When Relating is Difficult, Unsatisfying or Unfair
I talk about the frameworks my mentors have gifted me: The Calculus, The Living, The Decisions, The Power
The Secrets to Relating from 3 of my mentors:
The Calculus - am I clear on what’s so good + lovely that it allows me to tolerate what is decidedly unlovely, hard, and annoying? Am I checking in consistently with myself and my needs and is the relationship still serving and nourishing me and I it? And is it working - well enough? If parts of me are getting stretched or diminished in order for this relationship to survive, can I see that clearly? (lineage homage: Karen Hawkwood + James-Olivia Chu Hillman)
The Living - either the relationship makes space for the on-going unfolding of me and if the relationship doesn’t have capacity for all of my unfolding, all of my feeling, all of my needs, and all of my values, then I am living that out elsewhere. But what is non-negotiable is that it is either being lived out in the relationship or outside of it. (lineage homage: David Bedrick)
The Decisions - James-Olivia will say, “sounds like you are making decisions that don’t feel satisfying.” or “sounds like those choices aren’t leading to the results you want.” Relationships are arenas laden with accountability and choice - but more often than not we act powerless, or give away all our power to our partner, or pretend like we have no choice. (lineage: James-Olivia Chu Hillman + Karen Hawkwood)
The Power - rehabilitating your awareness of your personal power and your willingness and capacity to access your personal power weaves through and alchemizes all 3 of the above. One of the big shifts almost everyone can make in relationship is get clear on where they are giving away or refusing to come into power that is theirs.
There is an accounting that has to take place in relationship:
Is this worth it? Is there enough overall benefit to this that I want to move forward?
We’ve been taught via Disney propaganda that once we find “the one” it’ll be a perfect, easy fit. In fact, the ease of it, the natural way we fit together, is meant to be one of the main indicators of success - you’ve found the one and now you can relax - it’s happily ever after!
In my personal and professional experience, the truth is much more complicated. What I have found is that people and relationships are extraordinarily dynamic, so there is a natural and inevitable convergence or divergence or back and forth between the two. People change - quite drastically - over time. And so do long-term relationships.
And the result is most often a relationship where the good doesn’t so easily outweigh the hard. In fact, the balance sheet is pretty close. It can be quite hard to tell “should I stay or should I go?” In fact, most relationships hum along at “this is just barely better than the alternative” or at "I’m stuck in the inertia and familiarity of this, never mind how alive or how beat down or how met/unmet or seen/unseen I feel.”
Most long term relationships are either like a manicured garden, where one or both partners steadily prune off any parts or evolutions of themselves that would threaten the familiar aesthetic of the garden - or like a garden gone to seed - the fragile plants die without regular tending, and the hardier species take over. Every season brings organic shifts in the garden - but when we look at it we can’t help unfavorably compare the initial beauty of the garden with this wild overgrown patch.
In this culture, we tend to approach relationships with a “set it and forget it” mentality. Marriage (or another declaration of commitment) is the on-switch and then we just sit back and stop working and stop paying attention.
This is a quote I saw on social but forget where: “Most relationships aren’t meant to go the distance.”
In fact, it takes great care and consciousness and calculus to track: what are my needs and values? Who am I? Is this relationship still a good fit? How will I know if it’s not? What am I willing to sacrifice to keep this really critical part of the relationship intact? Perhaps more scarily - what am I NO LONGER willing to sacrifice? What parts of myself - what feelings - am I no longer willing to disinvite? When will I do this check-in with my true self again?
And because the balance sheet is usually complex, this accounting is sometimes done on a minute by minute, or day by day basis. As in, yesterday I didn’t want this relationship to continue, but today I do.
Be careful of this type of calculus - the one that sways between a yes and a no so dramatically and so often. All too often, we mobilize when the pain is unbearable, but easily relapse or reconsider the minute the pain lets up. Overtime, our “tolerance” to the “pain” (this could be any sort of discomfort or self-abandonment, it doesn’t have to be actual abuse or toxicity) grows. Maybe this is desired, but maybe it is unconscious.
What makes the accounting easier is getting super clear on where we are taking a “hit” (eg, where we are letting discomfort, self-abandonment, or (lack of) conflict exist) and why, and what is so important to us that we’ll accept large amounts of disfunction, discomfort, or inequality to get it or keep it.
And if we’re clear on that, and the calculus works, then that’s our business.
Maybe you don’t like the domestic labor inequality, but you really like the security of a partner with a huge paycheck. As long as you’re clear that that’s the deal, great.
