No Expectations, Fewer Disappointments!

We often expect our love partner to make the best choices for themselves and our relationship and when they are not our choices, we often get angry or disappointed. . . or both. Most people call this situation a problem; a problem we create by our expectations.

Try this: 'no expectations, fewer disappointments.' It's that simple. Not easy. Simple.

No expectations equal unconditional love. We all experience the need to have healthy choices exercised and when they don't show up, we either chose to have conversations about them or not. If the choices are abusive and therefore unacceptable, we begin to think about making a responsible choice to leave the relationship. However, always picking our lover apart because their choices are not the ones we would make can only point the relationship in the direction of failure.

A constructive argument; one that does not seek to make your love partner wrong and make you right; one that searches for understanding; one that releases tension and facilitates an emotionally healthy breakthrough, can help your relationship evolve to a new level of love and understanding.

When we disagree, our relationship can often become 'temporarily out of order.' Arguments that bring anger to the boiling point are most destructive. Restoration is a process. It requires patience, understanding, acceptance and much love. Discuss with an intention to resolve the conflict. Give up being right. Arguments create negative distance. We must move through conflict as quickly as we can. Life is too short to maintain negative distance between love partners for lengthy periods of time.

Men and women often perceive the same situation differently. They both are watching the same picture but to one, the picture may be blurred and out of focus. To the other, everything is crystal clear. There are as many opinions about things as there are people. Not everyone is on the same frequency.

When you do the work of healthy love relationships, you are always about the business of fine-tuning your relationship so that when different versions of the same picture show up, you can lovingly communicate your different perceptions and love each other for having shared them in a healthy way.

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How wonderful to be in a relationship where love partners feel free to express their wants and needs. It is a healthy relationship where love partners can ask for what they want from each other and feel the freedom to say yes or no without feeling that they 'should' respond in any particular way. Learn to be okay with the answer you get. Rejection and disapproval are not in the vocabulary of lovers who are in a healthy love relationship.

Be challenged by engaging in meaningful conversation. Talk about things that are important to your relationship. Don't leave anything out. Develop a relationship that creates the freedom to talk about what needs to be said, without arguments. . . only conversations. It's not easy. It takes giving your love partner the freedom to speak what is in his or her heart. It takes knowing that what they speak about is only their opinion, they have a right to it and are responsible for it. The challenge is to be okay with that.

If we could accept the notion that everyone is doing the best they can, regardless of whether their choices are our choices, our attitude about our relationship would improve and perhaps the relationship we have would become the relationship we enjoy being in.

next: Is Your Relationship Stranded at Malfunction Junction?