The true test of self-awareness begins only when you’re in a relationship. I can honestly say this because in all dating occasions, we’ll be spending most of the time with our partner, either doing things together or having an intimate talk. With our senses (thoughts and physical contact) being focused on our partner, it’s hard to be engaged with our internal thoughts at any point of time.

3 years into the relationship, I’m blessed that being consciously aware of feelings and thoughts of myself and my partner, has helped me overcome difficult moments in my relationship. So I hope by sharing some of the things I have learned from my awareness experience would benefit those who wants to have a happier and stronger relationships.

But before reading further, please take note that this article doesn’t define me as a relationship guru or a relationship expert adviser. Even if I do, I would have gotten my 3rd side income job as a relationship consultant. This article is solely base on my personal experience and the practices/learnings that I have read from various research.

Below are the list of things that awareness has helped me in my relationship areas.

Awareness has helped me :

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1. To Understand Why I Demand Things From My Partner

At many situations, I found myself giving instructions to my partner, and requesting a few favours from him. Even with the simplest things such as asking him to fetch me from Point A to Point B, taking out the trash, and many others may seemed like a thing that I should be doing myself, but after being too comfortable and too used to this habit, it became a natural thing to do.

At most times, my partner gladly obliged to my request, but some other times, he seemed distant from my never ending request, and when he doesn’t fulfil those requests, I become too emotional and will start overthinking and overreacting. This can last from days and weeks, which is quite depressing. Thoughts like : “Doesn’t he love me anymore?”, “Doesn’t he care for me?” “Next time marry liao, and he don’t help me, I think I will have a fail marriage leh.”

Yes, I know. These thoughts may seem ridiculous, but forgive my female hormones, they allowed me to think this way.

To be honest, I do feel bad for my partner sometimes for being too “demanding”, but I have no idea why I have such habit of being so “demanding”. Only after a friend of his, Derrick Tan, introduced this “5 Love Language” survey to us, I became more aware of why I behave that way. With my “Act of Service” as my highest score of my love language, this explains why I was so “demanding” of my partner, solely because I can never trust the words of a man until I see actions from him. This enlightened me on a whole new level and helped me to understand the intentions on why I want my partner to do certain things. Because for him to do even the simplest things for me, like washing the dishes, would means so much love to me.

2. To Prevent Hurting My Partner Feelings With My Hurtful Words

At any bringe of the moment during an argument, when emotions are high, and I couldn’t think straight, the tendency for me to lash out words as a last straw of defence is very high. And most of the time, these were harshful words to hurt my partner, sometimes intentionally.

I was aware that they were words that were gonna hurt, but when I reflected on why I intentionally used them against him, it was maybe because if my partner had spoken a little different to me, things would have been different. Maybe if my partner had spoken in a softer tone, or structured his words to sound much pleasant to the ears unlike the usual negative, full-of-himself, and judgemental opinions, I wouldn’t have reacted like a grenade.

But then again, you can’t fight fire with fire. If I backlash him with hurtful words, it’s either he will feel hurt, or he will counter attack me with even nasty words to hurt me. So, instead of changing his pattern of communication, I decided to stay as fucking calm as possible even when I want to throw a table across his face.

To prevent this from happening, especially during heated arguments, I tried to learn how to take DEEP breaths before saying anything. It helps me to compose my mind and acknowledge the words that I actually wanted to say to him, which may sound like : “I don’t think you care”, “It’s not like you care anymore”, “You never put enough effort in the relationship”, “You never tried anything new, you’re such a boring person”.

I would then take a step back and analyse if by saying these words, will it be :

- Beneficial to my partner and I?

- Will it help to solve the problem?

If the answer is no to the above, it becomes easier for me to talk to my partner about the problem in a gentler and kinder manner. The breathing is helpful as it gives me more time to think through my words and allow me some time to process the consequences on what’s gonna happen if I say those words to my partner.

3. To Know That I’m Wrong and How I Shouldn’t Be a Bitch Sometimes

Sometimes I feel bad for my partner, because I know I can be a nuisance sometimes, trying to cook up some drama just because he didn’t give in to me, or I was just acting too much like a kid.

Being aware and reflecting on the reason why my partner is mad at me is a pretty tough thing to do. The typical stereotype will always say that females always act in a way that a man has to always guess on what they did wrong. Unfortunately, man also has this same issue too. They won’t tell you their feelings, and what went wrong, and what you did wrong. Thus, it requires lots of patience and thinking especially when your partner doesn’t tell you why he was upset with you in the first place. Nevertheless, simple things that I have observe and take note of are the tone of his voice, body language, and the sudden change of his behaviour. If anything of these symptoms arises, it’s clearly to say that, it’s either I’m wrong, or it’s just not his day.

Knowing I’m wrong is fine, but it won’t do much help if I don’t apologize. Although it can be hard sometimes, especially when you know that you’re not in the wrong, and it’s even harder to mutter the word “sorry” because it somehow hurts your ego or pride. However, I would rather let it hurt my ego, rather than let my relationship end because of it.

So at times, when I was about to say sorry, I felt like my heart went through a bypass surgery. My organs felt like they were about to explode, I felt like I rather ran a full marathon than say sorry, I felt someone blasted my skull with a Kar98k, and I would rather slam a table at my partner face than say sorry. But in the end, I still said “sorry”.

I’m also aware of these kind of emotions and discomfort feeling arises from time to time, but I’m learning how to be okay with that feeling. Because I know many “sorries” would save me from ending a beautiful relationship in the future.

4. To Communicate My Objectives / Intentions to My Partner Better, Without Blowing Up Like a Cannonball

Fights and arguments never end because we have expectations on our partner. It’s even worse when our partner doesn’t know what are our expectations and intentions are. Our partner may not know this, as we ourselves, gets too engross into arguing with them, that we fail to remind them on our objectives and intentions, and the reason why we’re so mad at them for not fulfilling our expectations.

Many times, I told myself that I mustn’t have expectations, but us being humans, it just pops out of nowhere like a pimple on your face. So, yes, I do have expectations. In fact, in my opinion, it’s actually healthy to have expectations because it shows that you want to improve your relationship and you want to be happy with your partner.

During most of our misunderstandings and when he’s displeased with me for something, I would remind him again why I did XYZ in a kind, gentler manner. “I hope you could help me do XYZ because I was hoping we could finish it together faster, so we can watch a movie later”, “The reason why we came to this restaurant that you find it disgusting, because I know this was your favourite food, but I fail to realize on how bad it was L.”, “I wanted us to come here even though it’s quite far, because I thought it would be romantic to spend time with you alone.”

Maybe once our partners know our true intentions and objectives (in a sincere and gentler way), that they wouldn’t be so mad/annoyed at us afterall? So far in my experience, it does help. Because it helps balance out on what he wants, and what I want in a relationship.

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Self-Awareness in a relationship has great benefits to both parties, but it will not be easy if one of our partner is lacking of it or does not have any knowledge/practice of it.

If you think awareness has helped you in your relationship, do share in what situation did it help you during the most difficult times?