DTOP #43: Staying Open In Complex Relationships

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Doing Things On Purpose – the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose. This is episode 43.

If you don’t know me, I am Suri, a midlife Malaysian woman living in Switzerland, a mom of two. I’ve been married for 15 years together for 17, and I am a self-love and self-empowerment coach for moms and those whose calling in life and work is to serve. 

This is a very special episode because if you are on my YouTube channel, you will see that I’m recording this via video! I don’t know if this is something that I will continue doing, but it’s just something I’m challenging myself to do and see how it’s like with editing and if it’s too fussy or if it’s doable.

Relationships: beautiful and complex!

So let’s get down to the topic of today’s episode, which is about navigating the complexity of relationships. Relationships. How complicated are they? Just when you think you’ve got things pretty much in line… you think you know where you are… something surprising happens. 

Somebody gets in a mood. Somebody says something rude, and suddenly everything falls apart.

How can we sit with that? 

Because relationships are something that we need as human beings, and yet it is one of the areas that we don’t really get guidance on as human beings. 

We can get modeled how relationships look like by our parents. But oftentimes, they might not be the relationships of our dreams – and our parents were probably not perfect either.

So where do we go from here? 

I’ve been sitting with this question and feeling like I should come here as somebody who knows the right advice to give you in terms of a solution. And I have to say that I don’t have a solution. 

It is a journey that I’m walking with myself. 

Just as I was recording this episode, actually right before… I had lost my temper with my daughter. And my relationship with my children is one of the strongest relationships I have in my life. My children and my husband. 

But these moments still catch me off guard:

• How I get triggered
• How I say something I might regret
• How I start to resort to threats, “You won’t get this if you didn’t do that.” 

This pattern of behavior is so ingrained, it almost comes automatically. The words come automatically to our lips. 

And so I want to start by saying that I wish myself compassion, and I wish you compassion too for yourself, because again, it’s a journey. I don’t think there’s an ending. 

We just hopefully, become more and more aware of the patterns that we present – and work our way towards shifting those, if they’re not the way that we actually want to be.

So I have three tips that I thought I’d share with you today, and it’s not about things you should do. It’s about things that you can think about letting go of. 

Can you take these things off of your shoulders as burdens that you think you’re supposed to carry? 

Invitation #1: Let go of the belief that ‘I know best’ (about somebody else)

So the first thing that I invite you to let go of is the idea that I know best. 

Meaning you know best as the parent, as the partner, and specifically that you know best about somebody else’s life. 

Whether you have assumed that you know your child so well, you know their habits, you know how your partner ticks, you know their values, you know their desires, you’ve probably even put some labels on them:

• Whether you think this person is lazy
• That person is irresponsible
• That person can’t be trusted
• That person’s not disciplined. 

So we feel like we are looking at other people with clear lenses, but the truth is we are only seeing a part of them. 

For our children: they’re still developing! They’re still discovering who they are, what they love, their voice. They’re still trying to separate between you and themselves.

And with your partner, depending on how your relationship and your communication has developed over time, you might also only be seeing only a part of your partner. The part that they feel safe enough to share with you. Because the tender parts, are parts that maybe we keep to ourselves.

You know, the parts that make us feel small. 

We might not show those things, but they are still a valid part of who we are. All of our insecurities, all of our doubts, all of the habits that we wish we didn’t have, that we know are unhealthy for us. 

I think most people are much more self-aware of themselves than we give them credit for.

So we can be very quick to think: “They’re not seeing themselves clearly. I see them clearly. And then I need to tell them all these things, all these ways that they don’t measure up.” 

But what if we drop this assumption – and instead of thinking that ‘we know best’ about somebody else, we take on the belief that THEY know best for themselves.

How would the conversation shift, right? 

• We wouldn’t then be trying to give advice to somebody who knows best about their own lives. 
• We would be curious because maybe the choices they make are different than the ones that we would’ve made – we would be interested in why they made those choices. 
• We would be wondering if there’s anything we could do to help.
• We would be trying to understand their perspective, and even if we can’t understand somebody’s perspectives – because they might have different values than us – we can just sit with that.

