Give Yourself Permission to Let Go
Are you overdoing your relationship and clinging to control?
The Flicker Of Doubt
I’m exhausted in this relationship. I feel like I’m noticing my own feelings and needs, while filling in the blanks for what my partner might be feeling and might be needing. It doesn’t even feel like micro-managing the relationship, it just feels like I’m doing the whole relationship myself.
Over-doing a relationship is exhausting. It can feel like a full-time job.
And if you’re over-doing in the relationship sometimes your partner is leaning-out and under-doing.
Witnessing your partner leaning-out often triggers your anxiety and results in more over-doing to try and “get the relationship back on track” which your partner witnesses and often makes them shut down or withdraw further.
There’s a reason why I’m calling it “over-doing” and not “over-achieving” — as many of us over-achievers might prefer to view it. All the effort that you’re putting in could only be achieving more tension, instead of your hope and intention of creating more connection.
It’s a painful cycle and one that us couples therapists witness often.
The doubt comes in when you feel pulled between the reality that over-doing is unenjoyable and unsustainable…but you also feel afraid that if you stopped doing so much for the relationship, the relationship might collapse.
The Story We Tell Ourselves
All the effort I invest into having us connect is the reason this relationship exists. If I stopped nurturing our connection, I can’t imagine my partner picking up the slack.
This story is a challenging one. There could be elements of truth, anxiety, and patterns of relating that both of you have gotten accustomed to and reinforce.
And of course, there are aspects of the socialized expectations on female partners around caretaking that influence this experience as well.
It’s a complex story, and I’m just going to focus on one aspect.
With the spirit of building hope, we are going to focus on the elements of this story that we are holding onto, and explore where there’s flexibility to let that go to make space for a different mindset and potentially a different experience.
Core to this story is our relationship to control:
We often buy into a false sense of control about our relationships. Believing we are able to completely change others and change ourselves, and that our relationships will rise above brighter and shinier than ever.
Believing in an inflated sense of control for your relationship drives an impossible improvement mindset to constantly fine-tune connection, and also carries a heavy burden to feel completely responsible for the health of the relationship.
It can leave you exhausted and your partner feeling suffocated.
Part of building hope in a relationship includes noticing what’s within your control, and making space for what’s outside of your control.
If you slow down and reflect honestly on what’s within your control in a relationship, the list will be small and humbling, but also hopeful.
You will be spending your energy on what actually matters, instead of spinning your wheels trying to move a needle that’s not going to budge based on your inputs.
There are changes that your relationship might need. And, those changes can be catalyzed by so many factors beyond your efforts: your partner wanting change, the unfolding of time, and external life events impacting both of you.
You are a hopeful partner, not the sole partner, in this relationship.
The Way Forward
Letting go of control often involves building awareness of what it looks like in your body, noticing the urges to assert your influence in a relationship and practicing softening.
I’ve learned this lesson for myself, and I’m still learning it.
In my body, overdoing my relationship and trying to control the interaction looks like:
A set jaw with a closed mouth — the feeling of opinions piling up on my tongue ready to pour out
Averting my eyes — not wanting to see my partner’s expression so I can stay focused on my vision of what “should” be happening
Bracing in my chest — avoiding the feelings of fear and pain around disconnection to lean on a false sense of strength and stubbornness.
Secondly, try to learn what letting go feels like in your body. I notice:
Glancing towards my partner — seeking out connection and feeling curious about their perspective
tears — usually after an exhale, making space for eyes that well up, and release my fears
softening shoulders — seeing that my desire to control often comes from a hunger for care. Wanting to soften into connection and find a way out of the bind I’ve found myself in.
Sometimes my mind is rigidly connected to my thoughts and opinions, and I have to lean into the body postures of letting go in order to invite the softening.
Letting go doesn’t mean abandoning my experience or perspective.
Letting go, enables me to soften back into my authentic voice and share my experience honestly to my partner with a voice they’re more likely to hear.
It makes space for a conversation. And that always creates a little more hope for me, and hopefully will for you too.
Warmly,
Gwendolyn
So interesting to read! keep going :)