Building Bridges: Connecting with Ourselves and Each Other

When we experience a crisis in our relationships, one that we've carried for many years, and when we feel frustration or a lack of recognition alongside disdain or a lack of appreciation or consideration, it is not uncommon for our analytical and pragmatic minds to suggest separation, leading us to consider ideas like divorce.

These suggestions, it should be noted, come from the conscious part of us that seeks to offer practical solutions quickly. However, in reality, it is our subconscious that started this entire challenge. In fact, it has been speaking to us for years, even before we entered into our relationship and tasted the nuances of marriage.

The subconscious is the one continuously tasked with creating cognitive frameworks that have shaped our consciousness, dictating interpretations that influence our reactions and feelings, and with that, we simply entered the partnership, managed by it rather than managing ourselves within it.

When we live without awareness, it negatively affects many areas of our lives and makes it challenging to navigate from a place of choice.

This certainly manifests in our romantic relationships as well.

Awareness, in fact, is the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious, and in relationships, it is crucial that we elevate our awareness of ourselves and all those internal triggers that activate us.

What Happens When This Doesn't Occur?

When we do not engage in developing that awareness needed for these interpersonal relationships, we react automatically to situations. We may feel humiliated and unequal, and again, automatically and very naturally respond by projecting everything - absolutely everything - that happens to us, that we experience - onto our partner.

The natural state of a person is such that they only see themselves. They are constantly concerned with fulfilling their material and emotional needs. The question that drives them and ignites their desire is: "Why didn’t they do this or that for me?" or alternatively, "Why did they do this or that to me?"

They attribute every action or inaction of the other to themselves, and only experience what they feel, only what they would like to receive.

Therefore, the automatic response (if I expect that my partner will meet my needs, and they do not) is severe frustration, pain, and anger.

In our primitive and childlike brain, there is cellular memory that says, "My life depends on the other," because we were born without independence. The moment I do not receive from others what I think and feel I should get, my existential experience is threatened. I am genuinely in a life-and-death situation, and therefore, I continually place the responsibility on others to satisfy my needs, and if they don’t - I see them as the primary culprit of my condition.

What Is the Source of Suffering?

Within a marital system, when this does not happen, I begin to feel unimportant, transparent, humiliated. I tell myself that if he, and only he, does not meet my needs the way I ask - I will be in existential danger, and therefore I do everything to obtain from him what I believe I deserve.

When this is the case, we have two individuals, each trying to get from the other what they believe they are entitled to, two individuals, each of whom sees the other as responsible for fulfilling their needs.

When my needs are not met by the one upon whom I depend, the arguments start that will decide the fate of this marriage, which increases the likelihood of this foreboding prophecy, called divorce, coming to pass.

So What Do We Do?

First, it is essential to understand that human needs – they are human. We were all born with the need for appreciation, visibility, love, belonging, acceptance, etc. So, the argument is not about the need itself but about my strategy in trying or demanding to obtain it from the other.

Making the other responsible for my needs is what actually causes my dependency on them, preventing me from seeing them from their perspective.

In this space, I only see myself and how they might fulfill my needs, and as stated - when this does not happen, the poison enters the system.

First - I must regain the responsibility for fulfilling my needs back to myself, and release the other from me and me from them. This respectful and enabling space instills in them the feeling that I see them, and it also allows me to feel empathy towards them, and understand that just because they did not wash the dishes in the sink - it does not mean I’m not important, but rather that they currently have another need they're fulfilling by choosing not to wash. Maybe it’s a need for autonomy (to do out of desire and not obligation), or perhaps a need for some light rest. Overall, I need to understand that it has nothing to do with me.

The tendency to attribute every behavior of theirs to me stems from the dependency I created between myself and the other person, due to that transfer of responsibility for my needs to them.

In the vast majority of cases, we will note that the intentions we attributed to our partner's actions are vastly different from what they actually intended, meaning: because we experienced the event solely from our internal perspective and engaged only with ourselves - this created a gap between the way we experienced things and how our partner experienced them. This is because if I place myself at the center and look at a micro-level, perhaps even subconsciously, to respond to an essential need, and I see my partner as responsible for fulfilling that need, I tell myself that only through that specific strategy (the way the need is fulfilled) can this happen - meaning only if they perform or do not perform a particular action – and I convince myself of the exact way I want that to happen (only through them, and only in that way) -

Then naturally, when this does not occur, I remain with the need unmet from the outside. I am angry and pained by the action or inaction that was done or not done, for I did not mediate the need, but internally I am grieving the need of mine that did not receive attention. All this takes place far from my awareness and out of sight, certainly out of the awareness and sight of my partner. During this time, they experience something entirely different, with different intentions, and I am somehow surprised: how do they not know what my needs are, how do they treat me this way? Because, as I mentioned, the cellular memory resonates and demands its due. After all, in my early history, I did not need to articulate my needs - they were already fulfilled for me. If I have not reached a conscious and mature place, I will continue to act and live from that childlike space, which still sees the other as responsible for my needs, especially if they were not met when I was a child.

Secondly - Empathy for the Other. When I take responsibility for myself and stop placing myself at the center of the relationship, because as stated when one wins – we bothlose, I am already in a place where I can also develop empathy for the other, meaning seeing them from their perspective. To see how things are experienced by them.

Empathy for the other also heals me, and takes me out of the mindset that I am at the center, and that every action / inaction of theirs is necessarily directed at me.

When I recognize the need rising within me and take responsibility for it with empathy towards myself, it allows me to also be empathetic towards the other, and understand their needs for which they acted.

In this space, the consciousness shifts from the childlike consciousness that relies on the other for the fulfillment of their needs, to the adult wisdom that takes responsibility for them. I am capable of fulfilling my needs myself, and I will not die from it if it does not happen at the hands of someone I expected it would happen.

In this place, I discover the resilience within me to know how to cope even when I don't get what I want, and to take responsibility for that and understand how I can still meet my needs myself or communicate them to others in a way that they will be fulfilled. In this place, I am resilient enough to also accept a "no."

Thus, the bridge we have created between the conscious and subconscious can bridge the gaps in the expectations of both partners, preventing a worsening situation that may lead to divorce.

The understanding that needs to be established for this system to endure over time is that I am not here for my partner to fulfill my needs. The main reason I am here is to see them from their perspective, and to understand what I can give them - and not what I am supposed to receive from them. To understand that we are both together to hold something great and vast far beyond ourselves.

Adapted from Arninah Kesten's lecture on "Nonviolent Communication."

Inbal Elhiani, M.A., is a certified therapist in-NLP, mindfulness, and guided imagery, a writer and lecturer in the field.