Do You Really Want a Relationship?

With a divorce rate in this country that approaches 50%, and a
fairly sizable percentage of marriages that aren’t particularly
blissful, it’s difficult to avoid searching for the answer to
the battle of the sexes. 

Would you like to stop searching? 

We’ve moved through the old paradigm of getting your needs met
in relationships and it has proven itself to be a miserable
failure. Why? Attempting to get your needs met in your
relationship causes some troublesome things to happen. First, it
causes you to focus mainly on your needs and not on the desires
of your partner. Secondly, it sets you up for disaster because
it has you believing that you deserve something that may well
not be delivered. 

All across this great country of ours, battles are raging
between men and women: she needs to talk and connect, and he
needs his space and independence. Who wins here? The answer, of
course, is that both lose because of a flawed view of what a
successful relationship is all about. What also happens is that
both people start to blame the other for not meeting their
needs. 

For men who are really serious about success in their
relationships, it’s important to understand how blaming your
partner is an enormous problem itself. It creates a bigger
problem and has you convinced that you are not part of the
problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Blaming has
never worked and never will. It may have you feeling justified
in your position, but it will always hurt your relationship. 

It’s particularly important to develop the realization that your
feelings can deceive you in your relationship with your partner.
This can be difficult for people raised during the honor your
feelings era of relationships. Your feelings tell you things
like, I can’t believe she could do something like that to me,
or, How could she treat me so badly? These feelings are the
result of your own low self-esteem and your own personal history
of victimization. 

While it’s true that your partner may treat you in a way you
don’t like sometimes, it’s not true that you need to react to it
with strong negative feelings. These strong negative feelings
are a reflection of your own esteem issues. They also have a way
of keeping your partner engaged in the struggle with you so that
you can continue to blame each other. When you are both engaged
in the struggle, you’ll believe that she needs to be fixed.
She’ll think the same of you. Nobody wins and everybody loses.
This isn’t very smart or effective. 

What would happen for men in their important relationships if
they gave up defending themselves and believing their needs
needed to be met? What would happen if they worked at being kind
and caring with their partners? I’ll tell you what would happen.
They’d have great relationships! After all, the only thing that
you can do to improve a relationship is to improve you. 

So stop looking over at your partner and seeing all of her
flaws. Stop blaming her. She has issues just like we all do. But
if you see her as a collection of flaws you’ll have no chance at
a successful relationship. And it’s successful relationships in
life that make us truly happy.