Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Doubting Your Relationship

Hello everyone and welcome to another weekly episode of Wellness Wednesday. Today I wanted to do a quick video and talk about things you should be asking yourself in your current relationship if you are experiencing conflict, if you're experiencing ambiguity, emotional ambivalence. Um, I think ambiguity is not the right word. Emotional ambivalence, right? Should I be with this person? Should I not be with this person? Should I stay or should I go, etc.? And so often when I'm working with clients, we're just exploring and navigating, you know, what part of them is staying in the relationship if they are unhappy much of the time. Now, almost all relationships are going to have a level of conflict that comes up, and there's a couple quick things and kind of tips, mental cognitive tips, that I often provide to my clients that I've absolutely done myself of questions to ask ourselves and some exercises to do mentally and emotionally. So number 1 would be This is not in any order. Also, I'm coming up with this as I'm speaking. I really should start maybe outlining some things I want to talk about, but I like doing it like kind of by the seat of my pants because then I think a lot of my— it creates room for a lot of my authenticity to come out. Like in the blank spots or the mental blank spots is when like my most authentic self comes out. So anyway, once again I'm using this microphone and I hope it's not too loud. Yeah, okay, so things you should be asking yourself if you're struggling in your relationship. So this can also go for friendships, but we're gonna, we're gonna focus on intimate partner relationships at this point in time. So one thing I talked about in my last video, which is about— what did I do? I think low self-worth is parts work, the different parts of ourselves and when they're activated and when they come out. Like for me, I have a 13-year-old part of myself that is rebellious or self-sabotaging. I have a perfectionist part of I have an authentic part of myself. I have these different parts of myself. We can associate them with different ages, different behaviors that we exhibit, and especially behaviors that no longer serve us, but we want to make sense of. Like the part of me that used to have a really difficult time with vulnerability was the part of me that was, you know, broken up with when I was 16 and learned how to put walls up and keep my guard up to protect myself from getting hurt. And that was a survival mechanism in many ways, but it also blocked me from authentic relationships for many years as well. So Identifying what part of me is really invested in this relationship and what part of me is questioning if I should leave. Because sometimes the part of us that is questioning if we should not be in the relationship is fear-based. It's fear of, well, what if they leave? It's fear of abandonment, fear of rejection. It's fear that we're not worthy. It's fear that they may really get to know us and then they'll leave. And so that's a fear-based part. Maybe the part of us that is questioning whether this relationship is a good fit is the authentic, you know, truest part of ourselves that says, you know what, I know this isn't really a great fit. I know organically we're just not connecting, or I know this is unhealthy and toxic, but, um, listening to that part is hard, right? And so it's really helpful to just get a feel for what part of me is invested or parts and what part of me is questioning if I should leave. And that can help give us a little more insight into, um, whether or not the relationship is serving us, whether we are showing up as our truest, most authentic selves, etc. And so parts work, I may do a whole video on that because I think it's incredibly beneficial in aiding our insight into ourselves. So ask yourself, what part of me? That's number one. Number two is the pie chart, you know, whether it's this past week or this past month or this past year or the entirety of our relationship. If I were to make a pie chart of the relationship, how much of that pie is spent feeling content, you know, is, or happy, seen, heard, anything that you value that you would want in a relationship? And how much of that pie chart is made up of feeling frustrated or lonely? Because we can absolutely feel lonely in the context of our relationship. How much of that part, um, how much of the pie chart is feeling resentful or frustrated or wishing they would change? How much of that pie chart is questioning ourselves, right? And really just getting a feel and imagery for how much of this relationship do I feel good about, typically day to day, week to week, month to month, and how much of this relationship am I struggling in? And it's kind of asking like, is the juice worth the squeeze, right? I personally don't want to be in a relationship where the majority of that pie chart is going to be conflict or where the majority of that pie chart is going to be me questioning myself, if I'm feeling gaslit, right? Where someone is inadvertently or intentionally trying to twist my words to make me feel crazy. That's really important to look out for. Um, okay, another one is if you— this is like number 3. So number 1, what part of me? Number 2, make a pie chart. Um, and again, you can do that like week to week. I mean, it doesn't— you don't have to write like a pro/con list, but just noticing like what amount of time am I spent questioning this relationship and what amount of time am I spending just present and like content? And that doesn't mean tons of passion and spark and like exuberance all the time. That's also unrealistic, especially as a longer-term relationship goes on. But how much of