I have a new partner and everything is perfect, except for one thing and it’s ruining everything.
What should I do?
I want you to hear that reflected back to you – everything is perfect except for this one thing, and it’s ruining everything. But if everything was perfect, as you say, then this one thing wouldn’t be ruining everything.
Perfection is, first of all, not possible. Perfection is a fallacy – it doesn’t exist. Exactly because one person’s perfection is another person’s imperfection. For years, I tried and tried to become perfect, and built into this striving is some implicit awareness of what the definition of perfection even is. I did this so that I would be loved by my mom, by my family. The trouble is that the more “perfect” I became, the less they liked me – because MY PERFECT WAS NOT THEIR PERFECT.
Perfect does not exist. It simply does not exist. I had decided (without consciously stating it) that I would become honest, kind, compassionate and open. That was my goal as a perfect person. One day during a dinner at which my mother and my children were present, I asked how each person would want people to describe them, not how they thought people would describe them, but how they would want to be described. I went first with my adjectives from above (honest, kind, compassionate, open) and my mother’s response stunned me. The words she chose were firm, strong, unwavering and stern. Or something like that.
We had different ideas about perfection. Me trying to become perfect to get my mother’s approval? It was never going to work. In fact, all I could really hope for was to become better to get more of my own approval. In fact, now knowing that her ideal was stern and unwavering, having her approval would mean that I had become something that I didn’t want to become.
If a Stretch Armstrong were going through inspection or a quality control process of some kind, you must believe that if he doesn’t stretch, he will be seen as defective. Yet, if a Barbie would go through the same inspection or quality control process, stretching would be an instant fail.
It matters who is doing the measuring, the assessing, the approving or disapproving.
Cairn: Be careful who you are seeking approval from.
If you seek approval from anyone and everyone, you are asking them to use their standards to approve you. If a ballet dancer is looking for approval from a football coach, the football coach will be using criteria that isn’t even in the realm of ballet – the approval will reflect what the coach values, not what the ballet dancer values.
Who you seek validation from matters.
Is it really a compliment if people with a vastly different value system approves of you? If the gang leader thinks you’re amazing, is that a true compliment to you?
So back to this perfection stuff and one thing ruining your perfection. Is that true? When you are growing plants in fertile, nutrient-rich soil, a day without rain won’t kill the plants. This sounds like a less than perfect situation – to me, the perfect plants are those that are slightly resilient. Days without rain, days with too much sun, animals walking over them…none of this kills them.
Slight imperfections don’t mar an entire work of art – they enhance it. The imperfections are what make the piece unique.
Cairn: With the wrong people you won’t be able to get it right and with the right people you won’t be able to get it wrong
If you’ve ever spent years trying to impress somebody that was determined to not see you clearly, you know that no matter how well you worded things, there was always something wrong. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Not to say that you can’t make mistakes when you are with the “right” people, but one of the hallmarks with being with the right people is that they get you. They give you the benefit of the doubt, rather than criticize your every move.
So, when you find yourself agonizing over trying to get things just right, reconsider whether you are actually with the right people for you. It can be easier than this. If it appears that there is no way to please them, it might just be that until they are pleased with themselves, nobody outside themselves will measure up either.
And only you can know this. You can know this by how you feel when you are with this person, more often than not. How you feel absolutely does matter. I have spent years ignoring that type of thing, telling myself that feelings are fleeting and unpredictable and untrustworthy. But I am not talking about sadness or joy or anger, I am talking about a deep knowing in your body. You can have a deep knowing that is separate from the overlay of daily emotional changes. Try to pay attention to that deep underlying feeling, the deep knowing.
At the end of the day, we all have to, first and foremost, be comfortable with who we are as people. No matter what happens in your lifetime, you will, by definition, always have you and you are not guaranteed any other thing in this world. People leave, people die, pets leave, pets die. But you will always be there for yourself. And that is why your relationship with yourself has to be the strongest thing in your world. If you leave, you’ll still be there with you, whereever you end up. If you die, well, that’s a whole other topic that I don’t have the fortitude to address here.
As much as we all want and need relationships with others, we need to invest the most time in nurturing our relationship with ourselves. No, this doesn’t mean you have to be lonely forever. But it does mean that you have to build a strong and stable base for yourself. In fact, you have to be a strong and stable base for yourself, and know yourself.
If you end up in a friendship or a relationship, and you have (or are) a strong, stable base, it will quickly become apparent if you are compatible. Compatibility has to do with so many things – it’s not a formula to be solved. Compatibility is more about how you resolve differences than it is about completely agreeing on anything to begin with. Compatibility, especially long-term compatibility, has to be flexible and move with the changes that are inevitable in life. If you get together with someone on the basis that you both love horror movies or going out to the bars, and then after you have kids, you find that you don’t love horror movies or going out to the bars anymore, but your partner still does, where does that leave you?
If, rather, the basis of your connection is on valuing resiliency and growth and learning from each other and also allowing each other to be authentically who they are (which is another reason it’s absolutely important to first of all KNOW WHO YOU ARE), then when things inevitably change in life, you will be able to handle that.
This is far easier than it sounds and I recognize that. I am not implying that relationships (of any kind) are easy. But I am saying that if you focus on what you value and who you are, rather than getting attached to the outcome of a particular relationship, things usually go better.
Think about premarital counseling, by the time a couple goes into premarital counseling, they have often already decided that they are getting married. The counseling is just one of the tasks to do prior to getting married. If getting married is the unmovable goal and you are hell-bent on getting married, no matter what, then while it might still be good to go to premarital counseling, it is something that will just expose the problems. While this still might be valuable, it changes the game.
Think about it this way: When you go to buy a house, most of the time you will get the house inspected. If you then discover critical issues with the house (such as structural damage or invasive black mold), do you still buy the house? If discovering these issues isn’t going to lead to some sort of action, then why get the inspection?
After all, premarital counseling is an inspection of sorts – not of each individual (you are not inspecting your partner, nor they you). It is an inspection of the health of the relationship. It is an inspection of whether you have considered all that you need to consider – not to pass judgment on individuals, but to assess if the match up is a good one.
People are, by definition, all intrinsically good (mostly) and there are people who are just not aligned energetically or values-wise. Just because two people are individually amazing people – that does not automatically mean that they are going to be the best couple in the world. What if they are both determined to be the breadwinners of the family. In fact, they believe that being the person who makes the most in the family will give them their top worth. What might happen? COMPETITION. This partnership will be filled with trying to out-earn each other. Sometimes these differences might be something that can shift by examining the underlying beliefs and working to challenge preconceived ideas. Other times these big ideological differences can be deal breakers.
So back to the original question: everything is perfect, except for this one thing – what should you do?
Well, there is no should about it. You can check in with yourself and notice how you feel. You can talk with your partner and decide what it is that each of you want. You cam make sure that you are focusing on building a good, strong, stable base for yourself. And you can work toward becoming resilient on your own. After that, you can accept reality. Keep in mind that there is no perfect, there is only what you are willing to accept. In the end, you get to decide. And I suspect you know the answer.
