After many years of self-examination and soul-searching I understand that I am the only constant in any relationship. When I found a partner willing to love me for my flaws as well as my good points, I knew I had found the right mate.
When it comes to improving your experience of your relationship, it can often be fruitful to become more accepting of your partner's strengths and weaknesses, rather than to continue attempting to get them to change fundamentally.
How to Accept Your Partner’s Flaws
What are the annoying qualities you have that your partner puts up with? In relationships, it's easy to see everything through your own perspective. You might see all the ways your partner is irritating but conveniently forget about all the small ways you're a pain in the butt to live with.
What are three challenging qualities you have that your partner would like you to moderate, but you have no interest in doing so? What do you implicitly (or explicitly) ask them to accept about you? For instance, I'm pretty fussy and controlling, and my spouse is quite accepting of these qualities (more than most people would be!).
When one of your partner's weaknesses irks you, it can be mostly because of something extra you're reading into it. For instance, I value people keeping their minds agile, and for me, being up-to-date with technology is part of that.
Take a hard look at the extra meanings you're adding on to your frustration about your partner's flaws. If you tend towards anxiety, their flaws might activate anxiety for you. If you tend to feel uncared about (typically because of your past experiences), then their flaws may activate those feelings. Try to disentangle these extra meanings from your reactions to their behavior.
People who tend towards taking too much responsibility (which frequently goes hand-in-hand with anxiety) often get frustrated with themselves that they can't figure out how to get their partner to change. This is one type of extra meaning it can be useful to let go of. If your partner doesn't change a small, annoying behavior, it doesn't mean anything about you, so don't personalize it.
As mentioned, I value being tech-savvy and up-to-date with technology. I'm subscribed to weekly emails with tips for using spreadsheets and consider these types of skills fundamental to life. However, these are just my values. They're not some objective values everyone should have. If your partner isn't motivated to change a behavior, it may be because some of their values are different from yours.
If your partner isn't going to change fundamentally, then what are your options, other than continually banging your head against a brick wall? When you accept your partner's flaws, it can help you mentally move on to thinking about what the practical options are. How can you minimize the impact that their flaws and weaknesses have on you? What are the practical workarounds? If they're still going to exhibit the flaw, how can you reduce the stress that creates for you?
In relationships, it's easy to develop habitual, frustrated responses to your partner's flaws and lose sight of how important that quality is in the big picture of your relationship. If you step back and get perspective, you can turn down the intensity of your emotional reactions, feel more gratitude, and move on to thinking about practical solutions for how you can minimize the impact of your differences. This doesn't tend to be a one-and-done process, but one you'll need to revisit periodically whenever you feel frustration or resentment building up in a mostly-good relationship.
If you have anxiety and take the steps to plan your schedule to avoid spiraling, your partner taking a different go-with-the-flow approach to her week may activate your anxiety, which says more about you than her.
Only someone who has a true understanding of love will comprehend this. After all, you wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who didn't completely accept you, so why would you expect anything different from your partner?
Research has shown that arguments that start off harshly will result in tension that is equal if not more intense than where it was when the argument began. Starting discussions with your partner in a SOFT way is important and crucial to conflict resolution and maintaining emotional safety within the relationship. Using a soft start-up is connected to happiness, emotional stability, and overall relationship success.
In addition to using soft start-ups and practicing fair fighting, another effective tool to establish a healthy emotional environment and safety within a relationship is accepting your partner for who they are. When stress is high or conflict is prominent, it can be easy to criticize your partner or point out their flaws. However, for long-term relationship success, the practice of acceptance and accepting your partner for all that they are promotes understanding, respect, and relationship success.
Once there is acceptance, you bring peace and change to your energy, and from there anything you create with the person you love is possible. That's not to say that you must accept everything in your relationship. You shouldn't accept any abuse, physically or emotionally, and you must establish your deal-breakers along with making sure you are compatible, have similar core values and a vision for your future.
This article aims to help you understand a list of flaws in a relationship, how to deal with identified flaws in your relationship, and also what to do if you feel that they are becoming a bit too much to handle.
If you or your partner are terrible at communicating, your relationship will suffer. This is because every strong relationship is built on a foundation of communication. If you cannot effectively communicate with your partner, how would you be able to deal with the other flaws in a relationship?
Before your partner came into your life, you had a life to live, and maybe you were even successful at that. If you suspend your life to be with your partner, let go of all your personal ambitions/goals, and spend your entire strength/time helping them achieve theirs, it could be a form of relationship flaws right there.
When your partner is committed to being constantly inebriated, you will find yourself having to deal with real-life situations alone, and this can cause envy and resentment to begin brewing up inside you.
We all have that part of us that just wants to let loose and enjoy life. While this is good, being excessively impulsive can be a death trap in a relationship because a time may come when your partner can become wary of you, simply because they do not know the next thing you may be up to.
One relationship flaw that can be hurtful is when you fail to stand up for your partner when they are slighted or neglected, especially in public. This makes your partner feel little, unimportant, and as though you like being a part of their humiliation.
As far as relationships are concerned, setting proper boundaries is important for staying sane and happy with your partner. As two individuals, you have different tolerance levels for things. Something can be acceptable to you and completely unforgivable by them. This is why setting healthy boundaries in the relationship is vital.
Communication can help save any relationship if carried out well and with respect for everyone in the relationship. When you have identified the relationship flaws, sit with your partner and be completely honest with them.
While trying to deal with these flaws, you may have to enlist the services of experts like counselors or relationship experts to help you. There is no need to beat about the bush if this becomes the case. Go for their expertise and save your relationship ASAP.
Treat them as a human being capable of love and care. Respect them as a person and accept them as an equal. Love them the way you want to be loved and be thankful that you have someone like them in your life.
As a partner, you have to respect these differences. As long as you know that their decisions and their lifestyle are not hurting them, then you just have to accept them and love them for who they are. With patience and respect, they will grow up and become a better person in time.
5. Stay focused on the present. When we compare situations to the past, we tend to be less accepting. We all make mistakes, so try not to ruminate about what happened before and live accordingly. Give your partner the gift of thinking about the present. Comparing things to the past always hinders an acceptance of the current reality and it destroys marriages.
Every person has different views and reasons behind their thinking, so whether or not you look past an obvious flaw depends on you. If you lost a dear loved one to smoking-related lung cancer, you'll likely feel less inclined to look past your partner's smoking habit.
If you didn't know your partner smokes and you find out well into the relationship, you''' probably feel deceived. This is definitely true if your partner deliberately hid this habit from you. That action is a red flag since it is a breach of trust.
If you cannot deal with your partner's human errors, should you break up? Maybe. If your partner's flaws are repeatedly becoming a source of your unhappiness or frustration in your relationship, then it is time to find a way to overlook them, correct them ... or leave.
Say your significant other was a hardworking, supportive partner for the first few years of your relationship. If you move in together and they suddenly no longer keep their job or are no longer there for you in terms of emotional support, then it's safe to say that your love can change since they have changed.
If you are unhappy because your partner will not return to being the person that they were before their flaws came to light, you should question why you are still with this individual, especially if you are unhappy. Realize that they are no longer the person you chose to love unconditionally. 2ff7e9595c
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