Maybe then, the invitation is figuring out how to manage our differences gracefully, without trying to convince the other person.

And instead, validating their values, the things that call to them, the things that drive them… matter. Just the way that the things that drive us, matter for us.

And so that’s my first invitation.

I want to say that by doing this – by assuming that the other person knows best, we can avoid the pitfall of accidentally conditioning someone to certain beliefs. By believing that ‘we know best,’ we could give advice that makes somebody believe this (whatever our advice is) is the right path for them.

Instead of them asking themselves… What is the right path for me? – I have to figure it out for myself. 

Invitation #2: Let go of the belief that ‘people can’t change’

And the second thing that I would love for you to think about letting go is this statement that we tend to have, when we’re having trouble in a relationship. It’s that the other person can never change. So this is a very old belief: that people just don’t change.

Of course we all have our tendencies. We all have our personalities. 

BUT we are all also highly socialized. 

By the people we grew up with, how we grew up, how we internalized the things that happened to us. We don’t experience the same situation in the same way as our siblings, for instance. 

So each of us walk in this world seeing through different lenses and processing things differently. And we might feel like, okay, I see these patterns in this other person, and it keeps repeating, so it means they can’t change. 

• I’m just going to give up on the relationship. 
• Or I’m going to make an ultimatum: If they don’t change, ‘this’ is going to happen.

What neuroplasticity or the latest brain science tells us, is that this isn’t true. If we have enough awareness and enough desire to want to change things, we ARE able to do that. 

We have grooves or pathways that we keep walking down, because it’s just easier to keep repeating the same things. It’s just like the words that come out of my mouth to my daughter when she’s not doing the thing I want her to be doing. Those things come easily out. 

So the work, the hard thing – is to create new pathways. 

• New grooves of ways, of how we want to intentionally respond. 
• How we want to keep bringing ourselves back to our center and not get in somebody else’s business. 
• At the same time, holding our boundaries in a way that is respectful to ourselves and the other person.

That can look different for each person, and it’s something for you to discover for yourself. But again, this rejection that people can’t change… it gives, I think, any relationship hope – if you are still wanting to work on your relationships; whether it’s your best friend relationship, your husband, your wife, or your relationship with your children.

As long as you hold that beacon of hope…

• That trust that they can grow
• That growth has to be self-led
• That your business is just to be a witness, and a supporter, and a helper if they need it. 

While keeping in mind that the only person we can change, is ourselves. 

Everyone can grow and change, but the only person that we can make sure grows and changes, is ourselves:

• The way that we respond to a situation
• Our part to play in a relationship
• How kind do we want to be? 
• How considerate do we want to be? 
• How boundaried do we want to be? 
• How vulnerable do we want to be? 

All of those things are in our control, and these things can (and will) be experienced by the other party when we do them. 

But we also have to detach ourselves from the idea that we can somehow manipulate the other person to take on these qualities (that we also wish they had).

Because in all likelihood, your partner, your daughter, your friend, has slightly different values to you.

And even if their value ‘words’ are the same as you – for instance, kindness. 

Your definition of what kindness looks like, can be different than what they look like for the person that you’re trying to have a better relationship with.

Get curious and ask that question.

So that you know the answer that they give you – instead of making your own assumptions, processed through your own lens. 

Invitation #3: Let go of our need for certainty (it doesn’t exist)

And the third thing that I would invite you to let go of, in navigating complex relationships – is the need for certainty.

For instance:

• In a marriage, you might want to be certain that your partner will always be true to you.
• You might wanna know that your children will always respect you and listen to you. 
• That they will always share their deepest thoughts with you. 
• You might want to be sure that your children are going to be all right. So you try to push them to the best schools, to degrees, such as, medicine, law or engineering, and all of those things which you think create certainty in their life.

But the truth is, there is no certainty. 

