đ AIP 108 You Are The One You Have Been Waiting For
Does this pattern sound familar to you?
You exit into the adult world excited for a relationship. You've seen enough rom coms to know exactly how it works: meet at a cute coffee shop where they drop their books, overcome some conflicts, and eventually ride off into the sunset together. You know you have some problems--you've even been to therapy a few times, go you! You learned to say things like "I hear you" and "your feelings are valid" instead of nodding blankly and asking to be excused to the bathroom.
Eventually you find them. The first few months are awesome. There are some issues, sure, but you know through good communication you can change for your partner and they can change for you.
And nothing could ever ruin this.
A few more months go by and while you have both changed, many of the issues still remain or simply alter form. And wow, just ten hours more work per week for a career raise? Marijauna is now legal? Sports betting doesn't work for others, but it's only gambling if you lose. American culture puts a veil over both of you and you stop seeing the other person as much, physically and emotionally.
And nothing could ever ruin this.
You begin going to a couples therapist who suggests mindfulness. You suggest wine. You meet in the middle with mindful wine drinking, which is basically just drinking while feeling guilty about it. Things are better for a bit. But the same issues keep coming up. You don't understand. Your partner should be there to make you happier right? Why does it seem like they constantly torment you instead? Where's the Disney ending?
And nothing could ever ruin this.
You begin enjoying your partners presence less and less, experiencing what relationship scientist Gottman calls, the four horseman of the apocalypse: criticism, defense, stonewalling, and contempt. They criticize you, saying you're a "fat Ostrich that should go to hell so Lucifer can use your eggs to make an omelet for breakfast." You defend yourself, saying "any place is heaven as long as you're not in it." After a few seconds, you add a "bitch" for some added spice. Sometimes you stonewall, putting a suit of armor over your emotions to avoid being hurt. You might even grow contemptuous seeing your partner and only feeling disgust.
And nothing could ever ruin this.
Eventually, one of you breaks up with the other, and you are once again left alone, in the tumultuous storm of modern day dating. You might respond to the breakups in two ways: take time to reflect, or create a 47-part TikTok series exposing your ex. That's just a joke of course... it's 48 parts.
Why Doesn't This Work?
The sad thing about this whole ordeal is you were both so close to having it right.
Richard Schwartz reveals in his book, You Are The One Of You Have Been Waiting For, the problems of this type of relationship.
According to him, there was just one small but deadly mistake you made which led to your downfall: the belief that your partner will make you whole.
We enter into relationships with expectations longer than a terms and conditions agreement everyone pretends to read. We expect our partner to heal us. We expect our partner to make us happy. We expect our partner to save us.
This belief is fueled by the media culture of America in which Disney romances, action films, and Rom Coms romanticize relationships to be the crème de la crème of human connection; the same culture that makes it easy to overwork, fall to addictions, and more as a way of avoiding the problems from this beautiful romanticism collapsing at the seams.
Even if you do try to fix the problem, perhaps go to couple therapy, it can still fail. Couples therapy can be great. But sometimes working through problems with your partner isnât a good thing. If you donât have time and energy, if neither partner has an ability to emotionally regulate, or if the couple doesn't feel comfortable sharing deep parts of themselves it can actually make things worse.
We so often try to clip the wings of our partner so they wonât fly away.
Telling your partner to change can lead to lashing out. Even if they do change, they might feel resentful you don't accept them in their whole. For example, they reign in the fun loving part they cherish because you want them to be more focused and serious. You're not solving the real issue.
Self problems create relationship problems.
Like trying to grow a garden in contaminated soil, you can keep planting new flowers, but until you clean the earth itself, nothing healthy can truly take root.
So, what's the alternative?
Realize YOU are the one you have been waiting for.
Heal the gardens ground itself--your own inner landscape--while trying to grow love in it. Learn to be your own primary caretaker instead of giving that role to your partner. Last I checked they're not God, they're human. They could never fulfill that role.
This doesn't mean you can't get into a relationship before you are fully healed, nor does it mean you canât rely on others for support. Of course, you should let your partner in (in more ways than one if you know what I'm saying he-he) but they should always be your secondary caregiver rather than your first.
It also doesn't mean you donât try and solve external problems. Often navigating your internal problems will solve or at least help mend the external ones. But you or your partner still might need to change. Letâs explore how to be your own primary caregiver according to Richard Schwartz.
Being Your Own Primary Caregiver
Becoming your primary caregiver means diving into your psyche and healing your parts.
Richard Schwartz recommends Internal Family Systems (IFS) as the psychotherapy for doing this. According to IFS, our psyche is made up of a conglomeration of parts with their own experiences, motivations, and beliefs, all competing and collaborating to try and help us navigate this thing called life. Most of the time, our parts help us live well, but sometimes, they can make us feel, think, or do things that arenât in our interest. This occurs when our parts become burdened.
Our parts become burdened when we carry unprocessed experiences or trauma from our past. Burdens become like weights around our waists, so used to living with unprocessed experiences and limiting beliefs, we don't even realize they're there in the first place. Usually they come from our parents during childhood; there's a whole field which studies how the burdens from our past effect our present relationships called Attachment Theory. Often, however, our burdens can come from past romantic relationships, friendships, and more.
