Do Your Relationships Feel Like a Lot of Work?

Does your relationship feel like a lot of hard work?

If yes, then who is doing all of that hard work?

Your relationship will feel like a lot of work when only one person is doing ALL the work.

How are you sharing the workload to keep your relationship boat afloat? What is your responsibility to yourself and to the relationship?

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If you want your relationship to work and become fun, then you need to work together. Here are three rules to make your relationship feel less like work and more like play:

Rule #1 Stop Competing

Your relationship is not a place where you compete with your partner. Your success is her/his success and vice versa. It is also where you bring more of you to the table and see where you can contribute. But if you’re looking to compete, how can you co-operate with your spouse?

Career-minded women need to keep this spirit of competition in check so that they don’t bring it to their relationship.

If you care about winning, and if the other person loses, that other person is your spouse. It’s fine as long as you’re playing a game, like tennis or chess. If you bring your competitive spirit to your relationship and specifically in winning arguments, you stand to lose the relationship. A relationship is about winning together. You are there for each other, supporting each other.

If you have children, then don’t use them to compete for attention in the relationship.

Start co-operating.

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Rule #2 There’s no equality in a relationship

What does that mean? Have you ever participated in a musical jam where everyone is playing their own tune and nothing’s making any musical sense?

If you’re in a band, you play roles. Sometimes you sing lead. Sometimes you’re playing the tambourine. You play together. You’re both there to serve to one purpose. To make sense musically.

Why have relationships become war zones? It’s because people are in it for themselves asking “What’s in it for me?”. Instead, what if we could think and ask in terms of “we”. Neither party’s contribution is better or more. Yet both are doing their best in the roles they have taken up. The one who’s singing stays focused on singing and does a good job of that. And the one playing music does his/her best and make this an enjoyable song together.

Play your role as a man or a woman. The line between roles is blurring, I’m well aware. Instead of fighting over equality, what if you think about what you bring to the table. Think, “How can I serve my man/woman better?”

Many career-minded women no longer know what they bring to the table other than sex, career and companionship. Some do. But most don’t.

Do your share of the work and do it as best as you possibly can.

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Rule #3 Your emotional maturity is your responsibility

Way too many couples approach relationships unconsciously. They don’t realize the emotional commitment they signed up for. That is trouble waiting to happen. Two unconscious people means two people with unclaimed emotional baggage. In other words, they haven’t got their ‘shit’ together when it comes to being emotionally mature.

Hurt people hurt people. Taking care of yourself emotionally is your commitment to yourself. It’s too huge a burden to offload to another person.

It is your job and responsibility to become aware of your emotions and take full ownership of your conduct. Offloading this emotional responsibility to love you when you lack the ability to love yourself is a huge undertaking. People have more than enough personal shit to take care of.

No one wants to take care of a grown up person’s emotions that they are fully capable of taking care of themselves.

Unconscious parents offload their negative emotions of rage and anger through verbal and physical abuse on to their children. Unconscious partners do this to their spouses in domestic violence.

They say things like, “If you love me, you would/wouldn’t to X” or “Mommy is not very happy with your performance in X academic paper.” Suddenly the child is responsible to make the parent happy.

Who is responsible for their negative and extremely harmful unconscious behavior?

For instance, did you bear the brunt of your parent’s abusive behavior?

My mother wasn’t pleasant natured, and was rather unpredictable with regards to extreme uncontrollable rage. My sister and I were my narcissistic mother’s punching bags to offload her rage. It was very painful to experience this as a child. I was hurt, and I continued hurting for a very long time. Until one day, I was about to hurt my own child.

Who is responsible for my harmful behavior toward my child? My mother? My abuse and neglect during childhood? Or me?

How long can I play my victim card to justify my harmful behavior stemming from unresolved emotions? Who is to take responsibility of my negative emotions?

Me. And no one else but me.

Your emotional wellbeing is your shit to take care of. Don’t be afraid to seek help until you know how to be better in your relationship with your loved ones.

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Final thoughts

If you created a shared vision of your relationship, what would that look like? What would you do?

For those who are exploring the dating scene, you would benefit from sharing their vision of their future relationship with the right potential to see if they accept this invitation to play with you. No, I don’t mean jumping into bed. Don’t start there. Start with building a foundation for your relationship.

If you decide to take on this exercise of creating a vision, you invite your partner to play with you. You both get to play together. Isn’t life more fun that way?

When you take care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and financially, you can help your partner and they can help you, too. The relationship is then no longer a game of power struggles but rather of mutual admiration, fun, respect and co-operation.

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Thank you for being here. With your help and support, I have been able to make my book available in paperback. Taking emotional responsibility for yourself is the biggest act of self-love you will perform. All the tools you will need are available in this book, along with research and inspiring stories of people like yourself. Order your copy now at Amazon.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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