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Consider this a structural inspection of your relationship.
By Susan Allan
Last updated on Mar 14, 2024
If you've spent years in a relationship, you've probably experienced the discomfort of hearing demands beyond the "honey to-do" lists. Typically, your partner may want more "love", which may mean kindness, peace, joy, generosity, affection, and passion. Perhaps your spouse has dared to request more or better intimacy. When you hear these words, the biggest challenge is they interrupt your false sense of security. When you live with someone for many years, you expect to be loved unconditionally. You might believe you are, but is that true?
You may have heard about black mold that lives inside walls and poisons the air. Long-term resentments are endemic in most long-term relationships, lies of omission are the first step to a disaster that can make the entire structure unsafe and lead to unhealthy relationships.
Here are 7 deep questions that tell you how healthy your relationship is:
1. When asked to "change,” is there a benefit?
Heart-centered listening is the most crucial skill you need in healthy relationships. Learning to listen lovingly and cooperatively can save your marriage and your life. When your partner complains and demands, do you see the benefits of providing more of what is requested? When you learn to demonstrate more intimacy, grow, and expand your heart for your reasons, your life, love, and family benefits.
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2. How do you learn to hear complaints differently?
Your partner feels safe enough to complain and is hopeful these complaints will be heard with love. But, if your partner feels hopeless that your relationship could never improve, you will not hear complaints. Instead, you hear everything is "fine," and then you have the additional task of encouraging honesty. Until there is honesty, there is no possibility of unconditional love flowing to and from each of you, and honesty requires listening skills. This can be one of the more difficult questions for couples to consider, but it's vital for creating a healthy relationship.
3. What happens if you are angry or hurt by the complaints?
Too often, people withdraw even further and provide less of the kindness, peace, joy, generosity, affection, passion, and sex that is being requested. This withdrawal will eventually rob you of the level of intimacy that did exist between you. It's one of the quickest routes to an unhealthy relationship.
4. Can you listen to requests and demands for "more" in a way to meet your partner’s needs?
The solution is to listen objectively, without taking it as if we were under attack. Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., founder of Nonviolent Communication and one of my mentors, said this in his book Being Me, Loving You: "Love is not just something we feel, but it is something we manifest, something we do, something we have. And love is something we give: we give of ourselves in particular ways. It’s a gift when you reveal yourself nakedly and honestly, at any given moment, for no other purpose than to reveal what’s alive in you. Not to blame, criticize, or push. Just ‘Here I am, and here is what I would like, this is my vulnerability at this moment.’ to me, giving is a manifestation of love."
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5. How do you use the honeymoon phase to build an honest and stable future?
Do you remember when you were falling in love? Can you recall all you wanted to do was connect? And when it wasn't possible, the second-best option was to think about and talk about your beloved.
You are discovering what a dear friend calls "the treasures/pleasures" of love. This is the time to discover everything you can because later fear will creep in — fear of potential loss of this unique world of your partner and you. Fear creeps in before indifference. Indifference is the death knell of love. When people are reluctant to tell you their truth, it is because it no longer seems worth it. They feel hopeless that deeply intimate love is possible between you.
In the early days, you can ask lots of relationship questions to motivate someone to explain their romantic and sexual preferences, their financial situation, and their vision of the future. Learn about their fantasies and remember a shared fantasy is envisioned by two or more over time and has a high probability of becoming a shared reality.
6. How do you avoid arguing with your partner and shutting down?
Many peaceful and loving couples are confused about arguments. You want to avoid fights, yet numbness has crept over the intimacy you once shared. You look at your partner, and they don't have the enthusiastic or adoring face that was your first indication of love.
This is caused by "good manners". Couples who are civilized with one another are unwilling to say what is really on their minds. They usually lack the skills to speak their truth in a peaceful, honest, and open manner that allows deep levels of connection and passion to emerge. Healthy relationships are not built out of these habits.
When one of you learns to speak with a "Needs Vocabulary" without sounding like a victim, you can enter into a new phase of honesty, which is essential to passion. Be careful if this is new to you — harsh words aren't honest, and vice versa. Speaking about needs rather than accusations is the key to reconnection and takes training and practice.
7. How do you and your partner shift from making demands to making requests?
Once you hear a complaint without feeling resentful or sad, the next step is to be willing to hear "no" from your partner. If you can’t hear "no" without feeling triggered, your request wasn't a request, it was a demand. When you make a request and can't hear anything but "yes", your partner will feel pressure and a lack of autonomy. Many partners who want peace will pretend. And after years and years, the dam will break and there will be a drastic disconnect and an unhealthy relationship to show for it.
When you learn to encourage your partner to say "no", you shift your relationship away from lies and omissions that burrow into long-term relationships and destroy them from within, just like black mold.
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Susan Allan is a Life Coach whose Evolution Revolution Trainings offer proven tools to experience joy, and happiness and let go of suffering.