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Monday, November 27, 2006

Keeping Your Mate Happy

It’s pure self-interest. If your mate is happy, you’ve got a better chance of being happy yourself. Relationships are complicated, but this much is just obvious.

There are two of you in this relationship and, of course, you want to be happy. That’s a given. You find a job that’s as fulfilling, satisfying and rewarding as possible. You engage in hobbies or play softball or play with a band or make quilts. You do the things you like to do. You hang out with friends and goof off on the weekends.

You'd like your significant other to be happy too, but things get murkier when we talk about placing his or her needs at a high priority. If you love him, you naturally care about his needs, but the question is whether or not you act like you value his needs. This can be tricky, particularly if you think he should have different needs, ones that fit more closely to yours or ones that make more sense to you. Needs that, at least, don’t conflict with yours, right?

In a less complicated world, yeah, but that’s not usually how it works. Relationships involve two separate people. Two individuals. That means you’ve got different needs, different tastes. Different ideas about how to have fun. This is true even if you’ve found a mate who shares many of your likes and dislikes. Some things are going to be not alike.

This isn’t a problem until something she wants isn’t what you want. Then we have conflict in the relationship and this is unavoidable. Talking about the differences openly can pave the way to healthy conflict resolution, but somewhere in here you have to want your mate to get what she needs. If she needs to go to medical school to get where she wants to go, this will involve sacrifice for you. If she wants to climb the corporate ladder, then you’ll be the corporate mate.

You may think, “This relationship ought to be easier.” Maybe, but if it was there’d be fewer break-ups and a much lower divorce rate. Staying together happily isn’t simple.

You can’t be in a relationship without being effected by one another’s needs and pursuits . From the most basic decision of what to have for dinner to what car to buy to more complicated choices about money, you sometimes see things differently. You want different things. If you’re in a relationship, you’re going to feel the impact of your mate’s decisions. This can be massively frustrating and is the reason why some people stay single. There are many folks who try to find a way around this by being in a relationship without living together. Some even prefer to live states apart, and this does keep conflicts to a minimum. If you’re not together, you have less chance of being impacted by one another’s decisions.

Of course, living thousands of miles apart tends to limit other aspects of relationships, too.

If you commit to a mate, you’re committing to her pursuit of the goals that are important to her. This goes for the goals you’re pursuing, too. Commitment means a shared life. If you find yourself—or he accuses you of—hindering your partner’s getting what he wants, you need to seriously examine your part in the relationship.

Some people choose to separate. If your partner wants something you don’t, like 18 kids or a job that takes her on the road six nights out of seven, you have to ask yourself if this is the relationship for you. But you also need to ask yourself the harder question about the more common conflicts—are you thinking about what’s best for your mate? Are you placing her needs at a high premium. When it comes to the place you live or the car you drive—basic life choices—you might need to ask yourself the hard questions.

I hate the terms “sacrifices” and “compromise.” They too often involve resentment. If you’ve come to a resolution in a relationship, you want what benefits your partner and he wants what benefits you. The process of sorting this through—without resentment—is not short or simple. It can be very rewarding, though.

Know what you need. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Know what you want from your life and be able to talk about these things with your mate. Find out what he needs. Believe it or not, in most relationships, these aren’t mutually exclusive, but getting to this point takes work. Don’t be afraid of it. If you put effort into this, you can craft a truly rewarding partnership.