How to Deal With Change in Your Relationship

Most of us have found ways to deal with change, but, and it’s a big but, we don’t tend to greet it with open arms. How can we embrace it, especially when it affects our day to day relating?

Recently Maude switched her work and went from working outside the home one-on-one with clients and lots of administrative work when home, to a self-run business that operates online and can be done any time, leaving the scheduling of time pretty much open to choice.

It was obvious to both of us that this was going to create the potential for new ways of being together and different ways to share our time.

We wondered if both being in the house most of the time was going to be a problem, or cause any strangeness for either of us. Phil was used to being alone in the house most of the time, and Maude was used to being on the go and pretty filled up with work even when home. As with many things, it turned out to not even be a bump in the path.

How can you embrace change in your relationship? #relationships #marriage #dating
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We have a way of flowing around things together that seems to absorb these potential hazards and leads us to a natural balance with which we are both comfortable. We are both so supported by each other to find and explore our interests, and so accepted as separate individuals, that we moved quite naturally into this change in routine and before very long, it seemed as though it had always been this way.

Each of us began to balance the time to accomplish our new individual activities and to adjust to a new way of being in our shared space. There wasn’t a lot of talking necessary to work this out. We just continued to function as we always do together, with total acceptance and respect for the other as an individual.

That was one side of the change that reflected concerns about potential discomforts – ones that never really came to pass. There is, however, another side, one which we are just beginning to explore. This involves the exciting but somewhat daunting possibility of restructuring our time together and incorporating new possibilities. This is not something that will just happen on its own, and it calls for both of us to think about it individually, and then communicate with each other and plan how to put these intentions into actions.

We aren’t very practiced at this since it’s been so long since we were in a situation where we could consider big alterations. It’s even taken a while to realize that we are at a place where we can intentionally alter our patterns. This is a perfect place to apply Our Process, where we co-create new answers that grow out of our sharing with each other.

We are getting excited about the potential for new ways to spend our time together and change is not looking so foreign. It’s arrived here in the present and not in the imagined future, so it has become much easier to face and work with creatively. Like anything else, when we deal in the present, everything becomes simpler and clearer.

“The disappointments hardest to bear are those which never come.” The Urantia Book

That’s where we are at lately. What have you been up to in your relationships? All of us face life changes that we need to work out together in our relationship, like changing jobs, having to move, needing to take on an elderly parent’s care, changed sexual appetites, losses of various kinds, changes in financial situations, children growing up and leaving, children moving back in, to name a few. What have you been dealing with lately and how are you handling those changes?

We hope you will try using some of the tips we share for finding mutual solutions. Be present with each other, listen actively to each other and always come from love. Remember, you are on the same side and there is a solution that is better than what either one of you can come up with alone. Co-create it together!