This episode explores the impact of questions in a relationship .. how we ask questions, how we respond to them, how we welcome or resist them.
Some questions to reflect on:
- Where is my question actually coming from? Do I really want to better understand the other person? Or do I really want empathy? Do I want to make them wrong? Or do I want to experience greater control and less uncertainty to lower my anxiety? What’s driving my question?
- Why do I feel so threatened by my partner’s questions? Do I have a story running in my head that they are trying to find fault with me? (Which may be accurate by the way) Or that they want to know more much more about me than I am ready to reveal? Either way, how might I discuss this with my partner in a matter that deepens respect for our differences?
- Why do I feel a need to press my partner with questions that he or she clearly doesn’t want to answer?
- Are the question I’m asking or hearing somehow threatening or overly probing?
- What am I hiding? What don’t I want my partner to know about me?
- How much do I ultimately trust or not trust my partner?
- Humans are complex and at times full of contradiction. There are some parts of myself that on the one hand I genuinely want to share with another person, and yet on the other hand I feel too afraid to share. Why is that? What purpose does it serve? And in what ways does it interfere with me having full and meaningful relationships?
Ending quote:
“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
If you have comments about this episode or topics you'd like me to explore in future episodes, please submit them here: https://www.rachellelamb.com/contact-rachelle
