As with any long term relationship, sometimes things get a little rocky.  Work was rough the other day and I’ve been stressed about some decisions I need to make with my business and I know I wasn’t communicating well with my husband.  Simultaneously I know he is going through some stuff as wellI had an epiphany—I want the cookies and the compromise.  I want the pieces of you that make you who you are and I want the pieces of you that can be better.  I want you, and I want the plan, the compromise, the pieces of us that we put together to create something new. Part of a relationship, including a healthy relationship with ourselves is understanding who we are, taking the good with the bad and learning when we need to make choices to improve.  But it isn’t about a constant look for improvement because that leads to searching for “what’s wrong” all the time.  We aren’t a constant work in progress that needs to be perfected or changed.  But we are beings that need to recognize when we need to change, when things are stagnating and when we need to do something else—or when we can be better.

This then spills over into our relationships as well.  I want your given talents but I also want the things that we work on together.  I’m not talking about improving my partner as a project, I’m talking about working together to make something mutually better for the both of us.  For a long time I couldn’t articulate this—I kept hammering home the point that I wanted things to be better, for us to do better.  I see how that could come across as wanting my partner to be something other than what he is.  But that was never the intent.  The intent is to figure out what we want and to work on something together.  It’s about keeping ourselves fresh, not complacent, and looking to level up for the things we say we want.  It’s about follow through together and helping each other achieve our individual and mutual goals.  

So the bottom line is I will take you for what you are—but we can’t stay there because I won’t allow myself to stay where I’m at.  We are meant to be the best versions of who we are and we are meant to remind each other of our purpose and our goals, the accountability to what we agreed on.  It’s time to pick a direction and go that way—together.  I take the pieces that are you and I take the pieces that we need to build.  We have a picture to put together and that requires us working on creating it.  My vision doesn’t need to be yours, but we should be steering the same course.  There are days we will wander, there are days we will stay the course, there are times we will realize we need to take a few steps back and rechart what we are doing—and days we may need to simply stop and take stock of where we are.  None of that means I don’t care for my partner—not in the slightest.  None of that insinuates I need my partner to change.  No, this is about bringing out the best in each of us.