Back when Michael and I were fighting all the time
/Back when Michael and I were fighting all the time, there was a book about respecting one's husband to fix your marriage.
I kept buying and throwing it out.
I thought the language was totally sexist, and I thought that intimacy had nothing to do with respect.
I thought intimacy meant saying everything that was on your mind.
I kept buying it again because I had the sense that respect was part of the problem.
Then I had a realization that turned our marriage around.
We loved each other so much.
But we argued all the time and that was really taking a toll on our relationship.
After my realization, we were able to have a completely easeful marriage where the love that was able to bloom.
Love is easy in a marriage based on unconditional love, or radical acceptance.
How do you have a marriage that's based on unconditional love or radical acceptance? How do you solve problems? What do you do
when you're upset or have some negative feedback that needs saying?
Martin Luther King said "Power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
When I talk about unconditional love, I'm not talking about a kind of fake compassion or a marriage where you can't solve problems or be intimate because you're so busy being nice to each other that nothing actually gets said.
I needed to unconditionally love Michael not because he was a man, not because he was my husband, but because
human beings fail when they're exposed to criticism
human beings thrive when they're in an environment of kindness and respect
relationships fail when it becomes an environment of criticism
relationships thrive in an environment of acceptance and appreciation
The problem is is that our inner -environments are constant criticism.
That's why self-compassion teaches to speak to ourselves without criticism.
And it naturally occurs that we speak to our intimate partners in a kind way.
So self-compassion is key to a what I call an unpolluted—a non-toxic marriage.
Self-compassion is key to a home environment where your love can just naturally, beautifully thrive.
We need self-compassion, and learning how to do that is a conversation for another day.
But also it's so key, just to get the idea what an enormous difference it can make to treat the other person as if the other person is the expert on themselves.
You're an expert on yourself.
Once you really start relying on self-compassion your ability to be an expert on yourself is magnified.
But if you just get the concept that your partner really is the expert and the final word on their own path. If we think otherwise, we are simply not correct, and that can create all kinds of problems.
If they do something we don't agree with—say they like living in a messy space. And we think we have the more correct point of view, that is how we pollute our marriage.
Their messy space may be key to their well-being. We simply have no way of knowing.
The idea that there is one correct way is old-style thinking—from the last century. Now we realize everyone has their own path to follow and getting really solid on that is what will create a great life for everyone in the family.
We need to catch up and learn how to solve problems differently, rather than deciding whose right and whose wrong.
You get that the other person, in order to be connected to themselves and their own knowing, needs to be treated as if they HAVE their own knowing.
That's a big deal. Most people don't have people around them that treat them that way -- as if they are the expert of themselves. It makes a tremendous difference.
Suddenly you have a totally different relationship where everyone is excited about the information that they're getting from their inner knowing.
And their lives are moving forward because a solid connection with inner knowing moves your life forward.
