A primer into romantic relationships
I want to discuss relationships today.
I am a Marriage and Family Therapist by schooling and so have had formalized education in this area. There is so much we can learn from the teachings from psychology space from the 20th century and I want to link our understanding of how we can integrate this in the spiritual space.
Every one of our interactions is a relationship. When you interact with your spouse, you are having a relationship. When you interact with your friends and family, you are having a relationship. When you interact with the unhealed parts of yourself, you are having a relationship with yourself. When you interact with a person who is different from you (be it race, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc), you are operating as a representative from your collective group and having an interaction with another person who is operating as a representative from their collective group. And that is a relationship with a bigger impact.
As you might notice, in our world, we encounter tons of relationships every day, and these have the power to build harmony and cohesion or foment hate and separation. Everything we do in the microsystem impacts the macrosystem. If we pause here and approach this same topic from the opposite angle, we will notice large relationship dynamics from groups in the macrosystem that have large outcomes or consequences. We can notice which countries or groups appear to hate each other and thus are expressing that hate and disrespect through violence and warfare. It is easy to discount this problem as a macro-level problem. It is easy to just lament “why can’t countries get along and not use violence?”. But if we truly answer this question, we are left having to walk our talk in the microsystem, which is psychologically challenging for people. The answer is that there must be many people in a particular group that have been wounded and have experienced a bad interaction with another group. They are responding in a traumatized and unconscious way to express their pain. AKA their feelings are hurt. So if you want the macrosystem to stop using guns and warfare, you must have a mature way to deal with the microsystem occurrence of people’s feelings being hurt.
And this is where I know that most of humanity is not yet ready to bring about world peace. I have been doing couples therapy for 5 years and have done countless couples therapy sessions. People currently have difficulty responding maturely to the hurt feelings of their spouse, who they love the most. If we are not able to treat those that we love with the utmost consideration, I would say we have not earned the right to complain that other people are picking up guns. We have not mastered the spiritual frequency for love and peace in our personal lives, so we are not able to scale it and ripple it out to the macrosystem.
So here are my tips for having strong and healthy romantic relationships:
Structure your intention of the relationship as an intention to respect your partner.
This largely does not happen in most relationships because of systemic patriarchy. Both men and women have been taught that the opposite sex is fundamentally incapable of certain skill sets. This mindset leads to disrespect. For example, some men are taught not to expect women to be tough, resilient, or stay logical under pressure. Women are taught not to expect men to do fundamental tasks of self-care and survival, such as cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene. There is something to be said that in a systemic patriarchy, there will be those that choose to stay in stereotypical representations of their gender instead of realizing the full expression of their personhood. However, you should not select a partner expecting them to be less incapable than you, because you are choosing to disrespect them. In traditional societies (not USA, Australia, or Western Europe), marriage is often still framed as a business arrangement of survival. Men are expected to choose a woman that will provide survival and care needs for them. Women are expected to choose a man that will provide economic and security needs for them. Both parties are willing to sacrifice the desire to choose a person they respect, because that is not how relationships are framed by those societies. But let me tell you, if you don’t respect your partner and yet you live with them 24/7 for years, you will have many nasty fights. No one likes to be disrespected, no matter how much they are raised to tolerate disrespect.
How would we help a relationship where these kinds of patriarchal expectations of incompetence have been instilled for a long time? We go back to the drawing board, and we think about what it means to respect a person. Here is my shortlist for respect: Recognize that the other person’s feelings matter and communicate with them to find a way so that everyone’s feelings are acknowledged. You can take action by starting to ask your partner what their feelings are and acknowledge that you may have previously undervalued their feelings. You can have awareness that when you are labeling stereotypes on our partner (be it true of not), there is some part of yourself that is projecting your own feelings onto a narrative for the other person. Those feelings can be digested privately and then transmuted into respectful communication to your partner. That is how you ask your partner to respectfully honor your feelings instead of insulting them.
Why do we have such problems respecting each other in the relational space? It is likely because you were taught to tolerate disrespect while growing up in your childhood environment. It is an easy coping mechanism for parents to teach their children to tolerate disrespect rather than manage the ego challenges of parenting.
2. View your relationship as an ongoing series of interactions that you must constantly nurture for consistent harmony.
I believe this goes back to the historic distortion that your romantic relationship should be a business transaction. It is an illusion that the relationship is a one and done action. That once the couple is married, there is no need for more work. This can also occur when a couple displays actions of respect, listening, and consideration during the courtship phase, but then effort stops once the couple is married. It is helpful to think of your relationship/marriage like a plant. If you stop nurturing it or watering it, the plant is going to die. 100%. No ifs, ands, or buts. If we are able to understand this piece of biology, I hope we can transfer this wisdom to relationships. One reason that relationship conflict occurs EVEN if both parties perceive the business transaction to be complete, is because everyone is constantly growing and we grow through being triggered. Even better, we grow through being triggered by the people we live with 24/7.
This is the spiritual perspective integration. The person you chose to be with in romantic relationship is there to trigger you to activate your highest self. Spiritually, this is a welcome experience that you chose. Now considering that piece of spiritual wisdom, it’s possible that you do not want to be triggered for the rest of your life with your current specific romantic partner because perhaps you are actually being abused by them. Spiritual law is not dictating you must stay with any one person forever. But if you are in this moment and realizing that you are being abused by your partner, then your soul has probably made a contract with their soul that they will trigger you through abuse to master certain lessons about yourself. These lessons could be about standing up for yourself, valuing yourself, or learning to discern care and respect from others. My advice here is to learn these lessons as soon as possible so that you can end that particular contract. In layman’s terms, it means “leave your abusive partner.”
For relationship interactions that are not as intense as abuse, we still need to monitor when we are being unkind to our partners and replace it with kindness. This goes back to tip #1: constantly show respect to your partner. Constantly care about your partner’s feelings. Typically, you will not agree with everything your partner thinks off the bat, and that’s ok. But I advise you to care that your partner has their respective set of thoughts and values. You can learn respectful ways to express your difference of opinions. And you know what happens? People who are constantly feeling respected tend to be amenable to seeing how they can compromise with others. So if you are constantly respectful to your partner, you may find that your partner wants to work with you to get your feelings and needs met too.
What I don’t like to see is when couples justify their bad behavior by saying that the other partner was mean to them first. That is not being accountable to the fact that you entered your relationship under free will choice and committed to impacting your partner’s life and growth trajectory. Regardless of what your partner is currently doing, you have to be accountable to your commitments. This means that you should hold yourself to the principle of constantly respecting your partner and learning to communicate with them respectfully. If your partner continues to be mean to you despite your best efforts to be respectful and nurturing, you can consider leaving the relationship. It was your free will choice to enter into a relationship, and it is also your free will choice to decide if you will continue getting hurt in your relationship.
As always, I find that each concept that I write about has layers upon layers to uncover and analyze. Please let me know if you would like me to go deeper into any of the concepts I have mentioned.