Maybe you don’t like that you have to be a therapist and parent to your partner, but they’re funny, the sex is good, and they make you feel needed. Listen, if you’re clean and conscious around that accounting, you do you, boo.
Here’s the deal with my kids and I: I’m clear on the obligations that come with being a parent. Taking care of my kids is a genuine, painful, depleting sacrifice, AND I get to continue thinking of myself as a person of integrity, self-growth, and the ability to rise to the challenge. I get to think of myself as a mother doing her best. I’m clear that that’s the deal.
I’m also clear there’s another deal I could take: I could abandon my kids and free myself from the sacrifices and obligations AND then I would have to think of myself as person who abandoned her kids. As yummy as part of that deal might sound sometimes, the second part is not something I’m willing to carry.
But most of us aren’t clear on the trades and the compromises we’re making. We keep requiring the other person to change so that we can finally have a balance sheet that isn’t so complex - that has zero liabilities and is 100% assets.
Listen, I think the balance sheet is never going to be overwhelmingly positive. That’s a Disney lie.
I think the true shadow here is NOT that the calculus is dangerously close to breaking even - or even that the calculus dips into the red on the regular.
I think the true shadow is watching and experiencing that over and over and over and still acting really surprised and offended when the pattern repeats itself.
I think the true shadow is - in business terms - watching your business hemorrhage money, but continuing to get after YOUR BUSINESS (a non-sentient entity) to somehow fix itself. Or passively hoping/wishing that things will magically get better.
Translation: pointing the finger at our partner or our circumstances without ever thinking about what WE can do differently and where WE need to take accountability. And genuinely insisting/hoping that our partner/our lives will magically change just because we keep demanding it.
A lot of times, our struggle in our relationship is due to:
A part of us that is unlived/unexpressed - either we are asking our partner to live this part out for us (and it makes us both distress and jealous) OR there is something that has made us think that that part is not welcome in the relationship, so we suppress it.
A part of us that is wounded and seeks healing through relationship - sometimes in a particular, rigid way that the relationship is unwilling or unable to execute.
Sometimes, maybe we don’t conceptualize it as a “part” - it might make more sense for you to use the words “emotion,” “value,” “personality characteristic,” or “need.”
So to be clear, it’s WE that are somehow bringing a part, emotion, value, personality characteristic or need that feels unseen or unmet in the relationship. Maybe it even feels actively unwelcome or totally vilified and despised.
When we begin to recognize that, and identify the part the feels unwelcome/maligned, David Bedrick’s advice is:
Manifest it more in the relationship somehow. See if you can make space for it at the table. Again - that’s an US responsibility - it’s not up to the relationship/our partner to make space. And - what might be true is that when we manifest it, they manifest their resistance and dislike of it.
Which brings me to the second part of Bedrick’s advice: if the relationship can’t hold it AND you want to keep the relationship, find a way to manifest it in other parts of your life. To live it elsewhere, but live it somewhere.
That part must be integrated, lived, brought out of shadow, and ideally delighted in. It might take practice to express it cleanly (not in shadow) and with skill - and it is my hope that somewhere, somehow, you have a safe place, a sandbox, (perhaps therapy or coaching or Nature) where you can safely experiment with the expressions of that part.
This might be overly simplistic, but there are usually 4 ways to go forward:
ONE
You break up. In the current structure of who they are, who you are and who the relationship is, there doesn’t appear to be the possibility of sustainability. When you manifest yourself more fully, either the partner or the relationship doesn’t have the willingness or the capacity or the skill to hold that.
TWO
You stay together and you don’t make room for all of you or all of them or what the relationship wants - this continues the conflict and dissatisfaction cycle. You’re repeatedly trapped in and continue to be surprised and offended by who the relationship and your partner are repeatedly showing you they are. You continue to hide your self, your needs, your values, your voice, your will. You might be threatening break-up repeatedly, and they might be promising to change/asking for patience repeatedly and you continue to believe them.
THREE
You stay together and genuinely accept their differences, your differences - oftentimes this requires a deep identity shift on your part or the part of the relationship. Maybe it becomes easier to not require them (or yourself) to change when the relationship structure shifts - maybe the relationship moves from romantic to platonic, or from monogamous to open.
Maybe you begin to playact the tension/hate in a playful way where it can be aired with less threat. Maybe you find other areas of your life to live out your values, needs and desires where they can be honored and evolve without any involvement from your partner. Maybe your needs, desires, and/or values genuinely shift after much introspection.
To be clear - there is a lot of change and struggle here too - it’s not like all of a sudden you get a heart transplant and are completely chill and loving.
