“By letting our deep longing for love and connectedness be exposed…[we are] opening up the channel through which love can enter.” ~John Welwood When we feel disconnected from our romantic partner what we often want most is to genuinely feel their love again, to feel connected. And yet, it can be so difficult to simply share that longing. So instead of explaining or asking for what we want in a loving way, we complain about what is wrong, about how our partner isn't showing up for us. Or we simply withdraw. This is especially true for sensitive souls like me, who are a bit hard up on assertiveness. I was the girl once painfully called a “sheep” by the boy I had a crush on because I would follow my friends into social situations where they talked and laughed with the cute boys, but I could only sit smiling and mute at their side. There was just so much at risk in speaking, and my thoughts came slower when I was feeling nervous, which was often. Somewhere along the line, I ended up resorting unconsciously to using the tactic of complaining in an attempt to get the affection I wanted. No wonder my first marriage fizzled! About two years into my current relationship, which had been going wonderfully, I started to notice that I was generating negative interactions more and more frequently. My voice would get a little whiny when I wanted to do something with him. Or I would accuse him of not paying enough attention to me, or of spending too much time working. Sometimes tears would be the only outward sign that I was feeling disconnected. This tactic of trying to get what we want through accusation or complaint is very normal for many of us. Because if we straight out say what we long for we are exposing our heart. We are showing our vulnerability. And that can be very uncomfortable. This is doubly true for those of us like me who tend to be very sensitive and driven by feeling. We often feel shame about what is seen as abnormal emotionality. We prefer to appear as the culture expects us to be: strong and steady, certainly not needy! But because of our conscientious and caring nature, we tend to value and cherish deep connection above much else. This makes revealing our tender vulnerable heart in intimate relationship especially unnerving, as it seems so much is at stake. We prefer to stay safely guarded behind our complaint. It is easier to focus on what our partner isn't giving us. If we never share what we want outright, they could never reject us. Right? Wrong. What we often get in response is distance. Which feels to many of us remarkably like rejection. Ironically, it is the very act of showing our heart in this naked way that has the power to create that deep intimacy we long for. Scary as it may [...]

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen   When we fall in love, we feel excited to experience some of the most joyful moments of our lives. Because love is supposed to be the source of the best feelings, right? But what about when that relationship churns up some hard stuff and leaves you feeling hurt, annoyed, sad, and irate? For many of us, especially deep-feelers like me, when we start to experience these inevitable lows in our relationship, we may conclude that something is inherently wrong with it. But what if that assumption is just smoke and mirrors? What if it is preventing you from truly experiencing the real love you crave? Believing something is wrong with your relationship might, tragically, lead you to conclude that the relationship has failed and should be ended, even though it’s actually pretty healthy and promising. “I’ve been annoyed with him a lot lately,” and, “We just haven’t been connecting much” are common complaints I hear from people I talk with. Followed frequently by the sentence of doom, “Maybe I made a mistake by marrying him.” “Maybe they aren’t meant for me.” I’ve made that same jump of reason in the past. Multiple times in my twenties, I ended relationships full of potential because bad feelings were arising more often than I thought they should. I thought it meant something was wrong with him or with us. Being someone who is highly attuned to what I feel, I have always taken my feelings really seriously. When I feel bad, I feel really bad. And when things feel, well, blah, I feel that deeply, too. As had been my norm in past relationships, when my partner and I began to get over those hormone-stoked, bursting-with-love early months of our relationship, I started to feel moments when things didn’t feel “good” anymore. When it all felt “dull.” When he wasn’t behaving how I thought he ought to. When we weren’t “connecting” like I thought we should. Like I had done in the past, I could have taken this as a sign that something was wrong with our relationship, and that he was the wrong man for me. But I was gifted with a powerful secret that changed everything at a relationship workshop we had attended together to preemptively deal with the normal stuff that sabotages great relationships (we were committed to this relationship thriving): This dullness was normal and healthy. What? As I let the power of this one mental shift sink in, and marinated in the subtleties of what it meant, my relationship began to full-on thrive—and continues to years later. My hope is that it can change your relationship for the better, too. Let’s Investigate This Further Imagine your emotional life as a spectrum from terrible to wonderful, with neutral in the middle. It is completely normal to spend one-third of the time on [...]