The best way, I think, for you to create safety. For us to create this kind of stable base for the future, is to pay attention to what’s going on now:

• When our relationship needs our attention – ‘now,’ are we giving it what it needs? Are we fulfilling that need? 
• When we sense disconnection – are we seeking for ways to reconnect?
• When we sense meanness coming up in conversations – how do we work on cultivating more kindness in our own language, in our own behaviors? 

So ALL we have to care for, is what is showing up in the present, for us to work on. 

And everything that comes in the future, will come in its own due time.

• The more that we have been present and responsive to the current moment… which then becomes a future moment… and the next future moment…
• The bigger of a chance, that we can create a desirable outcome for ourselves.
• A stronger relationship – if that’s what we’re looking for.
• A deeper connection.

Again, when we think of our children, or our expectations of how somebody should move through life – know that there’s just no certainty.

If you think of how your life went: what you studied, or what jobs you took, you can probably notice that it’s not very linear. You might not be doing the thing that you were studying.

I certainly am not. I studied interior architecture and now, I’m doing life coaching.

But that mixture of our experiences and ‘life’ is magic. For me, being a mom developed something in me, that led me down a path where I felt like: 

I want to contribute here, I want to deepen here.

And so what happens when we let go of certainty?

We give less advice. 

Because when we give advice, oftentimes we are unintentionally saying, “If you follow this advice, this will solve your problems. Ergo you’ll be happy.” 

1. First of all, we can’t force anybody to take on our advice.
2. And secondly, if we’re really true to ourselves and we’re really humble, we know that we can have the best intentions, but whether or not we can promise that – “If you follow this, this is the result you’re going to get, and this is the happiness that you’re going to feel”… we know that that is completely out of our control. 

Countless times I’ve read studies where people find that humans are really bad at guessing what makes them happy. 

So we might think: This job, this experience, this thing is going to fulfill me – is going to make me feel satisfied.

And then we finally get the thing. Get the job. Get the relationship. And we go high… and then we go back down to our base level again. 

We might even find that, “Actually, I don’t like doing the thing that I thought I liked doing.” 

So if we let go of that need for certainty, all we have to do is just to move through life – is just to follow the breadcrumbs. 

Follow the thing that excites us now. Because that’s the best chance we have, to finding the next thing that excites us – or where we want to deepen.

…Instead of outsourcing our power, asking people for too much advice, and thinking that: Oh, if I follow their advice, then I’m more likely to reach that place of happiness for myself. 

(Because again, your idea of happiness, my friend, is really different than anybody else’s)

I love my husband for instance, and his idea of a good time, his idea of a perfect holiday – can be quite different than mine.

But we’ve learned to see each other’s needs, and find a way to move gracefully in this dance together, so that we both get what we need, without discounting the other person’s preferences. 

Quick recap

So these are my three tips, that I invite you to let go of, as you navigate this complex thing called relationships. Which is:

💎 Letting go of the idea that you know best. 

💎 Letting go of the belief that people can’t change. People can change, but the only person you can really change is yourself. 

💎 Letting go of the need for certainty – because there’s no such thing. 

So I hope this episode has helped you. And as you notice the things that trigger you when you return back to your relationships…

• Just give yourself that compassion, to sit with that discomfort.
• Sit with all those judgements that come through your stream of consciousness.
• Stop yourself from voicing those out – just sit with it.
• Sit with the disappointment of someone telling you who they are, and them having probably different values than you do. 

Try your best to see, that the way they express in the world, is also sacred.

🪷 The only thing we can do, is to encourage each other to ask for what we need, and to offer what we can. 

I hope this episode has been helpful. 

If you are looking for some tips to distance yourself from attachment, I have a few books that I would recommend. You can check them out in the show notes (above) at suristahel.com/43. 

And you can always find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Want to work with me?

💗 And lastly, if you are feeling called to be supported by me, I have some coaching spaces available – and also limited pro bono clients that I’m taking. So if you want to check that out, just go to suristahel.com. 

I wish you a beautiful rest of your week, and I will catch you again next time.