Feeding Your Partner While Teaching Them To Fish
In working with couples and individuals around relationship challenges, I’ve often heard partners state “well, I don’t want to have to show them what to do” or “I don’t want them to do it just because I asked them to”. The Disney-fication of love and romance has us believing that our ideal partner will just know what we need or how to do everything and that does all of us a disservice. Today we’re visiting the concept of teaching your partner how you want to be treated. To borrow an old quote, “give a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime”, we’re actually taking the approach of “You might have to feed someone while you’re teaching them to fish”.
People inherently want to do well. Our partners want to please us. Life is smoother for most people when these things can happen. However, people only do well if they can and have the skills. None of us learned our skills by osmosis. Someone somewhere taught us what to do. To use a benign example, no one was born knowing how to clean a bathroom and what all goes into that. At some point someone told you, had you watch, or taught you on the internet all the components of cleaning a bathroom, what cleansers to use, and what technique to employ. In our relationships, it’s not different. No one enters the world knowing exactly what every partner needs at any given time and exactly how to employ it. You may be thinking “well, yeah, but I know how to get my needs met in other ways or I know how to do this myself so it’s just faster for me to do it.” And sure, in the short term, it’s faster for you to do “it” whether it is getting a hug from a family member if your partner does not tend toward physical touch, or take over every part of the running of your household if your partner was never taught what goes in to keeping things running smoothly. And, by choosing to just do it yourself, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of dissatisfaction. Taking some time to model these behaviors while you show, teach, or tell your partner how to meet some of these needs (emotional or more concrete division of labor) will set your partner up to have the skills to do well.
To enter into this with an open heart and mind and without resentment, it takes some redefining romance. While Disney would have you believing that your partner will just *know* all of these things and that anticipating your every need is the romantic gesture, the actual romantic gesture is someone who want to put in the effort to be the right partner for you and have a relationship that feels good for both of you. Romance is putting in the work to choose one another and actively build skills that enhance your partner’s feeling loved. Within this framework, you are better able to come to your partner without resentment because rather than the experience being the antithesis of romantic, you’re able to tap into the romance of someone wanting to build a better relationship with you.
In the vein of redefining romance, feeding your partner and teaching them to fish benefits you! By showing, telling, and teaching what you’re looking for, your partner is more likely to do it and get it right. Rather than losing time trying to figure out what it is that you want and how to get there, you’re creating the map to get them there sooner. Coming to your partner in these conversations and communicating “hey, this is new for you and I’ve done it a million times, so why don’t you sit with me while I show you what I mean” or “Hey when you do this particular things [model behavior], I feel really loved” or “I totally appreciate the effort that you’re putting in and it’s not quite making the mark for me. Can I show you what I mean?” gets you what you’re looking for sooner.
In time, these behaviors become the habit of your relationship and you will no longer have to feed or be fed by your partner. This is a temporary state of being that both partners will be the recipient of at some point during the course of your relationship and the goal is that eventually you will be well fed enough and have learned the skills that you’re able to take on this new way of being without regular assistance and the tone of your relationship around this issue will have changed.
We live in a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture, but sometimes (most times), that’s just not possible. When we leave people to their own devices to figure out what it means to fish and then to learn how to do the fishing, we’re setting people up for failure. When people are well nourished, physically, emotionally, metaphorically, they are better able to learn new skills. When we manufacture barriers (especially in the name of romance), we’re setting ourselves up to be dissatisfied with our partners, believe that they cannot handle the seemingly hard thing we’re asking of them, and create an imbalanced power dynamic that only serves to divide partners and reduce intimacy over time. If you’re struggling with this and feel like you may be over functioning in your relationship, click the button below and let’s have a conversation.