Grace

Do not force your ideals and expectations onto your partner. This method may cause them to navigate feelings of unworthiness or shame. The ‘trick’ is in guiding your partner to meeting your needs with empathy and by showing them grace. What is grace and what does it look like?

Without going into religious scripture, grace is a disposition to show kindness or compassion— a willingness to make concessions. It’s actually an active choice we can make daily.

As fallen creatures, we often struggle to extend grace, especially in romantic relationships. How to tell if grace is lacking:

- Feeling tired of trying to change your spouse to ‘no avail’.

- Regularly losing patience over small acts.

- Being overly critical.

- Not letting the other person ‘off the hook’ without reprimand.

- Not allowing your partner a safe space to explore and provide their own expressions of thought.

Grace is choosing to be loving when you have a reason not to be.

Taking the last point as an illustration:

X: I am feeling like you do not understand me and here is why: _______.

Y: Thank you for opening up and sharing that with me. Can I repeat it back to you so I can know if I heard it correctly? How can I better support you?

(Btw, I can relate if you take issue with scripted language feeling inauthentic but note that you can always adjust the sentiment to feel more in line with ‘you’.)

Here, notice how Y showed up for X by not immediately becoming defensive and is (hopefully) open to constructive criticism. It is much easier to fold inward and choose to react from a place of selfishness as self-protection is also an extension of the ‘self’. Y can easily do so but he chooses not to.

In a lot of scenarios, it is really hard to show grace. Expanding on the former para, often the partner in Y’s position won’t take it well and Y’s defense on auto-pilot will cause Y to say: “Well I feel like *you* don’t understand *me*!”