Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

Featured Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

I am currently in my second ever relationship. I am learning so many things about myself and the work I need to do to be the best version of myself. I have known I tend to be conflict avoidant (see previous post on managing confrontation in therapy), but I find in friendships and at work I can usually navigate my needs and comfort levels fairly well. In my family it gets a little trickier, but in a romantic relationship? Let’s just say I’m not super proud of how I’ve been handling the minor disagreements that have come up.

We’ve both noticed a tendency in me to be both passive aggressive and dismissive of his attempts to address the issue in the moment. I typically need a bit of time to calm down and start feeling the shame of my immaturity. I know that shame is not a helpful emotion so I have been able to focus on the long term health of our budding relationship and return to the issue. One time the avoidance lead to me abruptly ending the phone call, which when I calmed down I acknowledged the huge limitation of that approach: what am I going to do in person?

Unfortunately there is a gap between knowing your current habits aren’t the healthiest and actually implementing better skills. I will be working with my therapist on this but for now the game plan is to recognize when I’m approaching my emotional discomfort level, take some deep grounding breaths, and refocus on the long term goal of healthy happy relationships.