“How to make him/her yours” returns more than half a million results combined in Google.
“How to make him/her your life partner,” on the other hand, less than ten results…
That’s sad.
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Words have power
Asking “how to make her/him yours?” frames our thoughts and not in the right direction.
“Make yours” suggests possession. And possessions can be stolen, sold, or stored in the attic, never to be used again. Not to mention that a possession can be tossed in the garbage once worn out.
Is that what we want from our love life?
Is that what we wish for the closest persons in our lives?
It’s not about being exclusive
Being in an exclusive relationship is very different from being in one driven by a possessive partner. Looking at synonyms of these two words is particularly enlightening.
- Exclusive touches with words like whole, total, and absolute.
- Possessive, on the other hand, sounds like clinging, controlling, and dominating.
No matter if you’re willing to be monogamous or not (and polyamory can be exclusive), almost by definition, being possessive isn’t a recipe for a fulfilling relationship.
Our lovers aren’t things
Online dating certainly feels like doing grocery shopping sometimes. Even if you match, you don’t need to stop “shopping.” Isn’t this strange? I mean, isn’t the very goal of the apps to match? Why would you want to keep on swiping? But, still, that’s the way Tinder works, for example.
You can put this profile on the side, return to it later, and keep on swiping in the meantime. As if selecting an item and putting it in your shopping cart waiting for check out.
One dating site even went as far as using a shopping cart for its logo.
We don’t own our partners, and they don’t own us
Trying to make your love interest yours can (paradoxically) mean you’re ready to be owned by them. Being owned or owning are two sides of the same coin.
If we’re ready to do anything to catch them in our nets. We could well end up being the prisoners, not the guardians. Bending up backward to satisfy their most irrational whims might make us very attractive in their eyes but won’t bring deep satisfaction in the long term.
We can do better than that.
A conscious partnership
We can do better than sacrificing our desires on the altar of our partner’s whims. And our partners can do better than having a childish relationship with a substitute for an all-powerful parent responding to a whimsical child.
We can aim for a conscious partnership.
What’s a conscious partnership?
I like Shelly Bullard’s definition.
“It’s a romantic relationship in which both partners feel committed to a sense of purpose, and that purpose is growth. Individual growth. Collective growth as a couple. Growth that makes the world a better place.”
Communication is key
The way to a conscious partnership is to say what you want. Express your needs and desires. Don’t wait for your partner to guess; it’s more than likely to lead to frustration and anger.
Asking yourself and your partner these three questions is, for example, a good framework:
- What should I start doing?
- What should I stop doing?
- What should I do more?
It doesn’t mean you’ll change everything to accommodate your partner’s answers. And it’s not going to solve core issues like wanting or not to have children, for example. But it can solve some smaller ones, which are generating frictions in your couple daily.
A technique for better communication between partners: Imago
Imago Relationship Therapy was popularized by Harville Hendrix in his book, Getting the love you want.
You don’t have to agree with everything the author said in the book, but you’ll, without doubt, find some of the techniques described very useful.
You won’t be the only one! The book has excellent ratings on Goodreads, and successful people like Oprah Winfrey highly recommend it.
“I would not still be in a relationship with Stedman [Oprah’s partner since 1986] had I not read that book. It’s the best relationship book EVER. It explains everything.”
Harville Hendrix recommends partners use the Imago Technique during intentional dialogues. The intention is key here. Although you can use the Imago technique in any setting, it works best if the partners are knowingly using it. If only because completion of each step should be agreed upon by all.
3 steps to follow
The imago technique starts with one of the partners sharing a situation that made them feel bad and then uses three basic steps to acknowledge the point and help look for a solution if necessary.
- Mirroring: Repeat and reformulate your partner’s message until your partner agrees that you correctly understood the situation. You should check for accuracy.
- Validating: It doesn’t mean agreeing. It means you recognize that what your partner said makes sense.
- Empathizing: It’s similar to the first step but with a focus on feelings. The goal is to understand and share the feelings triggered in your partner by the situation.
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Final Words
Carl Jung said,
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
That’s what we should be aiming for; we should look forward to interacting with our partners, being transformed, and growing together.
We could be shining like binary stars, revolving together around a common center, and bound by forces as strong as gravitation.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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