Make room for love

For many,  Valentine’s Day means chocolate hearts and roses. 

Let’s go deeper this year: 

What does a relationship really need to thrive beyond the falling in love period?

Sure, gestures of love are nice, but there’s one destroyer of most long term relationships. No amount of gestures can make it go away.

Resentment. 

I’m sure you’ve held a grudge before (we all have, it’s OK!). And it really makes showing and accepting love really difficult, if not impossible.

If we’re really honest, most relationships fall apart because resentment is allowed to fester. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way …

I can teach you a process of repair which you can then use with your partner to strengthen your relationship and create an earned secure attachment.

The first step in this process is sharing honestly.

In a secure relationship you must be able to share what’s not working, what is working and both partners need to be able to ask for what they need.

This can be hard. And that’s OK. It’s not your fault that it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us.

It might be because your childhood wounds taught you to expect to be ignored or even attacked for having boundaries and desires.

If you’re in a relationship that reinforces this pattern, you need to learn how to talk to your partner about your desire to heal, together.

When you create the ability to be that vulnerable, you’ll feel safe to be yourself.

If that’s possible (and honestly, sometimes it’s not), you’ll have to differentiate between the current relationship and our past relationships, where sharing vulnerability wasn’t an option. 

In that case you might even be able to use the current relationship to repair that wound.

Learning to be vulnerable isn’t easy. You’ll need to regulate your nervous system. 

When we feel mistreated, we tend to say things in a way that makes it hard for others to hear our authentic needs and desires. 

Sharing vulnerability involves taking responsibility for our feelings rather than shaming or blaming.