How to shift from frustration and disappointment to hope and connection

Are you familiar with the frustrating and discouraging feeling of getting stuck in a negative cycle or downward spiral together? After a while, you don’t know how to shift the pattern to recreate positive energy between each other. Sometimes you have an internal narrative which sounds something like this: ”If only my spouse would do X then I could / would do Y.” Both of you are waiting for the other to change and most likely have a score card pattern. As you point the finger at each other, your levels of willingness go down as defensiveness and frustration goes up. Let’s use this metaphor: Imagine your doctor told you that you needed fresh air and exercise to improve your health. Time passes and you’re not walking or jogging because of the weather. Every time you look outside you think, if only it would stop raining, then I could go for a walk. If it rains for a long time, you have to start figuring out how you can get moving outdoors despite the rain, otherwise you never improve your health. Once you change your expectation around the weather conditions, you can start to enjoy the benefits of exercise. By the time the rain gives way to sunshine, your health has improved and you can enjoy being outdoors even more. In my marriage counselling and relationship coaching work, I offer couples the following useful exercise to help identify a starting point for change. The magic wand exercise aims to help you shift your thoughts from “If only…” to embodying the change you want to see in your relationship. Here is how it works: Write down your answer to the following two questions on a piece of paper: 1) Imagine you had a magic wand and you could change one thing about your partner that would improve your experience of the relationship, what would that be? 2) Imagine with that same magic wand you could change one thing about yourself that would improve your marriage – what would you change? Once you’ve written down your “magical changes”, swap papers. Now you get to read what would make a big difference for your partner and what they consider they could do to contribute to a positive change in the relationship. When you approach change from the perspective of being the change you want to experience, three powerful things happen:

1. You stop judging your partner
2. You shift from complaining about the other person to reflecting how you are co-creating or contributing to the current situation
3. You stop feeling powerless and start creating movement in the only area of the relationship that you have control over, namely yourself.

Can you imagine how your willingness to connect with each other is going to increase when you don’t feel criticized all the time? And then you both start noticing how the other person is doing some things differently? Things that make you feel good or please you? Actions or behaviours that indicate to you that your partner is assuming responsibility for how they contribute to conflict and disappointments? Here is a potential scenario: You have swapped papers and read the following. “If I had a magic wand I would make my partner be a more tidy a person. And I would make myself be more appreciative of the things that my partner does do.” “If I had a magic wand I would make my partner of more patient and have them stop interrupting me when I talk. And I would be less negative and grumpy in the morning’s.” Of course you don’t have to limit the things you believe you could change in how you show up in your marriage to one item 🙂 That being said, you need to start somewhere. And as you rekindle good will and remember that you are not each other’s enemy the momentum of an upward spiral creates more willingness and desire to be loving and kind with each other…. and before you know it you can focus on actively nurturing the magic of the love you share and co-creating your dream relationship.