The month of February tends to focus on romantic relationships, so as cliché as it is let’s talk about relationships, which is the catalyst for so much of our learning and growth! When there is a relationship conflict, many of us are triggered so we put on defenses and suppress how we are really feeling. The truth is these feelings rarely ever stay buried – so suppressing won’t make them go away, they just stay below the surface waiting to come out.
I have found in my experience that the root of the feelings we suppress is either feeling rejected or feeling like a failure. I would say 50% have the rejected trigger and 50% have the failure trigger, and in most cases, both these people end up marrying each other and triggering each other! The one with the rejected trigger usually wants a lot of reassurance, time and acknowledgment from their partner so they can overcompensate for inherently feeling not accepted. And the one with the failure trigger usually takes up more projects than they can handle, spending lots of time prioritising work and keeps thinking about how they can be more successful to overcompensate for feeling like a failure deep inside.
So, you have one person slowly becoming more needy for constant affection and acceptance, and the other one becoming more distant and needing space to prove that they are successful – and slowly hell breaks loose in the relationship because no one’s needs are met! (The cause of this issue is much deeper than the incident with the partner; it usually comes from childhood).
In relationships, one of the key learning’s is to realise is that your partner probably has the opposite needs and values than you, and accept that without judging! Perhaps you can then start moving closer to each other and begin to love your partner the way THEY want to be loved and bring more harmony to the relationship.