How to use your feelings to help you make healthy decisions.
Moving in together. Getting married. Having a baby. It doesn’t matter how many of these ‘big life events’ you do or in what order you do them, they can all take us out of our comfort zone, raise anxiety levels and add pressure and strain to our relationships.
As a result, some of us kick the can down the road and put-off making these decisions. After all, it’s easier and less stressful to just carry on with things as they are, (especially tempting if things are going well in your relationship). So why risk spoiling things?
But there comes a time in many people’s relationships when one or both partners will want or need to take the next steps. After all, what better way to show our love and commitment to our partner, to strengthen our bond and show our desire to spend the future together, than making the commitment to move in together, get married, or formalize our relationship in another way?
Yet how can we know for sure if our partner is as committed and excited and determined to make a big life change as we are? Can we trust our partner to stick with us, to move closer and not abandon us? Will they get cold feet and have second thoughts about making a change? And what if living together or getting married just doesn’t work out?
With so much to consider and so many questions and possible doubts, it’s small wonder that making these big life decisions stirs our emotions and can bring forth feelings of insecurity and anxiety. Changes on this scale take us out of our comfort zone and make us feel more vulnerable, more in need of reassurance, and more reliant on the love and support of our partners. And if we don’t receive the assurances, signs of commitment or reactions we want from our partners, confusion or reactivity can quickly get the better of us. Sometimes we don’t want to say anything for fear of upsetting our partners, and go silent. We can get stuck in our head, over-thinking and playing-out different scenarios, and questioning the consequences of these changes. The simple fact is that our need for a secure connection with a loved one is innate. We need to be sure that our partner is as committed to making this big life change as we are. But our early experiences in life may have colored our expectations and sense of security and safety.
It’s important to realize that any emotions and anxieties that arise from making big life decisions need to be attended to, understood, and faced. Moving in together can be anxiety provoking for any couple, no matter how great things are going in their relationship. The same with getting married or trying to have a child. Invariably, there will be lots of questions, thoughts, fears, and uncertainties that come up. Plenty of journeys into the unknown. But we can’t constructively deal with the emotions that arise from these situations unless we recognize and pay attention to them.
What if our partner fails to respond as enthusiastically as we’d like when we tell them an apartment is available to view? Any lukewarm reaction can cause some people’s nervous systems to jump to attention. Our brains then automatically send out warning signals that there’s danger and our emotional programming takes over. Much of this reaction is the result of our brain’s early wiring (something that’s the feature of an earlier blog post and my books Loving Like You Mean It and Living Like You Mean It).
If we can recognize when we fall into well-worn patterns of behavior, it gives us a chance to handle the situation differently. But many of us don’t recognize when we’ve been triggered internally. We don’t notice or understand the underlying dynamics that are driving our emotional responses. We don’t get that the activation of our nervous system is a blast from the past and, as such, has little to do with what we’re facing at the present moment.
To counter this, we need to slow ourselves down, turn inward, and pay attention to what’s going on inside of us. In short, we need to be emotionally mindful. Emotional mindfulness is all about paying attention to and working with our emotional experience in the present moment in an accepting, non-judgmental way. It gives us a chance to focus on the unfolding experience, sensing, observing and allowing. Accepting what is and allowing it to be. And, once we get beyond our defenses and distress, hearing the messages our core feelings are telling us.
All experience is transient and constantly changing, so if we face and stay present with our feelings, they eventually pass. By slowing down and staying in the moment, any doubts that our partner isn’t quite so keen on moving in together as we want them to be, can be analysed more carefully. So, instead of lashing out or giving them the silent treatment (both of which risk alienating our partner) we can widen the gap between impulse and action, and give ourselves some necessary space to react in a more informed, balanced, and constructive way.
The process outlined in my books helps us navigate our feelings one step at a time. Each step helps us do something different. Step 1 – “recognize and name” focuses on helping us recognize and call out when our outdated brain wiring has been triggered. Step 2 – “stop drop and stay” gives us an opportunity to figure out what’s going on inside of us. Step 3 – “pause and reflect” enables us to access the wisdom in our core feelings and make better decisions. And Step 4 – “mindfully relate”, helps us manage any anxieties that come when navigating opening-up with our partners.
Each of these steps is covered in much more detail in the books. Suffice to say, the overall process is about being gentle with ourselves when feelings arise, giving them plenty of room and taking time to reflect on our experience to bring some clarity to the situation. When we face our fears, we get at our core experience and are more able to not only hear our truth but to share more of ourselves with our partners. We loosen the grip our early programming has on us, our range of options widens, and the way forward becomes clear.
If you have nagging doubts about how committed your partner is to making the life changes you want, or you are unsure yourself about taking the next step, do not ignore your feelings. Spend time with them, get to your emotional truth, and then find a way to express your feelings, needs and desires. It’s not as though you have to be fearless. Rather, taking the risk to share your anxieties and fears with your partner can be all that’s needed to help bring about a shift. Who knows, behind their behavior and actions, you may discover they have exactly the same feelings and emotions which may have been causing them to react and behave in an unusual way. With your feelings out in the open, communication and connection opens up, and you can both take steps to address your concerns.
Our life experiences, no matter how challenging they are, are not as important as whether we’ve made coherent sense of our experience and processed through them. That’s where true freedom lies. By being honest and open, you can both ensure the big life decisions you make are made at a time that’s right for both of you, so that your relationship flourishes as you move into a new and exciting phase of your lives.
