In working with couples over the years - and enduring some painful partnerships myself – I’ve come to appreciate the highly creative (if mostly unconscious) strategies couples employ to “make a relationship work.” Here is one of the more popular, if horribly unsatisfying, “relationship recipes” I’ve encountered:

1) Withhold your truth in a multitude of ways, especially what your feeling and thinking on a day-to-day basis.
2) Tell yourself those little matters aren’t important. Take the attitude “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” until your backlog of niggling inner complaints suffocates any chance of pleasure with your partner.
3) Begin to withdraw from your partner in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, until you are “leading parallel lives” or worse, experiencing life together as one of “sleeping with the enemy.”
4) Predictable outcomes: Create a seemingly out-of-the-blue argument with your partner and unleash a storm of blame and complaints, proclaiming yourself a victim to their intolerable behavior. If your partner joins you in outburst, you both argue over who-is-most-victimized-by-whom until you exhaust yourselves. After your fight, use your newly freed up energy to:

a) have make-up sex, or
b) feed your ever-growing plot of how you’re gong to end this relationship. . . someday.

5) Repeat this recipe again and again for same, reliable results!

Sound like something you’ve tasted? Although once considered standard fare in the unofficial marriage handbook, this recipe has now - brace yourself! - been recognized as being detrimental to emotional health! Yet its influence persists, likely because many of us were spoon-fed some version of it throughout our childhood. For those of us who were fed a steady diet of this kind of “emotional junk food,” it’s time to dream up something new! So try on this recipe instead:

1) Start with a solid base of inspiring commitments* that you and your partner agree on, including the essential grace ingredient: Committing to seeing your partner as your ally and to being theirs.
2) Stay current and transparent* with your partner about everything going on in and around you, because it feels SO good to be seen and to fully express!
3) Learn to speak what relationship gurus Gay and Katy Hendricks call The Unarguable Truth* about your inner reality as way to mature your self-understanding and deepen your connection to your partner.
4) When your Blaming and Shaming inner voices start to revolt and threaten to shut down your heart, remember (and call upon) your commitment to see your partner as your ally, no matter what.
5) Stock up with simple tools and practices* in your love pantry to throw into the mix when needed!
6) Awaken and go to sleep each day, grateful for the love of the exquisite, gorgeous -and sometimes mysterious - creature beside you.

Take a moment to reflect on your current relationship recipe. Does it have the right blend of delicious intimacy that you crave? Or has it become a bland – or perhaps grueling – mixture of less-than-vital ingredients? As I often share my creativity and love through cooking, I can tell you a simple secret of all good food:
It comes from a devotion to quality ingredients, a curious mind and an open heart. The same is true for “cooking up” a good relationship.

* For more information on these practices and how to create a new recipe for your own relationship bliss, go to: www.soletosoulwellness.com or call Joy at 541/482-8540