"Nothing has to be broken for a relationship to be worth becoming curious about."
Relating well is more than simply learning to communicate better. It is about becoming more able to know what is happening inside you, stay present when something difficult happens between you, tell the truth without abandoning yourself or the other person, and make choices about how you want to relate to each other.
BEFORE COMMUNICATION HAPPENS
A different starting point.
Most relationship advice begins with communication .I believe something comes before that.
Before you can ask clearly, you need some relationship with what you want.
Before you can set a boundary, you need to notice the no.
Before you can receive someone else's truth, you need know how to handle hearing something you may not like.
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Before two people can create an authentic agreement, both need enough permission to bring themselves into the room.
​The difficulty is that many of us became very skilled at relating before we became skilled at wanting.
Wanting is not the same as getting your way. Wanting is information.
It tells us something about preference, longing, pleasure, need, values, curiosity, limits and direction.
We learnt to anticipate, accommodate.
We keep the peace, we remain reasonable.
Need less, say we are "fine".
Then we protect ourselves and finally protect other people from our disappointment.​
We become so good at maintaining relationship that
we silently disappear from it.
The work is not to become more selfish.
It is to become more present with yourself.
The five stages
Relationship to self is not separate from relationship work, it is part of it. The more accurately you can hear yourself, the less another person has to guess. The more permission you have to want, the less desire has to arrive disguised as resentment. The more capacity you have for your own discomfort, the less urgently someone else has to make it disappear. And the more securely you can remain with yourself, the more freedom there is to genuinely meet another person.
01
NOTICE
What is happening in me?
02
WANT
What do I want?
03
SAY
Can I let you know me?
04
MEET
What happens when your reality meets mine?
05
CHOOSE
What do we want to create from what we know now?
You are allowed to know what you want.
The other person is allowed to want something different.
That is where relationship actually begins.
WHAT CHANGES?
The goal is not a perfect relationship.
It is greater relational capacity.
To notice sooner.
To know yourself better.
To want without immediately censoring yourself.
To ask without making the answer predetermined.
To hear another person's truth without automatically abandoning your own.
To recognise protection when it appears.
To stay when staying matters.
To leave when leaving is true.
To repair what can be repaired.
To make agreements that reflect the people you actually are.
And perhaps most importantly: