Do you value what your partner values? If not, you may be in for a rude awakening when they suddenly get upset with you for seemingly no reason.

What’s important to you may not be important to them, and vice versa, but it might be a good idea to make what they value important to you since your relationship’s longevity may depend on it.

In this episode Matthew Bivens and I tackle an email where the person who wrote in often forgets to lock the front door, and his girlfriend resents him for it because she’s been through a traumatic event and needs to know she is safe at home.

This causes huge issues and may be the final straw that ends the relationship.

Transcript of “Valuing Your Partner’s Values for Relationship Longevity” Follows

Paul:

I’m going to read this message from someone I’ll call Bill. Bill says:

“I’ve been binge-ing your show recently, prior and going into a breakup that I’m currently going through. We are spending time apart for a buildup of reasons. But my question is related to your one podcast on failing the challenge.

My girlfriend, or ex now, as I’m learning to cope with this, is a survivor of workplace assault. She has trust issues and strong sensitivities/concern regarding her safety. Early on, both of us found out that I don’t lock our front door with an absolute consistency. I prioritized it but it wasn’t as high of a concern as it was for her.

Per her request, I tried to develop habits to have the presence of mind to make sure the door was locked. I worked on this, trying to set habits. Despite this, on and off for a few years, I would slip. I would get distracted and I would forget to lock the door. There were even cases that I would forget to take the keys out of the door.

Each of these instances, she would be alarmed and conveyed to me how it troubled her. Then I would get defensive because I felt guilty trying to say I didn’t mean to do it. Then it would turn into a fight. To alleviate her concerns, I would list off ways in which I would try to improve myself, which was within my knowing capacity at the time. Then I would slip again at a later time. This became a deal breaking topic that she was sensitive about. She was convinced every time that I slipped that there was zero improvement, that I hadn’t learned my lesson. But to me I was trying in earnest to do as she wished.

I wasn’t malicious, I wasn’t trying to slight her, I would just be forgetful. She would tell me I didn’t love her because if I did, I would have changed or was a liar. Because if I did make the change, I would never forget to leave the door unlocked or my keys in it.

Other facets of how we are good poorly I’ve discovered in your other podcasts, retrospectively. I feel like I’ve tried my best and I wasn’t trying to disappoint her. I don’t know what kind of actions I could have taken better as a good boyfriend to make her feel safe. This isn’t a social habit that I’m being faulted for, which is what tears me up. I was getting lambasted for threatening her safety.

This I understand as well as the root of why her safety feels threatened. I know I’m totally at fault for being constantly absent minded. I just wish I had better solution to reassure her that I was on her side and I felt guilty for messing up and I wanted to make sure I kept putting in the effort to make her feel safe. We love each other and I want to stay in touch. I just want a better strategy for myself so that I don’t disappoint her or another future significant other over again, thank you for taking the time to read this.”

Bill, thank you so much for writing all of that. Matthew, we were talking earlier, you said you could definitely relate to this.

Matthew: 

The portion of this that really struck me when I was reading it was Bill performing some sort of action activity, again and again, sort of forgetting that it was hurting, or that it was doing something to your significant other.

I could relate to that because I was in a relationship where it seemed, every month or so, I would do something that wasn’t taking into consideration my partner, her feelings her time, and it would turn into a fight. I still vividly remember when the fight would happen I would be like, “God, you did it again, Matthew, you did it again.”

I remember that feeling of frustration, disappointment in myself, regret that I had done that thing again. It wasn’t always the same thing that I was doing but it was just failing to consider her. This was a point in my life when I was doing a lot of journaling and I remember writing in my journal multiple times, “if you do it again, she’s going to leave.”

So Bill, as Paul was reading your letter, that really struck me because I’ve been in that type of situation personally.

Paul: 

I think we all have. I think we all have said “Damn it, I just did that thing that he or she didn’t want me to do again.” I did that with my girlfriend when we first moved in together, when I moved into her place. She wants her dishes stacked up a certain way, she wants the dishwasher stacked a certain way.

It was a lot of, I don’t want to say demands, but demands on my consciousness. To be consciously aware of how somebody else wants things all the time, when you yourself are just trying to keep your own life together and trying to keep things going for you and now somebody else wants that too for them and you have to be conscious of both your stuff and their stuff – it can be demanding.

With that said, in my opinion, it’s not really an excuse. You can’t say like, “Well, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on in my life so I don’t have time to think about locking the door. I can’t even think about that. You’re lucky I shut the door at all.”

That would be harmful to the relationship. One of the things that comes up for me is when something is so important to your partner, what steps, what effort do you make to make it just as important to you?

When I was married, I did a values exercise with my wife. I wanted to find out what was most important to her about a relationship and what came up for her was feeling safe and it’s right in line with what’s going on here. She didn’t have a workplace assault but she could have had multiple relationships or family where she couldn’t feel safe.

When she goes into a relationship, she needs to feel that safe feeling to feel comfortable, to be able to be loving, and to be able to be supportive and nurturing. For her to be vulnerable means that she has to feel safe. If you are not able to meet that number one need, that number one most important thing, or something high on the list – if not number one, number two – then what’s going to happen is nothing else will seem to work, or nothing else will work. It just will not pan out.

Bill said, “I listed off all the ways I’m trying to improve myself.” That means nothing to someone who wants the door locked, who just wants that one thing. If you can meet that one important thing that changes the entire relationship.

Matthew, when I talk about trying to meet the most important need of your partner, where do you think you went in your mind when you were forgetful? Was it just absent-mindedness?

Matthew: 

Looking back on that relationship, I think there was a couple things going on. I think I definitely had attachment issues and self-worth issues, which kind of created this interesting cocktail where I was very attached to her but I didn’t feel like I deserved her.

I believe from myself, there were some elements of – using the phrase self-sabotage is little strong – but I may have been subconsciously compromising the relationship because I didn’t feel like I deserved it.

Paul:

That’s a very interesting way to look at it.

Matthew: 

When I when I think back to my own situation, I think about yours as well, Bill. I’m thinking, the locking of the doors, or in my case, the sending of the text message when I’m going to be late coming home or something like that, they are “small things.” They are things that make sense, but for me, I just did not feel like she was important enough, or it was important enough.

There were elements of me understanding that if I don’t do this, it’s going to create something. There’s going to be a consequence if I don’t do this one thing, and then not doing it, and then saying, “it slipped my mind.”

It might have slipped my mind but there’s still a part of me that knew that I probably should reach out or whatever it was at the time. I don’t necessarily think it was conscious, I don’t think I was out to end this relationship, but there was a part of me that was just picking away at that foundation because it confirmed my lack of self-worth.

At the time, I was more interested in being right then I was in being happy.

Paul: 

So that particular example where you didn’t text because you were late – what does that have to do with wanting to be right? Was that like a control thing?

Matthew: 

No, I think by me not texting, it would mean that there would be another blow up around me not being considerate for her and because there was a blow up the relationship, it wasn’t going well. I’m not supposed to have good relationships in my life. It just confirmed that I’m not worthy.

Paul: 

So you would confirm that you are right, in your own mind?

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