Events in your relationship are neutral, but what you focus on you’ll feel (and expand)
Your spouse left their dishes in the sink. Your spouse didn’t fill up the gas in your car. Your spouse doesn’t want to have sex with you right now. What do you notice about these statements? They are as close to factual as you can get. But usually, that’s not how we hear them in our heads is it? No, it’s more like:
“I can’t BELIEVE he has the edacity to leave his dishes in the sink. Who the hell does he think he is? Well, I’m not going to clean them up. Let them sit there!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!!! She did it again! How hard is it to go to the damn gas station and fill up the tank? If you’re going to USE the car, then you also need to take care of the car. How could she be so thoughtless and uncaring?”
“Here we go again. I deserve so much better than this. Sure I can masturbate, but why should I? Why can’t we have sex whenever I want to have sex? It’s just so thoughtless. Never for a second thinking about my needs. Why am I even in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with me?”
The Events In Your Relationship Are Neutral
We forget that that (often negative) voice in our head is our ego. It’s not actually who we are. We are the being that holds the space for that voice. But that’s a topic for another day. Right now, I want you to see the truth. ALL events in your relationship are neutral. “This happened.” That’s it. All the rest of the inflammatory language is your ego getting involved. Your ego thrives on being on a soap box being righteous – even if you never say a word. Those negative thoughts about your partner are doing so much more damage than you may think.
At this point, you may be asking, “What’s the big deal? They are just my thoughts. They don’t hurt my partner if I never say anything, right?” Wrong. Let me explain.
Your Focus Directs Your Feelings & Your Energy
I want you to really get that EVERYTHING that happens is neutral. It is our choice how we want to feel about it and our ego would really like us to feel bad and right about so many things in our relationship. The events are often used as symbolic triggers that activate your ego. As you focus on something that you perceive is negative, your anger, frustration and negative feeling grow. Something as dumb as dishes left in the sink starts out as neutral and soon activates a flood of negative emotions until you MUST release these feelings – usually “on the person who did this to you.”
And yet, in reality, your spouse did nothing to you. Or, more accurately, the event itself is “no thing.” By neutral, I mean that it simply is. The event itself has no emotions. The dishes are an object (or a thing), just like your car (a thing) and even sex (an act). None of these things are positive or negative. They just are. We, as humans, are interpretation machines. We interpret everything because that’s what our 10,000-year-old lizard brains were built to do to keep us safe and out of harms way. The trouble is, we’ve evolved faster than our good old fashioned fight or flight reflexes were designed to help us.
What You Focus On Will Expand
This is really important that you understand this point. Whatever you choose to focus on is a choice. I can choose to interpret my spouse leaving dishes in the sink as an act of aggression and therefore make it a negative event, rather than a neutral one. But understand, this is you charging up a neutral event. It’s not real. It’s only in your head and as you keep charging up a neutral event, it will expand from something insignificant and trivial to a massive blow-out fight that is, in reality, totally unwarranted.
Ever heard the expression, “the pinch doesn’t match the ouch?” This is what’s happening. In the grand scheme of life, this is a totally small and meaningless event. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. And yet, as we focus on it, we are giving this meaningless event or act more and more of our (negative) energy until something small and trivial because massive and life changing. Separation and divorce can begin this way. Something small and insignificant can shift our focus and expand our (false) belief that our partner is bad, wrong, evil, worthless, uncaring, etc. When we get it in our heads that this is “the truth” we begin to seek out evidence so that we can be right about the false belief we’ve totally made up in our heads.
So What?
Instead, there’s a very simple solution here. “So what?” Or, more accurately, “So [this event] happened. So what?” This is not callous, cold and uncaring. It gives you the opportunity to look at what stories you’re making up about what actually happened. The gas tank is low. That’s the fact. “My partner never thinks about my needs and all the proof I need is right here on the gas gauge” is an interpretation. The so what is the question that allows you to look and make a distinction between “the fact” and “your interpretation of the fact.” They are not the same things. But we humans are clever creatures and we have an uncanny ability to collapse facts with our interpretations so that our interpretations feel just as real as reality itself. These are the seeds of the lies that, when left unquestioned and unchecked, grow into a forest of falsehoods and limiting beliefs.
You partner has zero chance of success in your forest of fallacy. The best they can do is survive as you continue to plant seeds of doubt and disbelief around their worth as your partner. Eventually, one of you will snap. But there’s a much better option here.
Now What?
So this happened. Now what? What do I want to feel about this? Do I want to feel anger, frustration, pain and negative emotions? Or do I choose to give my partner the benefit of the doubt. If you are able to remain neutral, you can be very honest without being caught up in a swirl of negative emotions. Because these events are neutral and you see them as such, you have many, many options of what you can choose to do about them. For example, you can choose not be to upset. You can ask yourself, “what else could this mean?” You could assume good intentions. If we’re going to “make stuff up” about your partner, it might as well be positive instead of negative:
“My partner is working so hard, they left their dishes in the sink. I know this isn’t my job to do my partner’s dishes, but I bet I could show them some love and appreciation by helping them out.”
“What else could a low gas tank mean? I wonder what my spouse was doing when they last used the car. Oh, that’s right, they were running errands. Wow, how incredible my spouse is running our household. We always have what we need. I know I’m busy too, but I’m going to give myself a few extra minutes to fill up our gas tank just like I fill up the love we have in our relationship.”
“I really would like to have more sex in our relationship. I wonder what I could shift so that my partner wanted to have sex with me more frequently? Perhaps I should better understand their love language so that I can be sure I’m sending the right signals that will ensure we increase the passion in our otherwise amazing partnership.”
Again, we’re interpretation machines. If we’re going to keep interpreting, why not assume good intentions and hold our partner’s high? What we choose to focus on expands. If we continue to see the good in our spouse, we can keep adding positive energy into our relationship. And if this feels too over the top for you, check in. What’s that about? You can never change your spouse, but you do have control over what you focus on and how you feel about events in your relationship. As you strengthen your resolve to have a blissful marriage, you see that all the choices are, in fact, within you. You are the source of your own happiness and bliss. It’s less about your partner and what they are doing (or being), and a lot more to do with how you are processing and feeling about what they are being or doing.
Do I have rose-colored glasses on? Perhaps. But they sure beat the pants off the fiery, angry, bitter, and hate-tinted ones I see so many people wear. How can you expect to have a happy marriage when you’re filtering everything your partner does “TO” you instead of “FOR” you? In truth, they are just being themselves. It’s your desire to have them be something else that’s the real source of your pain and frustration. Stop interpreting and start communicating more effectively.
If the dishes in the sink bother you, get clear on why before having a conversation. What role are you playing in this? If you want a car with a full tank of gas, then what are the conditions in which you are creating so that there’s no time to fill up this gas tank? More sex comes from the positive triggers of a passionate relationship. How are you creating space to have that happen?
By taking responsibility, you are empowered to make the kind of change you want to see in your relationship by working on yourself first. Be too busy working on yourself to have judgements about any deficiencies you may perceive in your partner. That way, what you are focusing on (the positive aspects of your relationship) will also grow and expand.