How much energy do you spend trying to get what you want from your partner? Think about it for a moment – how much of your thinking time is spent on what to say to your partner to get him or her to be the way you want him or her to be?
Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about how to get what we want from our partner – how to get our partner to open up, be more caring, see us, love us, pay attention to us, spend time with us, have sex with us, and so on. We spend at lot of energy trying to get what we want from our partner because we believe that if only we do it right – behave right or say the right thing – we can have control over getting our partner to change. This illusion of having control over getting another to change keeps us stuck in behavior that not only does not work to get us what we want, but drains us of the energy we could be using to learn to take loving care of ourselves.
It is very hard to accept that we cant get others to do what we want them to do, even if it would be good for them and for the relationship. In my counseling work with people, I frequently hear:
How can I get my husband to read your...