What do you do when your partner doesn’t necessarily want to participate in Relish? That’s what Pam was thinking when she found Relish. Although she and Mike have a good relationship, there is always room for improvement - she just wasn’t sure he’d be on board.
Mike’s lackadaisical attitude toward actual participation in this stuff as “silly” as it may be to him, is more telling than not. Once we took the quizzes and got our attachment styles, I realized his disinterest could be the weakness of the Labrador attachment style creeping in, complacency – “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
I was nervous about starting to use Relish, because I wasn’t sure how much he’d be on board. But I started using it alone, because I realized I can always improve myself, and I can’t control anyone else. Each lesson I’ve digested has been working its subtle magic on me. Then I started sharing the lessons and activities with Mike, sort of joking at first, and then becoming something we could bond over. Like the lesson that makes us try out pick-up lines on each other, at first we both laughed, and then I was just like ‘Well we might as well give it a try!’
I do think I can attribute a few lessons that have helped me reframe my outlook and perspective on our relationship – and they are centered around communication and assumption. The most impactful thing I’ve learned has been that we make meanings out of literally everything. Every. Single. Thing. Especially when it comes to our relationships, whether they’re platonic, familial, or romantic. No matter what Mike would do, good or bad, I would make meaning out of it. I got the lesson about assumptions and I was able to recognize that I was guilty of that. After I realized that, I was able to identify everything I said to myself about a particular act, word or gesture as detrimentally one-sided and narrow. My thoughts were skewing reality, and I was just finding confirmation of things I already believed. Once I was able to identify that behavior and bring it to him when I noticed I was doing it, or even just stopping my typical thought track, I was able to see that Mike WAS showing me that he loved me a lot, in many small, subtle ways.
It’s therapy, but way cheaper.
My advice to anyone that doesn’t think their partner will be on board would be to make light of it with silliness and jokes if you must (or don’t because it’s actually awesome and everyone needs this). It’s therapy, but way cheaper. Any way you slice it, Relish starts a conversation between you that you weren’t already having, it reminds you of the little things that get drowned out in the everyday hustle and bustle, and it’s simply a great vehicle to stoke the fire and keep it burning – especially if you’re afraid to stoke it on your own.