Exploring the ways we provoke actually offers us a tremendous amount of insight into ourselves. It can also dramatically improve our relationship.
I often tell couples I work with to avoid playing the blame game. It tends to be pretty easy for many of us to list off the things our partner is doing wrong or to describe how they provoke us. However, few of us take as much time to examine the patterns we engage in that provoke our partner.
Investigating the patterns that may be pushing our partner away or creating conflict is a worthy endeavor. While this is not about blaming or turning against ourselves, it is about taking 100 percent power over our half of the dynamic. When we do, our interactions with our partner may shift for the better a lot more than we expect.
Exploring the ways we provoke actually offers us a tremendous amount of insight into ourselves. Many of our relationship patterns are learned from our personal history. From our earliest relationships, past experiences and hurtful ways we were treated influence how we expect relationships to work and others to behave. We may not realize it, but we actually engage in behaviors that help to recreate old, familiar scenarios, even if they were unpleasant or painful.
I often ask people who are describing something that annoyed them about their partner what they did right before their partner reacted. Once again, this isn’t about taking the blame for our partner’s actions.
It’s about getting to know the sneaky self-sabotaging patterns we engage in that may be perpetuating problems in our relationships. Here are some of the common behaviors people have caught on to that have helped them change their ways of relating for the better.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/compassion-matters/202104/do-you-provoke-your-partner