This came up during a TimeLine session, with a client I’ll call Sarah (not her real name).
Sarah said the other night her boyfriend had told her he was going to make dinner for her, but when she got home from work it wasn’t even started, and he was involved in doing something else. And so she got upset about it, feeling as though that meant he doesn’t value her. And then the next night she came home and he had dinner all ready for her, and he teased her, “I learned that if I don’t have dinner ready for Sarah, it’s really a big thing.” And she said to him, “Well did you do it because you wanted to do it, or because you felt pressure to do it?”
Jane: This is the big trap that many people in relationships fall into. There are certain symbolic things that you (like many people) require that mean to you that you are valued or loved or respected, or whatever the symbol represents. Your boyfriend making dinner for you apparently is one of them. And you feel he doesn’t value you, love you, and so on if he doesn’t do them. And not only do you expect him to do the specific symbolic thing, but you expect him to think of it himself and do it because he wants to.
But this is an impossibility right from the start. Your boyfriend is thinking in terms of the specific thing that you’ve made clear has symbolic meaning to you. He can’t possibly want to do it originating from himself, because his focus is catering to your particular symbolism. And what you’re asking for isn’t the real thing that matters to you any way. Receiving it can’t really cause you to feel valuable from within yourself.
Everyone inherently starts out knowing they are, for example, valuable, loveable, and worthy of respect. And they have experiences in life in which they feel loved, valued, and so on, because they’re open to receiving it. For that reason, people valuing them doesn’t have to come in a particular form in order for them to know they are valued. But when they make unconscious, childhood limiting decisions* such as that they aren’t valuable, or loveable, they close the channels for truly receiving these. Therefore. they then require certain symbolic things from other people in order to feel that they are valued, loved, and so on. And when they don’t get those symbolic things, they think that other person is withholding valuing them, as in your relationship with your boyfriend.
Sarah: Then how does it work with a couple? You have to compromise and push and pull to know what the other person wants. I thought in intimate relationships you just do things for each other.
Jane: It’s not about what the person wants that’s the issue, but what is motivating him to want it. If what he wants is a substitute for some emotional need that he doesn’t have access to receiving, it won’t work and will conflict with you. It won’t work in terms of happiness or things really working well for both of your highest interest or joy. The only way to accommodate someone’s substitute desires is by squelching and limiting yourself because it doesn’t leave you free to be true to yourself and express your love in a way that is true to yourself. It doesn’t lead forward. It contracts the relationship.
If the relationship is based on catering to each other’s substitute desires, you start creating a little world made up of each other’s symbolic things. If you go down that path, it doesn’t expand the relationship. It insulates you from having to grow. You get more and more into a locked-in position, cut off from here-and-now experience. You become codependent on each other. This results in you sacrificing being the real you — as big, and as free, and as empowered, and as creative as you really are.
With some couples that kind of compromise is the best they can do because they’re not interested in transformation. They’re willing to compromise what really matters to them because they’re more invested in feeling stable and secure, which really means stuck. And they can do that — unless or until there is something in their soul that can’t stand it. And then they end up physically or emotionally hurting each other, and/or leaving.
But you can have it all, all of it — the freedom to be true to yourself, as well as, an intimate, committed relationship. In order for that to work, you have to be willing to grow and transform rather than taking a stand on how you are currently seeing things — on being right. If there is a conflict there between what one or both of you desire, then one or both of you are likely wanting a substitute desire fulfilled, caused by a limiting decision* that you are trying to compensate for. When this happens your partner will probably feel controlled in some way. Compromise over something that really matters to you is never something that has to happen if you can come into the present moment with each other rather than getting into a power-struggle.
* Limiting Decision: An NLP term used in NLP TimeLine counseling sessions to mean unconscious decisions, made in early childhood, that are some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “unlovable;” or “People can’t be trusted.” Limiting decisions are never true. NLP TimeLine counseling sessions facilitate clearing limiting decisions, in order to release the negative patterns in your life that are caused by them. For more information on limiting decisions and NLP TimeLine sessions, click here.
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Author’s Bio: Jane Ilene Cohen is an Intuitive & Transformational NLP Counselor, and an NLP & TimeLine Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist, with a private practice in San Diego North County (Encinitas). She does individual counseling with children and adults (includes the NLP TimeLine Process and hypnosis), works with couples, families and other relationships, and facilitates groups and workshops. She is also the Founder of the “Life is Designed to Work” thought system.
For more about Jane’s counseling services, click here. For a free phone consultation to decide if this is right for you, and to make an appointment, call Jane at (760) 753-0733.
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