But He Should Know!

A lot of people think, “but my partner should know!”

If he loves me, he’d get how this makes me feel. If she’s the right person for me, if she is sensitive to how I’m feeling at all, she would have known this is not what I wanted.

He should have known that I didn’t want to spend the extra money – he knows how stressed I am about our not saving enough. She should have known that transitions are difficult for me and I would want her to be around more during this one.

I have to tell you, I totally disagree. I think X-ray vision is a skill for X-ray machines. Mind-reading is a skill for the neighborhood psychic. For you and me and our relationships, there is communication.

Give your loved ones a break. Stop expecting them to know.

And give yourself a new job: discovering how you feel, what you want, and communicating it. Because let’s be honest. How often do you really know precisely what you want and what you want from your partner? Isn’t it a little unfair to expect your honey or your friends or your family to know what you really want and feel when you find it too difficult (or don’t make the time) to sort through the complex and conflicting layers yourself?

If you aren’t sure about this, try it this week. As you communicate with your loved ones, invite yourself into the practice of finding out what you really want. When you are talking about the weekend, are you aware of what you actually want? When you are talking about childcare responsibilities, are you clear about what you want (or are you just in a negotiation that has more to do with obligation, resentment, or martrydom)? See if you can begin looking inside to explore what you want. Sometimes it will take time to peel pack the layers to find out.

The other reason our loved ones can’t know what we are feeling is that our individual minds work differently from eachothers. The terrain is different within each of us. When we try to guess what our partner is feeling, we are always doing one of two things 1) projecting our own inner reality onto theirs (assuming our partner will feel how we would feel in similar circumstances or 2) projecting our beliefs about our partner on to them. Often, our beliefs have to do with our own past experiences or with how they’ve reacted in the past – but neither of those have bearing on what is happening in the present. One of the saddest things that can happen in a relationship is when one person makes big assumptions about their partner based on how that person has felt or behaved in the past. When we do this, we literally kill the most exciting part about relationships: that they are always evolving, because we are always evolving.

I find my own relationship stays most healthy and most interesting when I bring a sense of curiosity, of “what is happening over there, in that territory, now?” That means assuming nothing about how my husband feels or what he wants – and instead, being curious about it. Of course, I diverge from this at this all the time, but I do so less and less- as the assumption reflex gets weaker, and the curiosity reflex gets stronger.

So that’s my offer to you this week. To assume less about that person sitting across from you. To get curious. And to take the time to go within and discover what you want – about the little things and the big things. To share that. You’ll be surprised – quite often, you discovering what you want and saying it is enough. You no longer need to do anything about it, or expect anyone else to get it. You’ve witnessed and honored yourself.

On a different note, I want to invite you to visit here and listen to my audio conversation with writer and creativity expert Jeffrey Davis. We talk about “tracking wonder,” about fostering a creative life, about writing. I read a couple poems too.

Love,

Tara