Practice Acceptance
By Meagan Francis
Page:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Being honest and upfront with your partner can also allay fears. "It's critical to keep communication open, clean, and clear, so you're continually sharing with your partner where you are and what's going on, to help him or her feel some sense of security and safety," Miller says.
And remember: It's not fair to dictate how your partner supports you or to get angry if you don't feel supported in that specific way, Taylor says. "If you think about it, the nonbeliever then has only one choice, when in fact there are lots of ways you can get support from your partner."
A final thing to keep in mind is that your partner's resistance or negativity isn't one-sided. "People have such a hard time realizing that there's a systemic relationship between all these issues," Taylor says. "It's not just that one partner is resistant—the other is also playing a role in the problem."
With some couples, a partner might use religious or spiritual issues to create a sense of separation, because he or she is afraid of intimacy, Taylor says. In family therapy, this is called triangulation. "You have an unsolvable problem 'outside' the relationship that you focus all your attention on—drinking, working too much, sick kid, aging parent, religious beliefs—and there's no energy left for the relationship." Such a situation takes away the possibility for intimacy, Taylor asserts.
In other partnerships, one person will assume a teacherlike role and communicate the message that "if you just believed like me, or acted like me, then the relationship would really work," Taylor says. "There are many forms of teacher-student dynamics, and they mostly lead to distance and trouble."
So if you're interested in making your relationship work, try examining how your actions and emotions contribute to the dynamic. "It's like a biosystem," Taylor says. "You can't add more rain without having a change downstream."
Next
 
| 
