How Can You Have a Good Relationship With Your Spouse?

Steven Stosny wrote about this dilemma in his post "How Can I Be Me, When You're Being You"? 

Perhaps you have experienced how difficult it is sometimes to be yourself, when you have to deal with it the personality quirks of your partner and your disappointments. 

We sometimes wish our partners would change so we can have a good relationship. 

It seems so clear that our partners need to change as we believe we can't change sufficiently to please our partners and find satisfaction for ourselves.

Steven shows the danger getting what we want by changing our partner.  He wrote:

If you do get what you want by changing your partner, your self-concept is reduced to:

"I am loving, compassionate, supportive, etc., as long as you do what I want."

Do you really want this on your tombstone:

"As long as I got what I wanted, I was great to the people I love?????"

Wow, Steven really called it the way it is.  We are very selfish, when we want to change others in order to have a better relationship.  You probably don't like what Steven said about trying to change others, but he does have a disturbing point.

The conclusion is inevitable, if you want to have a better relationship with your partner.  You need to change yourself or you need to be true to yourself and your values. 

When we focus so much on what is wrong with our partner, we fail to look at how wrong we are. 

We fail to realize how we have changed over time and are no longer communicating our love and values to our partner.  In order to have a satisfying relationship, we need to change and become authentic with our values and commitment.

Steven said this about successful relationships:

Successful marriage is not about getting your partner to do what you want; it's about being who you are, i.e., behaving according to your deepest values. For most people, this means being loving and compassionate to the people they love.

 In my e-book, I Live within the Environment Created by My Choices, I emphasized the importance of changing oneself and living by one's values in order to have satisfying relationships.  In my book I wrote:

In any interaction you have a choice to make.  The choice is to communicate values or feelings.  THE RELATIONSHIP CHOICE is the choice to communicate valuess....  THE RELATIONSHIP CHOICE is actualizing how you really want to be in your relationships with others.

If you are interested in learning more about integrating values into relationships or obtaining THE RELATIONSHIP CHOICE, please e-mail me at drhal@northstarmentalfitness.com.

Remember You Live within the Relationships Created by Your Choices!

Dr. Hal

Life and Mental Fitness Coach