
Weâre taught to work hard from the time that weâre little until we grow up. Through our working years, itâs a given. Work hard, get results.
But what happens when we apply this work ethic to our relationships?
Sometimes we luck out. We meet the right person, settle down and build our very own white picket fence. The work it took to meet them and have a happy relationship pays off.
More often than not, something is missing. And the worse we feel about that, the more we try to jam things into place. If weâre single, we read about what to do, we go on dates, we attempt to remain open, we force ourselves to go speed dating and on paper, itâs all straight from the perfect daterâs handbook.
If weâre already in a relationship, we might feel the dread. If youâve ever worried that your relationship was not enough, or not working, you know exactly what I mean. Itâs that cold, stomach-churning sense of worry that things arenât okay.
So we try to fix, fix, fix and mold our pairing into something more suitable. We might feel like theyâre pulling away, or that the relationship isnât exactly what we want, so we start doing. We schedule date nights and we have long, agonizing talks about our feelings. We go to therapy and cast around for new tools to use relate to each other. We heard the mantra at some point that couples who play together stay together, so we try to get our partner to take up photography (or whatever).
And somehow, even with our Herculean efforts, all falls flat.
We get disappointed.
We feel disillusioned.
We start to think that this love thing really isnât all itâs cracked up to be.
This gets exhausting right? Arenât you tired of wishing and hoping, wondering, analyzing, and brainstorming about what you can do to âmake things workâ but still feeling like itâs hopeless?
Yeah, I get it. And itâs not your fault.
So Whatâs Missing?
Letâs rewind for a second. Remember when you were just learning about the opposite sex and came across the idea of romantic love? Okay, not that exact day, probably, but remember your first crush? Why did you want them? Why were you interested in the first place?
It was most likely a feeling of some type.
And, feeling is why we do EVERYTHING in our lives. We spend our days striving to feel a certain way. We want to feel the satisfaction of sex, love, attention, admiration, respect, comfort, satisfaction that our needs are met, and so on. Feeling full after eating is.. a feeling.
Reasonably, we look to our romantic partners to provide some of this emotional fulfillmentâ or if we happen to be particularly unrealisticâ all of it.
I think you can agree that no matter who youâre with, you want to feel good when youâre around them. Or, you might stick around to avoid feeling guilty about leaving. Either way, feelings are at the center of it all.
And, guaranteed, they want the same from you.
Humans are endlessly complex creatures with simple needs.
Thatâs why we forget sometimes that at the heart of any relationship is a simple trade. To boil it down to itâs most basic, we do all of this effortâ the relationship danceâ to feel a certain way (even if itâs simply lust before passing our genes along).
Neither of you are operating an emotional charity. Make someone feel the wrong way long enough and you WILL drive them away. Make them feel the right way long enough and well⌠your relationship struggles become a thing of the past. If you were blissfully spinning around in circles, Sound of Music-style, you wouldnât feel that creeping sense that something is missing, right?
But while weâre doing all of this fixing, relationship-achievement-striving, sometimes we donât realize that the entire goal is to FEEL a certain way around another person and have them FEEL a certain way around us.
We feel like all of our hard work should pay off in the form of the relationship we really wantâ after all, striving is how we got everything else, right?
During all of this busy-ness, often we donât look around and think about how all of this makes us feel. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels lousy for us and intolerable from the other end. But just the same, we keep striving, hoping that all of this will amount to something, anything, to stave off the terror that we might end up alone.
Paradoxically, when we ignore our true feelings and do mindless striving instead, we often do end up alone in spite of all of our efforts.
And weâre back in that place of awful, gut-gnawing anger and frustration that once again, âThe Oneâ hasnât panned out.
The good news is that weâre in charge of a LOT of this, simply due to the fact that first, we get to choose how we feel at any given time AND we get to choose how we interact with our partners.
We can also choose to find out what really makes them feel good and do those things.
Not because weâre pandering.
Not because itâs inauthentic.
But because all relationships are a trade.
Weâre doing things to feel something. Every minute of every day. This isnât sinister, itâs just the reality. If you commit yourself to making another person feel goodâ how THEY want to feel itâ then youâll never be at a loss for romantic partners or business associates or friends.
The tricky part of that equation is that you must get in touch with your own feelings and take the time to understand how THEY want to feel.
May it be through education about what men or women are likeâ or with the individual youâre after (and even after 28 years of marriage, you can still be âafterâ your love). So often we go about trying to do things to for someone else that would make US feel good and assume that it works the same for them.
Think of the way you would treat someone elseâs leashed dog you wanted to meet.
Youâd probably ask the owner if the dog was friendly. If given the go-ahead, youâd probably stick out your hand to let the dog smell you before trying to pet it.
And you would do all of this because itâs the ârightâ way to interact with a dog, right? You donât think to yourself âwell I love hugs, so Iâm going to hug this strange dog, right off the bat.â Youâd probably get your face bitten off, or at least a scary, warning growl.
But all the time, we try to do this with other people. We think about what we like, then try to approach them with exactly that, using the rationale, âwell I would love to be called 43 times a day, so why WOULDNâT I just do what Iâd like?â Unsurprisingly, the object of our affections is not impressed and we feel hopeless by call number four.
Itâs here, in this fallacyâ believing that theyâll want what we want, then trying to DO, DO, DO more of thatâ where many, many misunderstandings live. Itâs where our striving utterly fails us.
What makes the person in front of you feel good might be the polar opposite of what you want, and vice versa. It might be that youâve been HOPING to feel a certain way in a relationship, so you do all of those things for someone else, thinking that theyâll get it and reciprocate, but you both keep falling short.
It isnât the action itself, itâs the continual application of action in the wrong direction. So⌠what the heck should you do instead?
Always Consider Your Results Before Taking Action
To put this into real terms, letâs look at it from a problem solving perspective:
Say youâre not thrilled with the frequency by which someone else calls or texts you. It happens, but itâs just not enough for you.
The way to get them to contact you more is NOT to go on a rip about how you donât hear from them enough the next time they call. Doing that doesnât make you feel good, right? No shock here, itâs a downer for them too.
If you think about the result that you really want to achieveâ the way you want both of you to feelâ then itâs impossible to tackle this issue by starting on the bitter bus. Youâre forced to think in a more strategic fashion and work with what theyâre already doing to inspire them to WANT to make you feel good by calling you more.
To use another example, say they leave their socks in the middle of the living room floor every day when they get home from work.
If you want to avoid feeling like youâre a nagging crazy person, youâre going to have to find a way to inspire them to want to make you happier around the cleanliness of the house. Browbeating will not work. It does not and never, ever will inspire happiness for either one of you.
Thatâs why when you think about what youâre doing to get or improve any relationship, it helps to step back and then approach it from a âhow can we mutually feel goodâ perspective. Notice that this doesnât mean you just doing whatever they want because you know they like itâ thatâs people pleasing and itâs one-sided. It implies that your own needs donât get met. It means that you take the time to look at the problem differently. It changes the questions you ask them and yourself.
Itâs super cheesy, but if your relationships arenât going the way you want, instead of âstriving,â think âthrivingâ first and then work backwards from there.