It starts innocently enough. You meet someone through a mutual friend, or on a dating app, and after a few dates, there’s a funny feeling in your stomach, an indicator that this person is different. Special. There’s something about them, you think.
Time seems to fly by and after a few months, you’re convinced your soul mate has arrived because the emotion you feel is strong enough to power a whole city. I’m in love, you think, as you re-read old text messages and scroll through their Instagram feed.
You ride a wave of bliss and cannot for one second imagine the feeling coming to an end, and with that kind of optimism you pack up your stuff and move in together. When you know, you know, you tell your friends and family.
And then you wake up one morning and realize that your soul mate, your one and only, your forever and ever love is actually doing things that to you seem illogical and if you're honest with yourself, kind of stupid.
Soon enough, most of your sentences begin with “Don’t forget to…” or “Remember that you need to…”, and although you started off with a great deal of patience, you see that none of your efforts are working. Your partner’s still doing the same, annoying things, and now you’re annoyed, angry, and frustrated because they don’t appreciate how much you’re trying to help them.
After all, isn’t that what love is all about? Coaching our partners and helping them to be better versions of themselves?
Uhm, no!
All of us arrive in relationships with a particular set of beliefs, perspectives, and values that are born from our own experiences and upbringing. No two people are ever the same, and how you show up in a relationship is likely a product of what you experienced long before your partner looked into your eyes and made the world spin a little faster.
If you always slip into a pattern of “raising” your partner, consider that maybe you saw the same dynamic playing out in the relationship between your parents. Having been modeled for you for all of your childhood, it may have registered as the normal, healthy dynamic between two people who love each other.
Another reason might be that your partner’s way of existing in the world actually causes you a great deal of distress, because it is wildly different from how you have chosen to live your own life. So when you decide to “help” your partner, to mold them, train them, and change them to fit your own beliefs and worldview, perhaps you're trying to mitigate your own discomfort with things being contrary to what you believe.
Maybe it’s just easier and safer to focus on someone else rather than on yourself. There’s a part of you that recognizes there’s some stuff you haven’t processed, some hard truths about yourself you don’t want to face; turning your attention on your partner seems like a sound strategy to avoid feeling uncomfortable. After all, if you were conditioned to believe that being anything less than perfect is unacceptable, it’s not logical that you would then grow up to be an adult who can embrace your vulnerabilities. It makes more sense to avoid them altogether.
If you have noticed that your sex life has dropped off, if you no longer reach for each other the moment you’re in the same room, it may be that the interactions between you have become too parental, which is not the sexiest dynamic in the world.
When you channel all of your energy towards making sure your partner is improving, changing, progressing, and growing, you run the risk of forgetting two important factors: they never asked you for help in the first place, and they managed to survive on earth before they met you. Rather than change and grow, they remain firm in their ways, and you end up feeling exhausted, frustrated, resentful, and worst of all, unappreciated. This is not a recipe for an active sex life.
If you are the person being parented, you might be feeling like a 5-year-old whose constantly getting in trouble or trying to get things right so that your partner doesn’t get upset with you. This too may kill any desire for intimacy you may have had when you first met, because you’re starting to feel like you moved in with a younger version of your parent. Again, not sexy.
Make a decision as to whether or not you really want to stay in your relationship. You may have to explore what drew you to them in the first place and ask yourself some tough questions: Do I really love them? What, exactly, do I love?
If you are hyper-focused on the things that bother you, it’s easy to forget the important stuff: maybe you share the same values, maybe you both want the same things, maybe you share the same faith.
Remembering these things can help you determine whether or not you want to stay or throw in the towel.
But if you’ve realized that you do love the person, and you want the relationship to work, remind yourself constantly that the only thing over which you have real agency is you. No amount of well-intentioned efforts on your part will ever change another person who hasn’t first recognized the changes they’d like to make for themselves.
Be a team, not adversaries. If your partner’s up for it, seek a couple’s counselor. Sometimes you can fall into the trap of thinking that your partner is the problem, or perhaps they think you’re the problem. A counselor may help you see that neither you nor they are the problem, but. that there is a problem, and it can be resolved by working together, not independently.
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