Being True to Yourself in Intimate Relationships
Have you ever found yourself saying “yes” to your intimate partner— whether it was about having their family over, going to an activity together or even engaging in physical touch— and then resenting it and wanting to blame them even though you know you said “yes”?
When you find yourself struggling between saying yes to your partner’s requests and being true to yourself, it's a warning sign that your relationship might have reactive patterns of enmeshment rather than a thriving sense of interdependence and mutual respect.
Whether you want to set boundaries with your partner or simply create a sense of mutuality in your relationship, it's helpful to be clear about what it means to be true to yourself. There are all sorts of ways you can fool yourself about what's right, and what's right for you. You can drive yourself crazy with endless standards, comparisons, and ideas about how things should or shouldn't be. Here again, cultural beliefs and societal norms can be so ingrained that you may not realize the ways you invalidate what’s really true for you in a given moment. When it comes to discerning what it means to be true to yourself, thinking a lot about it isn't necessarily helpful. Your body, on the other hand, tells the truth.
Learning to check in with your body is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. You can create greater access to this source of truth by doing intentional experiments. Take a few minutes to sit still and become mindful of body sensations. Then, think about doing something that you already know isn't right for you and notice how your body responds. You will likely notice one or more of these responses: tightening in your stomach, chest, or throat, the beginning of a headache, a sense of nausea or stomach pain, a general sense of contraction or imbalance, or a sense of feeling distant from your center.
Do the same experiment again, only this time imagine doing something you already know is right for you. You will likely notice one or more of these responses: a relaxation in your stomach, chest, or throat, a sense of clarity or solidness, a sense of alignment from the center up through your crown and down through your perineum, or a basic sense of expansion.
Checking in with your body and a felt sense of expansion and contraction is not the same as identifying emotions. When you are being true to yourself, all these responses listed above can occur at the same time as fear and anxiety or any other other emotion that might come up when you are challenging yourself. Emotions often arise from a misperception of threat; this can easily come up if you’re not used to saying “no,” for example, or if you’ve had negative experiences in the past when saying “no.” Smaller parts of you might be in reaction to this, while a bigger “you” has a sense of solidness about doing what's true for you despite your own reactivity.
When your partner makes a request, ask for a moment to check in with yourself or repeat back what you heard. If you feel your body tighten, let them know that you are not experiencing a “yes.” Repeat back what you understand the request is, not only to check your understanding, but also to give your body another way to register it. If it is a true request and not a demand, your partner will wait for your response.
As you continue to focus on your body sensations, insight into what doesn’t work for you is more likely to arrive spontaneously. If you give your body time to share its wisdom, it will. When you take the time, something will arise all by itself in the form of sensations, images, impulses, words, memories, or a shift in energy. As each new experience arises, stay with it, not thinking or analyzing, just holding your attention there and noticing the next experience.
It's important to name that if you’ve been saying “yes” to requests for a long time without checking in with yourself about whether or not the choice is right for you, or if you’ve been saying “yes” even while sensing that you would rather say “no,” when you do start saying “no” out loud it can be confusing and destabilizing for your partner and may trigger reactivity for them. This does not necessarily indicate that they are making a demand, but rather reveals that you are in the midst of a challenging change in relationship dynamics.
As you focus on being true to yourself, it’s essential to recognize the signs of a true request. It can be easy to misperceive a demand if you are in a tenuous relationship to your own authenticity. The most important part of any request is that the person making it recognizes and respects your freedom of choice. This means that ideally your partner only asks for the gift that is freely given. That is, if you say “no” to a request, they are willing to take it at face value, get curious about the needs behind your “no,” look for other ways to meet their need, or enter into a negotiation that equally considers the needs of both of you. In general, when someone is truly making a request, they can express empathy or curiosity about your experience regardless of whether you say “yes” or “no” to their request.
Request-consciousness and authenticity can get derailed by beliefs about what you should or shouldn't do as a partner in an intimate relationship; such beliefs are often encouraged by society (such as the general belief that our partner’s role is to “make us happy”). Rigid expectations about what one should do in an intimate relationship will typically manifest as demands and criticism. Someone caught in a rigid expectation might not be able to make a true request. Rather, they might attempt to make you responsible for their needs by finding fault with you, telling you what you should have done or said, or exploding in anger when something doesn’t go their way. In addition, they might not be willing to look for other ways to meet their needs or they might refuse to negotiate so that things work equally well for both of you.
If you recognize these behaviors in your relationship, you might need support in shifting expectations and learning new skills to identify needs and negotiate specific and doable agreements. It takes practice to show each other that a “no” to a given request does not mean you don’t care.
In summary, there is no line between being true to yourself and giving to your partner. There is only being true to yourself. When you give to your partner out of fear of doing something to push them away, out of obligation, to win love and approval, or out of fear of anger, you plant seeds for a toxic relationship. When you are grounded in your own authenticity, wise discernment about healthy boundaries and generosity of heart flows naturally. By being true to yourself, you encourage your partner to honor and respect your authenticity and their own while fostering clearer communication between you. Your own mindfulness practice, along with surrounding yourself with empathic others who actively welcome your authenticity, is essential.
Practice
Take a moment now to come to stillness for one full inhale and one full exhale. At the end of the breath cycle, drop your attention into your body. Notice if there is a basic sense of contraction or a basic sense of expansion. To continue to cultivate body wisdom, do this simple practice as many times in a day as you can.
If you'd enjoy more practice, once you have carried out the above experiment of sensing into your body with what you know is and isn't right for you, you could start experimenting with topics you're uncertain about. After having centered yourself and quieted your mind with a few deep breaths, bring the topic you want to experiment with to mind and feel into your body to sense whether there is an overall sense of expansion or contraction, indicating whether it's mostly right for you or not.