Don’t waste your time worrying about what others think of your marriage/relationship. The truth is you’ll spend more energy imagining what others think of you than those folks will ever invest in themselves or their relationships.Let me ask you this: Is the love worth saving?
Whenever you stretch yourself into taking bold new actions, like getting help to make your marriage/relationship better, don’t be surprised to get a negative reaction from those around you.
It’s common.
Some folks may launch into long-winded explanations about why you and your partner are doomed to fail.
Or they might say, if you need help then you must not have enough love.
There’s no need to let that stop you.
Most of the time they speak from fear, not love, anyway.
Fear speaks from limitation; love speaks from possibility.
But what happens if our friends and family members are actually right? What if our relationship doesn’t go as planned even after they warned us it would happen?
It doesn’t matter. Even when they’re right, they’re still wrong.
Marriage/relationships rarely go as we plan.
I’ve been warned many times not to do something, but being who I am, I went ahead and did it anyway and sometimes I failed just as they predicted.
But I had to learn what I could do and it meant taking risks.
I had to risk the disapproval of others when it came to relationships, and assert myself even though I wasn’t sure it would work out.
When Yael and I were going through rough times I realized that I had to teach my friends to support me (and us).
I told them that I needed to build self-confidence, self-knowledge and self-trust “in a relationship.”
As a single person, I had it going on with “Self,” because I spent decades working at it.
But who am I in a relationship? That’s an altogether different set of skills.
And … that’s where many of us need help. It’s also where many of us give up out of fear, or we suffer in isolation.
I had to learn how to utilize my hard won Self-skills, successfully, in a relationship. And … I was never going to learn this by sitting on the do-nothing stool, listening to stories of others’ failed relationships or by running away. I needed to learn my true capabilities. How could my friends possibly know if I didn’t know?
Just because people sound certain doesn’t mean they are right.
Yael and I could never have achieved the kind of successes we have today in our marriage had we not, at times, made complete fools of ourselves, failed … struggled … argued; fell flat on our faces in front of our friends. And then dusted ourselves off and kept going.
The truth is we fall short in our relationships and it can lead to conflict and feeling like failures. Get used to it!
Make conflict your friend. Having conflict in relationships is not the opposite of success — it’s an integral part of the journey toward healing, maturity and real love. Understand that it’s absolutely, perfectly fine to reach out for help even if others are showering you with “can’t’s, don’t’s and shouldn’t’s.”
The fear has nothing to do with you.
Put your faith in love and the life you desire with your partner.
It may bring up feelings of uneasiness to even try and imagine what I am saying.
In the long run, you and your partner have the potential to stretch way beyond your current limitations and circumstances.
And this is when your dreams will start to become your reality.
Wishing you love and light,
Paula M. Smith, M.Div., MFT
Certified Imago Therapist
Couples Coach
401-782-7899
