Become Your Spouse

After over 21 years of working with couples and families, I have found one common thread: we are highly attracted to our shadow.⁣⁣
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We unknowingly partner with people who embody the very strengths that we lack, and we decide to be with them for the unconscious purpose of adding to our own quiver the very arsenal of weapons they possess — which we have not yet acquired. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣In the counseling setting, couples come in with heated complaints about the failures of the other. I believe that embedded in these complaints are merely the side effects of the strengths they possess that we ourselves are envious to become.⁣⁣
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He is easy going and lackadaisical, you need to freaking relax. She is emotional, and you need to be more vulnerable with your feelings. He is aggressive, and you secretly desire to be more assertive and stand up for yourself. She is overly concerned with the well-being of others, and you need to tune-in to the care-taking and selflessness that you so often neglect.⁣⁣
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It is not that we must fundamentally abandon our own strengths and invert ourselves into an opposite nature. But we become whole and fully human when we add to our own gifts the upside of the very attributes our partner demonstrates in their seeming waywardness.⁣⁣
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She is anxious and visibly neurotic, and you need to tune into the things that you are forgetting about. He is overly sexual and you need to drop your guardedness in the dimension of your own sensory stimulation and satisfaction. She is overly social, and you need to get more involved with your friends. He is insanely spiritual, and you need to see the bigger picture. ⁣⁣
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Much has been written about the polarity that brings us together. Consider the things that you deem flaws in your significant other and become those things, yourself. To become one is to each add to your own beauty the things that are missing from it. These attributes are most often displayed in (and recognized as) the words and actions and behaviors that look like bulls#*t when you are in a defensive position of resistance. Become who they are and you, yourself, evolve into the character that your soul is craving to create in you. ⁣⁣