the time am I happy to be in this relationship and how much of the time am I not? So that's number 2. Number 3 is, and this is a personal favorite of mine, I don't know if any of you can relate to this, but I used to be in love with people being in love with me, right? Like it was a high knowing how much someone loved me, or liked me, Pump the brakes, Hannah Rose, was a huge factor on whether or not I was ever interested in them. And so a lot of times my standard for dating, and this was true for many years of my life, was whether or not the other person was into me. And then from there I would say, oh yeah, I also like this, I also like this. And so one thing that's been incredibly helpful for me in gauging my feelings for someone is if I remove the way they treat me, which is very important, the way they think about me, feel about me, the way they love or strongly like me, Can I look at this person as an individual and really like them? Do I want what they have, right? Do I— am I attracted to who they are as a person? Do I respect them? Am I inspired by and challenged by, like in a healthy way, their existence? And of course, how they treat me and look at me and love me matters. It absolutely matters. But if that's the primary thing keeping me in the relationship, that's absolutely something I want to look at and kind of explore a little further. And so again, I absolutely used to be in love with the way that people felt about me. And so with my current partner, I remember really early on kind of thinking to myself, all right, if I, if I remove all these other, like the bells and whistles of him being interested in me, which was very flattering, um, do I like him as a person? Like, do I, uh, admire and am I attracted to his Does he have these things, values, attributes that I admire, right? Ambition, motivation, compassion, humor, like someone who's like on my wavelength with humor, all these things. Like, yeah. And so that's number 4, right? Is as a person, do I like them? Do I like them? That's number 4. Number 5, if I were to find out today by some miraculous like crystal ball that the person I'm with right now is going to be the way that they are long-term, would I stay? And this really illuminates the whole concept of not being in love with someone's potential. You know, I've absolutely stayed in relationships with hope of change and humans are capable of growth and change. Absolutely. Humans are capable of, um, really like this metamorphosis and becoming our most ideal selves. But how much of my relationship have I been spent waiting for this person to change? And, and whenever someone's saying, if they just did this and they this and this and this and this, then I'd be happy. Like, why can't they just change? My question often reverts back to number 1: what part of you is invested in this relationship? And that really illuminates— I don't know if this was number 4 or 5, but the next one, which is, um, you know, what parts of you come out most in this relationship? The controlling part of you? The compassionate part of you? Like, if I always want my partner to change, and I've been in this dynamic. That's about me. Why am I, why am I showing up in a relationship where I am not content with the person that I am with? Challenging someone to grow and be better is not the same as, you know, fundamentally, I want you to be a different person. And I'll never forget in a previous relationship, I have nothing but good things to say about this person, but we just weren't like meshing organically. We were not on the same page and no one was right or wrong. We just like stopped meshing after a few years. And I remember like trying to encourage him to do this differently or do this differently. And he looked at me and said, I just feel like you want me to be a different person. And it was so eye-opening for me. Cause it was like, wow, the problem isn't me. And the problem isn't him or wasn't him. The problem was that I think we both were continuing to try to make something work that just wasn't working. And at the end of the day, I think it's important to ask ourselves, What part of me is showing up for this? You know, is it fear of being alone? Is it fear that I'm never gonna find anyone else? Is it the fact that we have a house and kids and, you know, a dog together? Like, what's keeping me here? And if I were to remove those variables, would I stay? And if the answer is no, it doesn't mean leave them now, but I really invite and encourage you to just allow yourself to explore that more. I find that relationship conflict, dysfunction, complications is like probably the number one cause of emotional pain for most humans that I come into contact with professionally, personally, and was definitely true for me. And the work that I had to do in therapy was hard. At one point, I left my therapist a voicemail saying, I want to terminate therapy, and then I blocked her number. That's how— and this is like as an adult therapist, this was maybe like 3 or 4 years ago. We laugh about it now, she and I, but I unblocked her and was like, sorry, I just thought like, I just wasn't ready to look at some of the things that she was challenging me to look at. And it And it was terrifying. And so if you're struggling in your relationship, you're not alone. I encourage you to talk about it and I encourage you to create some space to allow yourself to explore all those different dynamics. Now there's so many other questions you can ask yourself in a relationship, but those are the top ones I think I want to make a point of talking about today. This video is already over 10 minutes, so I'm going to wrap it up now. Feel free to subscribe. Obviously you don't have to. And, uh, I'll see you next Wednesday.