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Do you believe that relationships are hard? I hope not. If you do your relationship is going to be hard.
I used to have that believe. Oh, relationships are hard, I can’t be bothered. Well, I am here to tell you, relationships are not hard. Relationships may have challenges, but relationships are not hard.
How can I say that? What do I know?
How We Make Relationships Hard
I used to have a ‘hard’ relationship, one that was too much about arguments that went nowhere. That became hard. It was not my relationship that was hard. What was hard was how my husband and I foolishly decided to address out issues from day to day.
I suspect that many of us who see relationships as being hard are falling for the same mistake. We attempt to take the hard and impossible road to get to where we want to go in our relationship.
What do I mean by that?
We take the roads that lead us to every other place but to a happy relationship. Are there going to be disagreements? Yes, many. But disagreements do not have to end in senseless arguments.
It is the senseless arguments that make everything seem hard. Use those disagreements to genuinely foster more understanding.
Relationships are hard if we make them seem hard. And we make them seem hard because of our attitude towards things such as disagreements.
Why Relationships Seem So Hard
Disagreements send us signals that say we are different. You are so different from me, and I am so different from you. I don’t like being different. We are supposed to not be different.
It is all these false beliefs that we hold about each other once we are in a relationship that makes it so hard to get to where we want to go in the relationship. Reconfigure those beliefs and rather than seeing relationships as hard, you will see it as a place where you will grow.
Your spouse has to be different from you. It can be no other way. Someone who is the same as you, think the same as you is bound to be a fake. Your experiences are different from everyone else. So are your spouse’s experiences. And even if you have similar experiences, they are most likely processed in a different manner.
Do not expect or even desire sameness in your relationship. If you have diversity outside of your relationship it’s for a reason. Diversity is everywhere, even in an interpersonal relationship. Embrace it and reconfigure how you process differences. If you do, you will build a great relationship.
In fact, I had to reconfigure a lot of what I believed about relationships before I got rid of my ‘relationship is hard’ mindset. I outline the six principles in one of my books and they serve me every day. Do the same. Reconfigure.
Then you will be all good. Take it from me.
