Relationship Alchemy, Part 1. How do I start to fix my relationship?

September is a time of transition as summer gives way to autumn. Perhaps that makes it a good time for reflection. It also seems like a good time to move from the losing strategies to the winning moves which make relationship alchemy possible.

Self-reflection is one of the pillars of relationship alchemy. If you want to transform your relationship with your partner – or indeed with your child or a sibling – your first step is to look inward.

You can probably already see what you don’t like about your partner.

• They’re too negative

• They’re angry all the time

• They don’t show you any appreciation any more

• They put you down and humiliate you

I get it! These are all behaviours which you would like to change. You wish so much that you could just make your partner listen to your complaints and change their behaviour.

But the honest truth is you can’t. Unless you want to engage in coercive control, and that’s illegal here in the UK, in the rest of Europe, Canada & at least some US states.

The only person you can change is yourself.

In all relationships there is a dance that the partners engage in. The dance may be loving or it may be destructive. If you’ve noticed that there’s a lot of destructive behaviour going on, then recognise that you are inevitably part of that dance.

Show your commitment to transformation

Your commitment to transforming your relationship into something beautiful will show up in your willingness to look inward at what you’re contributing to that dance.

If you read August’s blog posts you’ll know about the five losing strategies. But which of those losing strategies have you noticed in your own behaviour?

Or to look at it another way, which of the typical dances do you and your partner engage in?

• Is it the dance where one of you complains and the other becomes defensive?

• Or maybe one of you shouts and the other withdraws into silence.

Once you’ve started to notice what you’re doing, you can consider what you could do differently that might change the dance.

For instance you might try replacing complaint with request.

The key to change is your willingness to engage in self-reflection and to accept some responsibility. Because if you and your partner are constantly at loggerheads, you are definitely sparking each other off.

A client – let’s call her Anne – told me recently that she had tried a new approach when her husband ‘Joe’ came home from work feeling tetchy and grumpy. While in the past she would have castigated him for being so grumpy and quick to criticise, on this occasion she simply went up to him and put her arms around him and helped him calm his system by the close contact between them.

By switching out of her normal reaction to Joe’s grumpiness, Anne changed the dance that had played out so many times before.

Making self-reflection easier

It can be hard to look inwards and discover things we don’t like about ourselves. But there are steps you can take to make it easier.

First remind yourself that whatever you’re doing now which is maladaptive, it made sense in the past.

We are very creative beings and we’re good at creating behaviours which keep us safe. It’s most likely that what you’re doing now is something you created in the past to keep you safe.

Ask yourself: ‘when did I first do this thing? And what drove me to do it?’ The chances are that it’s a behaviour you developed in childhood. Which means it’s an ‘Adaptive Child’ behaviour. But you can change it.

If you really want to dig deep, you can try journaling about the behaviour, and find out why your younger self made that decision to behave in this way. Journaling will help you get your thoughts out of your head and make sense of them.

Understanding why you do what you do will make it easier to change. Believe me, I know, I’ve tried it!

Self-care and self-compassion will help you do the difficult things

There is one other pillar of relationship alchemy which I recommend you put in place right away. That’s self-care. When you are looking after your own needs it becomes much easier to do the more challenging work of self-reflection and owning your contribution to the problems in your relationship.

Self-care includes everything from yoga and meditation to taking your self-talk in hand. The self-talk piece is really important when we’re doing self-reflection to ensure that we don’t end up being really hard on ourselves.

If you’ve discovered something about your behaviour that you don’t really like, such as being super-controlling, you can still be kind and compassionate towards yourself. Remember these maladaptive patterns were adaptations you created to keep yourself safe when you were a child.

When we practise self-care, we show ourselves kindness and compassion, and that helps create a climate in which we can accept our own shortcomings and start to make the changes we want for our own behaviour.

If you’d like more support with this process of self-reflection, download my Survival Kit Workbook. It will take you through the process step by step.

In next week’s blog I plan to talk about relational mindfulness, which is another pillar of relationship alchemy. Looking forward to seeing you there!