About Recognizing and Accepting the Feelings of Your Partner…

Everybody has feelings, more or less constantly, all day long. Much of the time we don’t share our emotional inner life, but when we do, it’s important to be received, acknowledged and appreciated for what we’re feeling. Since feelings so often are the “language of the soul”, if we want to develop a soulmate relationship with our partner we need to learn how to respect feelings for the valuable asset they are.

How do you respond when your partner tells you how he/she feels? Do you want to leap into action and do something about how the person feels? Or can you simply sit with the truth of the feeling, and let it be what it is – a present moment emotional fact? Sometimes sharing with each other leads to a call to action…but first, it should be valued for what it is…what we do on the basis of it comes later.

The sharing of positive feelings is easy to handle; our task is to enjoy them with our partner, period. Negative or troubled feelings are a different matter…they are often much more difficult for us to just sit with. What are we to do? The answer may surprise you – we are called to accompany the person in the painful moment; hold their hand and walk with them as the uncomfortable feeling washes over them. We cannot take that feeling away. We can, however, be present with the person in those hard-to-bear moments. Going through painful times together is far easier than going there alone.

For example: Let’s say your wife’s dad dies unexpectedly just before the holidays. You can be sure there will be many days when she’ll be consumed with sadness. What are you to do? Sit and talk with her about how she misses her dad, what a wonderful man he was, and let the depth of her pain touch you. This is not an easy thing to do. Most of us would like to make her pain go away. Registering her pain touches us, and our usual human reaction is to move away from our discomfort of being touched, being moved by the pain she is experiencing. This is why staying present is so difficult. Make no mistake about it, to just be there is a not a little thing, it’s an act of courage and caring for the person. It’s a wonderful opportunity to accompany each other on life’s pathways.