How To Be Happy In A Relationship

3 Steps To Be Happy In A Relationship

Your experience of your relationship, your experience of the other person, happens entirely in your own head.  And how you feel about your relationship or that other person is completely dependent on what you think.  

It’s actually dependent on what you think about three things:

1. What you think they think of you
2. What you think of them
3. What you think of you in relation to them

Your relationship is created by what is happening in your head.  A relationship is an idea.  It’s not a tangible thing.  And since it is created with the thoughts in your own head, that means you have control over the quality of your relationships.

How To Be Happy In A Relationship: Step One

#1: What you think they think of you

We never really know what someone else thinks of us.  Even if they tell us.  Even then we are just thinking we know what they think.  But our brain is just making it up.  

We make it up by interpreting their actions.  We look at what they do or what they say, and we decide that we know what they must be thinking about us and that contributes to our feelings about them.  

But you have to recognize that your thoughts about what they think are your thoughts.  Your thoughts about how they feel about you are your thoughts.  You are in charge of them.  You have to notice the ones that don’t serve you and question them, and then choose what you want to think on purpose.  

• Ask “What else is true?”  If your brain just really believes that their actions mean that they don’t love you, try asking, “What else is true?  What else do I know about my husband or my wife?  What else is true about their actions?”
• Remember that how I feel about my relationships is 100% up to me.  And if it’s all up to me, what do I want to choose to think on purpose?  
• How would it change things for you if you knew that your feelings don’t have anything to do with their actions, but your feelings are 100% because of your thoughts?  What would you decide to think if your feelings were 100% up to you?

Because they are.  Your feelings are 100% up to you.  And no matter what your spouse does, you get to make it mean anything you want about you.  You get to interpret what they think about you, any way you want and decide what you want to think they think of you.  No matter what.  And what you think they think of you will impact how you feel about your relationship

How To Be Happy In A Relationship: Step Two 

#2: What you think of them 

What do you think about your husband or your wife? We often don’t love fully because we want people to be different versions of themselves.  

We think our feelings for them are dependent on them.  But again this is a totally powerless position to be in.  You get all your power back to have the relationship you want when you realize your feelings about someone else are always created by thoughts about them.

• I like reminding myself that everyone is 100% lovable.  And I ask myself, what conditions have I put on loving them?  What conditions have I put on them that are preventing me from feeling love?

It’s not them preventing the feeling of love.  It’s our condition. Our thoughts that they should be different.  Notice how if there were not requirements or conditions or lists of what they needed to do then you would just be free to love them.  

• Ask, “What if I believed their only job is to be there for me to love?  How would it change my feelings if I believed all they had to do was be there for to love?”
• How would it change things if I didn’t want to change them at all?

How To Be Happy In A Relationship: Step Three

#3. What you think of you

Many times it’s not the other person that we don’t like, it’s the version of us when we are around them that we don’t like.  We don’t like how we show up in the relationship and that makes us feel bad about the whole relationship.

If you aren’t showing up and liking yourself in the relationship, that is your work to do.  The thought that my coach gave me is that: It’s all up to me.  It’s not his job to make me feel loved.  That’s my job.  It’s all my job because fundamentally, he can’t make me feel anything.  To feel anything is always my job.  It’s up to me to meet my needs because it’s all happening in my head anyway.

You don’t have to love anyone.  You don’t have to love your spouse.  There is no requirement to stay married or committed in any relationship or to have to love.  But don’t decide not to love and then give someone else the credit for it.  It’s totally up to you.  Don’t say you don’t feel love and then blame the other person for that, because it leaves you completely powerless and stuck.  

One of the most powerful things you can realize is that no one else is creating your feelings.  And if you want to love your spouse or anyone, if you want to improve and feel better about any relationship, that is completely up to you.  

It does take work, but it is personal work.  It is the work you will do on your own brain.  It does not work to fix your spouse.  It is the work you do on your own brain, day in and day out to nurture thoughts that create love for yourself and your spouse.  And if you do that work, you will have the relationship you have always wanted.

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