Needing Your Partner To Save You

I found that a common theme among couples is the feeling that one has to save the other from loneliness or angst. Expecting this from your partner can break down your connection, because it is not possible for someone else to help you with these feelings. You are setting them up for failure and will start to feel resentment and contempt when your significant other does not meet your impossible expectations.

These expectations are impossible because only by facing ourselves can we help ourselves. Loneliness and angst are within so many people. There is a false expectation which many of us have grown up with that being in a relationship cures us of these ills. That is simply not true. Look around you and see how many people who are with someone still feel lonely or sad. If long-term commitments or marriages cured it, it would be much less prevalent. The reason that no one else can cure you of loneliness is because loneliness stems from our lack of connection with ourselves.

People who enjoy themselves and are comfortable in their own skins usually do not feel lonely. They may feel moments of it, but not often or consistently. Our partners cannot do for us what we do not do for ourselves. Only we can save ourselves. Our partners can help with support, but we are the main character in the play of our own life. Only we can do the work. It is like asking your partner to lose weight for us. It is not possible. They can support you, but they cannot exercise or diet for you. The same goes for expecting our partner to save us from bad feelings. Only we can help ourselves. Only by facing ourselves and what arises within us can we learn to help ourselves.

Being in a relationship in no way ever guarantees that we will not have to deal with all this angst, pain, sadness or loneliness. If we have it as a single person, even subconsciously, we will have it in a relationship. I have seen many couples who have felt so much anger and hurt toward one another for not feeling supported in the ways that one wants or have felt resentment toward the other because they did not do enough to erase the angst in the other.

Marriages and relationships have crumbled and fallen because of scapegoating each other for one another's problems. Look inside yourself. Know yourself and take care of yourself. Do not expect from your partner what you do not expect from yourself. Set each other up for success, love, support and true friendship by being introspective, loving, supportive and a true friend to yourself. You are the only one who can help and save yourself. You are the only one who can give yourself a good life. You are the key to yourself. For more information, book a session today.