Stop being okay with things you are really not ok with. Being a good person is not the same thing as being willing to suffer in silence and not make waves. Being kind is not the same as being a doormat. You can be kind and still advocate for yourself or others.

It is important in a relationship to communicate your needs, your vulnerabilities, insecurities, anxiety etc. I think of it like a user’s manual. You don’t step into a whole new kind of vehicle without a huge manual telling you all the specifics about how that vehicle works. We should do the same with ourselves. We all have certain triggers, stressors, and sensitivities that are non-standard or objectively unreasonable. But they are still part of you and your relationships need to be based on you and not the you you think you’re supposed to be. If something makes you unhappy or nervous or frustrated, it’s only fair that you share that with the people in your circle. You have to give them the opportunity to address their behavior.

Early on in my relationship with Fiance, he would hold me whenever I tried to pull away from a hug or get up from the couch. He would physically restrain me. For him, it was because he wanted to snuggle more or extend the hug. In his mind it was sweet and completely innocuous. For me, it felt like I was being overpowered. It felt like he was taking away my choice to leave. Even though I knew in my head it was coming from a sweet place, it felt threatening to me. We talked about it. It hadn’t even occurred to him, it was just an impulse because he never wanted to let me go. Sweet motivation. But it wasn’t having anywhere close to the desired impact on me. So he stopped. And we still hug plenty and we are still sweet to each other and me speaking up for myself has not had a negative impact on our relationship. But he would never have known that bothered me and it bothered me a lot.

A relationship can’t work if there isn’t balance. It may work for the short term, but not long-term satisfaction. The relationships I see most in my office pursuing a divorce are the ones that were founded on an imbalanced dynamic and one partner now wants to bring that power into balance. You cannot control whether someone accepts or how someone receives you expressing your needs. But you have to give them the opportunity to do what you want them to or fix the things that you feel are broken. And then you can decide whether it is enough for you or not. Spending decades silently frustrated without expressing to your partner why you are frustrated is no way to live. It is unfair to you both.

Creating the opportunity for a true partnership depends on you both expressing yourselves to one another. It requires communication.

I watched an interview recently with a couples therapist who talked about the adage that marriage requires you each give 100%. “No it doesn’t”, she said. It requires that you each give what you have that day. Some days she’ll walk in the door and tell her husband she’s got about 20%. On those days he knows that if he has it in him, he has to pick up her slack. And vice versa. And on days when they both have 20% and don’t have the bandwidth to pick up one another’s slack, they do what they can to get through the day. They order out instead of cooking, they leave the dishes for tomorrow, they watch tv instead of doing projects around the house, whatever it takes.

The only way to build a strong partnership is to communicate where you’re each at on any given day. Communicate things that aren’t being received the way they’re intended. Use your words and share your stressors with your partner. You are a team, not competitors. If you can’t trust your teammate, why are you still on this team?

Use your words and build strong relationships. Or learn that this relationship won’t ever be what you need.