By Ann Martin
Is the stress of planning your wedding coming between you and your spouse to be? Stop it before it starts with these five steps to living daily in compassion.
Listening
Everyone wants to be understood and know their feelings are important to the person they care about. As your future life partner, this validation and respect is especially important. Even if you don’t totally agree with or initially share your partner’s viewpoint on a particular topic, do ask questions, share opinions with grace, and listen with a truly open mind. This is perhaps the most important part of communication – what happens when your own mouth is shut.
Patience
It is essential to exercise patience with your loved one. Before exploding when a difference of opinion or miscommunication occurs, take a second to pause and breathe. Is it the end of the world if he doesn’t take out the garbage or polish the dinnerware when you asked so nicely for the tenth time, or is there a better way to communicate your feelings? You don’t want to be treated recklessly, so treat your partner with the same care. By sharing some bit of their self with you, your partner is entrusting you with their feelings. This is both a privilege and responsibility – don’t abuse it.
Forgiveness
This is difficult and very essential. After a problem has been hashed out, take the appropriate time to grieve, share frustration, and dialogue, but then forgive and move on. The best relationships have no room for “score keeping.” Instead of holding a grudge or storing wrongs away to bring out when it is most useful to you, choose instead to forgive your partner fully – this strengthens the bond of trust and also takes a burden off your own shoulders. Accept that your partner, like you, is human. And humans do in fact make mistakes.
Empathy
Literally translates itself as “in feeling” – being able to totally share in another person’s pain and set of emotions. It requires a certain dismissal of personal ego and the ability to change perspective – looking at a situation from your partner’s world for a moment. To be able to do this also requires an innate understanding of our own feelings and emotions, and being able to identify them. So don’t ignore your own feelings/emotions! By understanding yourself, you will eventually grow to a place of being able to understand, and truly empathize with your partner more fully.
Acceptance
Your partner is not you. You are not your partner. And this is ok. By accepting that you are two different people who grow differently, you open yourself up to a world of possibility. Accept that he likes watching the game and you love the arts and collecting square dinnerware. Accept that he grows differently and at a different rate than you – its’ all ok. While there are certain destructive behaviors that are never acceptable, by respecting and accepting a person for everything they are, you can begin to develop a deep and lasting love.
