Alongside questions like, “Do we have enough chemistry?” and “What if I’m making a mistake?“, my clients and course members are plagued by the question, “Am I settling?”
Chemistry, mistake, and settling are powerful buzzwords in our culture and can easily lead even the most level-headed person down a dangerous path of possibly leaving a healthy, loving partnership because they think it doesn’t measure up to the impossible standard that our culture upholds.
Yet when I ask my clients to describe their relationship, they invariably say, “I’m with a wonderful partner: loving, kind, trustworthy, responsible, accountable. We have shared values and goals and he completely gets me. She’s my best friend. I was sick and tired of dating people who weren’t truly available, and as soon as I started dating my partner I knew they were what I had been looking for.”
Nobody is Perfect
Let me pause here and offer a few words: Nobody is perfect. The wounded self/ego might read the above and think, “Well, my partner isn’t perfect and we’re not exactly aligned in every area, so obviously I’m not suffering from relationship anxiety and this work doesn’t apply to me.” If you’re here reading this article, it’s highly likely that this work applies to you.
But when you’re with a great partner at some point the reality of the commitment sets in. This can be at date one or twenty years into marriage. And the reality is this: Love is scary. That’s just the nature of the beast.
We come to real love relationships with a host of scripts — some healthy, some dysfunctional — that attempt to interfere with the natural forward progression of the relationship. Instead of understanding that this fear is normal, we equate the fear with doubt and fall prey to pervasive message that “doubt means don’t.”
What Lives Underneath the Doubt
But for most of my clients, doubt didn’t begin as doubt: it began as fear and grief.
Life itself perpetually constellates fear and grief: we fear the unknown, we grieve letting go of the identity that we’ve embodied our entire life, we fear failure, we grieve separating from family of origin, we fear growing up and we grieve the end of childhood, we fear the risk of loss that accompanies opening your heart fully to another human being, we grieve the fantasy of marrying an imperfect partner.
Because we’re poorly educated about emotions in our culture, we mistake the fear for doubt and thus begins a scary domino effect of believing that we’re in the wrong relationship.
The message is: If you’re doubting, you must be settling. Cut your losses now and move on. This is dangerous advice, and only entrenches the doubt further as it doesn’t allow room for the normal fear, grief, and groundlessness to surface, air out, and find resolution.
Let me ask you simply: How could being with a loving, kind, trustworthy, responsible, accountable partner with whom you share values, goals, and a connection be considered settling?
Settling is staying with an emotionally abusive partner while knowing that you deserve better.
Settling is staying with someone whose core values are grossly out of alignment with your own because you’re scared to be alone.
Settling is not working your tail off to boot fear out of the driver’s seat of your psyche so that you don’t walk away from a great partner with whom you could build a fulfilling life.
New Definitions
The next time someone confides in you that she’s feeling doubtful about her relationship, instead of spouting off the rote line of, “Well, maybe you’re with the wrong person,” try offering, “Maybe underneath that doubt is fear and grief. Of course you’re scared! Relationships are scary and there are no guarantees that it will work. It’s okay! I know you’re with a great partner and it’s going to be okay.”
What a different relationship culture we would have if we encouraged people to validate their normal yet uncomfortable feelings instead of judging them.
What a different marriage culture it would be if we presented a realistic view of partnership, which includes marrying a fallible human being that might not meet your every need.
Given the dismal success rate of American marriages, don’t you think it’s time we examine the messages we’re sending about love, romance, and marriage? Let’s redefine those messages right here.
