Relationships: Your Toughest Challenge and your Deepest Teacher…

They fell in love and lived happily ever after.

Or not.

Because, let’s be honest, dear reader, who lives a true fairytale?

Exactly. Nobody.

In real life, we’re not always in a happy place. Sometimes life sucks.

But what do you do when you and your beloved are both challenged? How can you keep the relationship loving and alive, even when there’s not much to celebrate?

It’s a question my beloved and I certainly have explored in the past years.

With his chronic illness (read: fatigue, brain for, body aches – all worsening for the past 2,5 years despite medication) and me being in early stages of peri-menopause (read: brain fog, mood swings, joint pain, changes in hormones, et cetera), I can most certainly say: we’ve become experts at navigating love when things get tough.

Perhaps you’ve been there too.

You may have experienced setbacks – physically, professionally, financially, emotionally – that impacted your every-day life.

In those phases of life, you may notice it’s a little harder to stay calm and loving towards your partner.
Perhaps you get agitated more quickly.
The smallest things, futilities maybe, may trigger you.

You may get snappy.

Or you close off, because you don’t want to bother anyone else with your mood.
In the meantime, your partner might be struggling with their own challenges too.

The love? It seems far away.
And every snap, every passive-aggressive look, every day without loving touch, seems to erode the love even more.

How, then, do you get past this?

Your nervous system in a state of protection

What you need to understand, is that in those challenging moments, your body is most likely in survival mode. And so is your partner’s.

Your nervous systems are not in a state of connection, but of protection. Neither of you are regulated. Why? Because these nervous systems need to get you through whatever you’re going through.

When we’re in a state of dysregulation and protection, our old patterns take over. The patterns that you’ve developed in your childhood and have served you many times.

These are coping mechanisms, that I will now refer to as your ‘Adaptive Child’ (the part of you that learned to adapt to scary situations and stood up to protect you).

For years, your Adaptive Child has done you well.

It got angry to give you the power to live and not become a doormat.
It started pleasing everyone, not to risk rejection.
It defended itself from unjust accusations, because this was how it had some agency.
It hid behind a wall, to protect you from intrusive people.
It internalized the shaming and criticism, because the idea that your caregivers were at fault was way too frightening.

And yet, adaptive then = maladaptive now (quote by Terry Real).

Because when those old patterns take over, intimacy is out of the window. Especially when neither of you is able to stay connected to your inner Wise Adult. Two kids are basically running the show. How’s that working out for ya?!

What you need to learn...

What my partner and I had to work through in our own way, is to become truly honest with ourselves, acknowledge our own patterns and see where our Adaptive Children sometimes take over.

We had to learn to separate our own subjective reality in that moment, from so-called truth.

We’re lucky that we’ve done a lot of work on ourselves prior to our relationship, so it was relatively easy to pick up, but nevertheless… we’re not perfect either. Haha. At all.

Here’s what we learned over the past years:

Taking responsibility of your own wounding, healing and inner safety is key. We did not expect each other to solve this. This meant: each making a choice of how we wanted to show up in the relationship, without waiting for the other to start.
We always assume positive intent. I trust that my partner means well, especially when times are tough. We choose empathy over being right. In a conversation, you will see me standing up for his, while he stands up for my experience and needs.
We focus on being a team, especially when it’s hard. This means, we both voice what we need, and we negotiate our way through it to make sure we both get enough. Even in times of scarcity, talking through it and being clear in what we need, while being generous with our ‘yes’, helps a lot. We help each other deliver.

We did not get there overnight. We earned this over time. It was more than just 'skills'; it was deep inner work.

My partner might now say it was my ability to keep my heart open that got and still gets us through.

I will say it’s his grounded generosity that makes me feel welcome with everything that I am.

Here's the thing...