First, the honeymoon period, then engagement, then marriage, and when you start to settle down into ‘happily ever after’ your relationship turns sour and you wonder ‘what have I got myself into? What have I done wrong?’ Or maybe the problems start earlier than this and you want this person so much in your life but wonder ‘how can it work’!
Sourness can show up in many individual ways or in a combination of symptoms: Out of control emotions that result in hurt and regret; infidelity that results in hurt and usually regrets; boredom; fear of truly being yourself; unable to resolve or repair after arguments and withdrawal to name a few.
When your emotions start to railroad your relationship, it is hard to talk to your partner in ways that make sense let alone resolve your argument to a point where you both feel heard and seen.
It is at this point we usually play the ‘blame game’ and you think ‘if only they’d changed we’d be fine’ or ‘I see so much potential in my other half but…’.
What is really happening is that your brain has ‘been triggered’ and has gone into survival mode. So you’re either in fight, flight or freeze mode. It’s hard to believe that here in front of you ‘your beloved’ has now become the biggest threat to your survival. The part of your brain that watches out for threats has been activated and has now gone into automatic and invariable you’ll be wanting to fight, flee or you’ll freeze.
We keep pulling out our hair to solve the problem and actually what we need to be doing is finding out what is it we do in a relationship that sabotages us from being present for ourselves and our beloved. What you’ll need to do is ‘somehow’ calm yourself down enough so you can start to really hear what your partner is saying. This will start a process of softening and opening up to each other again.
Here are a few ways in which we can gain control of those heightened emotions…
- Take some time out…it usually take up to 20 mins to regain composure to the point where you can talk about the issue at hand.
- The sooner you notice your emotions are getting elevated, which is before the out of control state, calm yourself by slowing your breath and speech down.
- Stating what is happening for you out loud so your partner hears you and follows suit e.g I want to calm down so I going to breath and talk slowly.
- If you need help with your relationship book at relationship session now … it’s always better to start learning how to get to the bottom of your relationship trouble earlier than later. Later might be too late!