FOUR
You stay together and struggle with your differences, but in a way that is open. There is more capacity in the relationship and new users have entered the chat: their differences are no longer being kicked out or reviled the minute they show up, and your difficulties with their differences are no longer getting smushed down, left to simmer in a stew of resentment.
You are manifesting the truth of what is more fully. They get to be more them, and you get to be more you in response to them - this includes your feelings and requests about their differences. (And their feelings and requests about yours.)
Hopefully, after a while of this openness and permission to bring all of you, there is no longer so much defensiveness or charge, even though the main issues might not have changed all that much.
Maybe this does result in some “questionable” dynamics (who is to say if it works for you though?) but those dynamics are recognized, accepted and moved through mostly smoothly and resiliently - maybe even with an odd recognition or affection of the idiosyncrasy of it all.
As in, yeah, we have a blow out fight every day after work, but once we both blow off stream, we spend the rest of the evening content and spending time together - it’s just how we do. Or maybe - in order for this to work, we live in separate spaces.
tl;dr: I have found that romantic adult relationships are where we MOST OFTEN and MOST THOROUGHLY give up our power.
Relationship work is self-empowerment rehabilitation.
I’ll say it again: Before communication skills, before gratitude lists, if we want our relationship/s to change, we need to get clear on *OUR* accountability, responsibility, sovereignty, choice, decision, limits and consequences.
Do we like the results we’re getting with the choices we’re making? Are we clear on the fact that we are freely - no one is forcing us - making real life choices with real life consequences all damn day long? Are we ready to stop blaming our partner and our circumstances?
Are we willing to walk away? Are there consequences we aren’t willing to endure - even if it means enduring other discomfort?
Self-empowerment isn’t necessarily the courage to DO hard things, burn bridges, end relationships, etc. It can also be the courage to LOOK CLEARLY AT and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR where we’re at. We don’t have to change a lot, or anything at all, as long as we can make the shift to understanding that we’re at where we’re at because of our own choices - and not just past choices, choices that we continue to make, day after day, over and over.
So, per my mentors, here are some general ideas for examining relationships you wish would change or you are unhappy in:
ONE: THE CALCULUS
Do the calculus. Why ARE you staying in this relationship? What bugs you? What are you getting out of it? Somehow - perhaps unconsciously - the math is working out to you choosing to stay (despite chronic dissatisfaction) instead of go. Why is that? Make it conscious.
TWO: THE LIVING
What parts of you does the relationship not welcome or not understand? What would happen if you began to manifest these parts more fully/openly? AND - if the relationship strains with that AND you want to keep it, where else in your life can you manifest (eg, live out) these parts?
THREE: THE DECISIONS
Clarity on the choices you’re making and the results you’re getting. If you don’t like the results, what other choices can you make - and where are you telling yourself you don’t have choice when you actually do, just because the choice is hard, or comes with a consequence that is undesirable?
Are there options you’re not even considering, because of conditioning (how the relationship is supposed to look, the needs it’s supposed to meet) or because of “rules” (we’re supposed to be monogamous, I’m supposed to be straight, we’re supposed to sleep in the same bed, etc)?
What other options can you conceive of with radical, liberatory, empowered imagining? What happens when you both consent to breaking the old rules and creating new, updated, relationship requirements and experiments?
FOUR: THE POWER
Where are you out of touch with personal power? Where are you having the experience of being over-powered or not safe to express your power? What would happen if you were empowered? What would become possible?
Thank you to my beloved mentors, for giving me this wisdom: the Calculus, the Living, the Decisions, the Power.
Celestyna Wild
celestynawild@gmail.com | celestynawild.com |
Instagram: @celestyna.brozek.wild | Substack: celestynawild.substack.com
is a Parent, Relationship & Neurodivergence Coach. They have multiple coaching and somatic certifications, and are trauma-informed, radically neuroaffirming, and rooted in indigenous and decolonizing wisdom. They primarily utilize nervous system care, a focus on self empowerment and unshaming techniques (including using astrology and Human Design in a therapeutic unshaming capacity) to facilitate new stories, possibilities, and neural updates for their clients.
Celestyna is expanding their practice to offer non-behaviorism based Affirming Alternatives for neurodivergence support. They are an official Safe & Sound Protocol Provider (the SSP is a low demand auditory therapy that retrains inner ear muscles to increase the ability of the ear to pick up auditory safety cues and helps rebalance the nervous system). Other Affirming Alternatives will include Goat Assisted Therapy, Nature Therapy with Adaptive Technologies, & Community Care Opportunities. Celestyna is available as a speaker and workshop facilitator as well as a 1:1 practitioner - please reach out to learn more.