Your Partner Is Important To You

What happened to the ease of communication you had in your relationship when you first got together? How did you get to the point of asking, “How to save my relationship?”

Disagreements intensify the longer you’ve been with your partner because you become important to each other. Your partner means a great deal to you as years roll by because you’ve created a life together. In fact, your partner becomes so uncomfortably important to you that you often feel constrained by his/her opinions, likes and dislikes.

And your partner feels the same about you.

This partner importance is normal. It happens to all couples and exacerbates long-term relationships. Why? Because we want to make ourselves acceptable to our partners, and we think the only way to do so is by compromising ourselves. The price we pay for this sacrifice however is not expressing the fullness of who we are to our partners or to ourselves. This downward spiraling path of self-sacrifice is not the answer to how to save a relationship.

If partners could only understand that when they feel like yelling, “I can’t be ME in this relationship!” it’s not the time to break up and run away. This suffocating feeling is part of the natural forces at work in every long-term relationship.

When you say that your partner means very little to you, just the opposite is the truth. Once you understand this relationship dynamic when your partner is upsetting you, you’ll realize that one of the reasons you’re angry and “triggered” is because he/she is so important to you – even though you may pretend that he/she isn’t to alleviate your own anxieties.

It is possible to learn how to save your relationship if you understand how partner importance operates in your marriage.

How (besides financially) is your partner important to you? Sometimes it actually scares me how important my husband is to me – in my daily life.