As someone who spends a great deal of my life helping people to master relationships, I can attest to the fact that people are often out of reality in their relationships. And lately, I have been seeing a disturbing trend in this regard. The trend I’ve been seeing is person A expecting person B (whom they are in a relationship with) to be satisfied in the relationship because person A is doing inner work. In today’s episode, I am going to explain this delusion in detail, remove the delusion and bring everyone back into reality about inner work and its role in relationships.
We are going to start this conversation with an example. I met June when she was selected to come to the stage at one of my synchronization workshops. June is in a romantic relationship with Dalton. They are engaged. But for a while now, things have not been going well. When their relationship first started, everything felt wonderful and they rode the relationship escalator to greater and greater levels of commitment. But when they went to look at buying a house together, things started unraveling. June was very excited to find a permanent home to make her own and especially, a place near her family that she is really, really close to. But Dalton started to act funny. He started dragging his feet and procrastinated badly enough that June’s favorite place was taken off the market. He stopped acting normal at Sunday night family dinners with June’s family. He acted withdrawn and almost snappy and he complained about everything afterwards. June reacted by defending her family and spending more time with them throughout the week. Dalton could not give a straightforward answer as to what his problem was. But the distance grew between them. And one day, June found Dalton getting high on weed at his brother’s house. By doing this, he had crossed a boundary that she had set and he had agreed to at the very beginning of the relationship. It was this trust breech that drove them into couple’s therapy. June feels like she is stuck in limbo with Dalton. She can’t move forward in the relationship with someone who is behaving this way and who is making no moves to tell her directly what his problem is and what he needs. But now, she is just waiting for some kind of improvement or for the shoe to really drop in the event that he should tell her that he doesn’t love her anymore and has fallen for another woman or something.
What June needs is for there to be some palpable change. Something like Dalton being more engaged again and affectionate. Or a full explanation about what is happening for him accompanied with some decision and action taken as a result of that truth he has. Or for him to be actively engaged in buying a house with her. Or for him to initiate developing close relationships with her brothers. Something that makes her experience with Dalton feel better and something that creates security and certainty in the relationship. But instead, when June complains that her needs are not being met, Dalton loves to say “Ease up, I am doing what you want. I’m going with you to therapy!”
One day, June managed to get Dalton to go to a seminar to learn a self-healing process that was supposed to increase self-awareness. June was thrilled to see that Dalton started to use the process regularly of his own accord. But then, in their relationship therapy session, when June mentioned the incredible lack of effort that Dalton puts towards the relationship and how passive he is being about changing anything in their relationship, Dalton blew up and said “How can you say that? Don’t you see how much of trauma processing I’ve been doing?”
The big problem with this, is that Dalton is clearly in the delusion that his own inner work, whether it is going to therapy or doing trauma processing, is FOR June. And so, she should be happy with him in the relationship and even celebrate him because he is doing inner work.
Even though it has nothing to do with the point of this episode, for the sake of those of you who are total awareness freaks and wont sleep without knowing what was actually going on with Dalton, Dalton did not realize until he and June started shopping for places to buy that she was so dedicated to being near her family and never, ever leaving them. This meant that there was a big incompatibility between himself and June because Dalton’s deep desire is to follow the career opportunities that come his way, no matter where that takes him. Not limit himself by only taking opportunities that are near enough to stay near June’s family. He wants his wife to be dedicated to and supportive of his success, even if it means moving. Dalton realized through her behavior that this would be a “no” for her. Not knowing how to face this incompatibility and also terrified to lose June, who is the only person Dalton is truly emotionally close to, he became passive aggressive and slipped into old coping mechanisms and tried to buy himself avoidance time by showing her that he is “doing inner work”.
So many people do not understand that ANY form of inner work that a person does, whether that inner work is going to a therapist (including a relationship therapist) doing any self-help process, doing any kind of shadow work, meditating, doing trauma work, engaging with shamanic medicines, doing breathwork, attending retreats or attending any seminars about any type of inner work etc. is something that a person does for themselves. Why? Because these things are all tools that serve YOU. They are tools SO THAT you can improve your own life. It just so happens that part of the picture of improving your life (maybe even the main thing you want to improve in your life) is the improvement of a relationship you have. Inner work is not something that you do (or even can do) FOR another person’s sake. Even if the byproduct of you doing inner work is something that happens to end up benefitting them.
If a person is doing inner work for someone else, they are treating inner work like a hoop they have to jump through to please someone else. And this defeats the point of inner work. Also, any form of inner work is a tool that CAN enable you to change your perspective or make different decisions or take different actions. But these things are the BYPRODUCT of the tool of inner work. A person can just as easily pick up the tool of inner work and do nothing with it. They can choose to not change anything based off of what they discover doing inner work. When this is the case, the tool is not being applied. So it isn’t creating any improvement or benefit for the other person.
What someone is looking for and needing if they want you to do inner work of any kind, is not that the doing of the inner work itself. It’s the hoped-for positive byproduct that might be the result of you doing inner work. This is what they usually don’t feel like they will get unless you do inner work. The inner work is simply a perceived means to an end. The end being you meeting of a need of theirs or doing something that will feel like an improvement for them.
So that you understand this better, here is an analogy. Let’s say that in a relationship, a person is feeling really deprived of sexual engagement. Eating food is something that you do to be physically healthy. Being physically healthy is something that makes it more likely that you can engage in sex physically. Also, eating certain foods boosts your libido. But you don’t expect the other person to celebrate you for eating. Nor do you tell them to get off of your back and be satisfied because you ate asparagus and chocolate yesterday. The eating is simply a hopeful means to an end. What the person needed in the relationship, was not for you to eat food. It was for there to be an actual, perceivable improvement regarding sexual engagement.
Do not ask another person you are in a relationship with to celebrate the fact that you are doing any kind of inner work in and of itself. I’m saying this as a being who teaches inner work and has made inner work the epicenter of my entire life… If you don’t want to do inner work, the answer to your relationship problems is to make the improvements that the other person hopes will come about as a result of you doing inner work, in your own way. For example, if the other person needs more intimacy, find a way to give them more intimacy or be straightforward about the fact that they cannot get more intimacy from you and make the improvement be about how they can get more intimacy in ways that do not include you.
To sum up this conversation, if you are doing any form of inner work, no matter the motive for doing it (including the motive being to try to make a relationship better), that inner work is something that you are doing for yourself. It is focus and energy you are putting into your own internal bank account so to speak. If someone tells you that they are doing any form of inner work for you (or ever holds it over your head) don’t succumb to the confusing clash of emotions that you will feel and don’t let it slide. It isn’t them doing the inner work itself that you need. It’s whatever improvement you need that you hope the inner work will lead to. Express those things you need and want and hope for directly. And leave the HOW up to them.