Burdened parts arenât inherently badâeveryone has them. The problem comes when we blend with the part. We become like an actor who's forgotten they're on stage, so deep in character they can no longer tell where the role ends and they begin. This means we give the part undue ability to influence our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Many of the horrible things that have happened and are happening in the world result from people blending with their misguided parts.
Luckily, behind all the burdened parts rests an endless ocean of presence, its depths untouched by the waves that crash above--The Self or as I like to call it, Mahatma Ghandi.
The Self is what exists when you unblend from all the rest of your parts. It's fundamentally, curious, calm, confident, compassionate, creative, courageous, insightful, and connectedâbasically everything you pretend to be on a first date before revealing your truer form. The core process of IFS is in embodying Self, and using it to heal and integrate our various parts to navigate life better.
The core issue with your relationship problem solving before is you didn't do it from Self. Instead, you let one of your parts take over. And once both partners have parts talking for them, no genuine understanding and change can occur.
When in Self, however, you can work to genuinely change. For example, your partner comes to you with a relationship problem while you are in self. Instead of lashing out or shutting down you give them three things:
- Hear them out for how they were hurt
- Show genuine compassion and sorrow for your role in leading to that hurt
- Indicate you are interested in working on the parts that might have led to that
Sometimes for particularly hard things this isnât enough. You have to show you are continuing to put effort into working with those parts even after the apology.
By diving into your parts and healing their burdens (which I talk about how to do in depth in this article here) you can become your primary caregiver, healing the internal problems which lead to your external ones. Ironically, this is where your partner comes in.
Your partner is your Tor-mentor.
They are a mirror reflecting back your unhealed parts--not to torment you, but to illuminate what you must mentor yourself through to heal.
Even when you are aware of parts work, things can run amuck. If you canât stay in Self while having a conflict, it might be better to pause or wait for another time entirely. Arguing from oneâs parts by both partners wonât help anything. When you have insights from your parts work, tell them to your partner. If that part takes you over later on, they will understand it's just the part talking, not your Self.
You might be able to do a lot of this process on your own. But ultimately, it can be helpful to see a therapist, preferably one trained in IFS for help. The work won't be easy by any means. Don't expect to deeply understand your inner parts in a few months, or roughly the time it takes your AirPods to mysteriously disappear. But as we'll get to in the next section, the kind of love you can have if you do it is like nothing else.
A Newer Truer Form Of Love
When both you and your partner learn to be your own primary caregiver, you'll find paradoxically you can open up and show more care to each other than ever before.
You understand your partners every word or action isnât them. You know when a partner says youâre a "prehistoric parasite who should have been born in hunter gatherer times so at least they could have used your cells feeding a hungry animal," it isnât indicative of their full personality.
People can tolerate a great deal of scary turbulence if they trust that smooth skyâs are ahead.
As you heal your internal parts, the external problems that plagued your relationship begin to diminish even if nothing changes! Other parts of your life get better as well.
You begin embodying what Schwartz calls courageous love. You prioritize the growth of your partner over simply fulfilling the selfish needs of your parts. You want whats best for them because you no longer need them to be happy. The love is more similar to the kind a parent should have for their child, letting them grow into their best selves.
True love isn't about clipping wings to keep someone close--it's about helping them build stronger wings, even if they might fly away. It's choosing growth over grip, possibility over possession. This takes profound courage because they might grow into someone you don't even recognize. Perhaps you even break up. But you do so with love. Because as the saying goes, if you love me let me go.
For example, imagine a musician whose partner reveals they want to move across the country to pursue their PhD. The musician's initial parts react strongly--their anxious part panics about long-distance, their controlling part wants to convince them to choose a closer school, and their music part wants to sing, "Oh won't you, Staaaayyyyyyy with meeeeee." Sorry it had to be done.
But instead of acting from these parts, they pause and access their Self. From this calm, curious place, they ask their partner about their dreams. They listen as their partner lights up describing the research they want to pursue.
They spend the next few months working together to explore options--maybe the musician could move too, maybe they try long distance, maybe they even consciously separate. But whatever the outcome, the musician stays committed to supporting their partner's growth rather than clipping their wings out of fear.
This is the kind of courageous love possible when you operate more from Self. But that's not it. The level of intimacy you can have is much greater. Intimacy grows in four forms:
- Describing parts to each other
- Relating to each others similar parts
- Relating to one of their parts in Self
- Relating to each other from Self
As you rely on each other less, you begin to love each other more. You love each other in your entirety, even if you still work towards external change.
You might never have seen a relationship like this. But when you do it's beautiful. The couple seems to fade into many different versions of themselves around each other. They are comfortable expressing all their parts because they know they will be loved as who they are. It radiates out of them.
The best news is you can start making this transformation right now. You don't have to continue experiencing the pattern from the beginning of this piece. I recommend reading my article on IFS or going directly to the book this article was inspired by. Remember, you don't have to find a partner to begin.
Because after all, you are the one you have been waiting for.