Confusion

I have some pretty serious questions for you. For starters: 1. Do you care for your spouse? 2. Could it be possible that your spouse cares for you? So many times it is the case that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes! And yet, small things can come up and challenge this feeling. I recommend shoring things up a bit. The more secure your bond is, the less the little things affect your relationship.

When the bond with your spouse feels frayed and distant, the smallest of challenges can feel like a confirmation to your fears. It highlights the confusion you have, and leaves you worrying that your spouse just might not care about you.

If it is in any way possible that they do care for you, I want you to hold on to that. Step back from trying to figure out if they care or not, and start trying to navigate through your own confusion. Why might it feel like they dont care for you, when they actually do?!

This last question can really begin to open up some answers. The answer may lie in how you perceive certain actions or behaviors. Often, your spouse is just as confused as you. It’s possible that they are busy trying to answer their own question. This one of; do you care rather about them?

You may be thinking, ‘what’s wrong with trying to figure out if they care about me? Surely if this is true, the answer will be obvious!’ The problem with trying to answer this particular question is that we often investigate it in rather confusing ways. We push people away and wait for them to work to get close. We criticize or blame to see if they are willing to change for us. We become fixated on how often they stop to give us a quick hug throughout the day. And, while it can work at times, the odds are that this type of behavior will only increase confusion in our relationships. The person on the other end, trying to answer their own questions, will see the criticism and the pushing away, and conclude that their worst fears are true. Maybe they conclude that we really don’t love them wholly and completely.

When we focus on navigating through the confusion, we can safely turn to our partner and say, ‘it seems we are confused, how can we work through this together?’ From this place we can change the tone of the conversation. We can discover that we do truly love each other. We find that we are on the same team, taking on the challenges of staying close and connected in a relationship, together.