THE RELATIONSHIP BEHAVIOR PROFILE: YOU

[CHAPTER 2]

That was the easy part. Now here are ten similar questions that you absolutely must answer with total honesty and candor to help organize and guide your assessment about the way you think about yourself, and about the way you and your partner relate. These are questions that you might not think to ask yourself, so consider them carefully. Resolve right now that you are not going to lie to yourself. Propel yourself to deal with the truth about yourself, even if it hurts. Prepare your heart and mind to be open rather than defensive. It is cowardly to blame and it is cowardly and self-destructive to be in denial. Use your journal, if you wish to help you understand why you feel the way you do.

• List five instances of loving behavior toward your partner during the last month.

• List five instances of unloving or hateful things you have done to your partner during the last month.

• List and describe your five best qualities.

• List and describe your five worst qualities.

• List five things which your partner has asked or scolded or nagged you to correct or improve, but which you have not corrected or improved.

• List five things that made your partner fall in love with you.

• List five things that today would make your partner fall our of love with you.

• Describe your sexual relationship wit h your partner, paying particular attention to your own:
• Pattern of initiation
• Frequency
• Quality
• Problems

• Describe your tendency or lack thereof to focus on your partner, paying particular attention to:
• Desire for being physically close
• Desire to talk with your partner one-on-one
• Desire to spend time alone with your partner
• Desire to protect or comfort your partner during times of need
• Desire to please your partner
• Does your partner look forward to seeing you at the end of a day? If no, write in your journal the reasons why. Be as specific as possible. If you tend to complain to your partner about the day you've had soon after you see your partner, write that down. If you tend to have a stressful look on your face when you see your partner, write that down. If it's because you feel a sense of dread upon the sight of your partner, write that down too.

You will also hear me frequently say that you must approach your relationship with a willingness to own your part of the problem. Whatever your partner repeatedly does in your relationship, he or she does it at least in part because of how you respond. You teach your partner how to treat you - or how to continue treating you - by the way you respond. You either elicit, maintain, or allow the behavior by your own responses. If, for example, your partner takes certain excesses in the relationship or is consistently rude and insensitive, I promise you he or she has learned that such behavior is acceptable because of the way you have responded. You may in fact have actually rewarded your partner for such behavior by giving in, abandoning your position, or by getting so upset that you no longer can express adequately what you feel and believe.

Acknowledging your own problems can be most refreshing when you realize that at last you are getting real about what is going on. I am betting you will find that that willingness to take a non-defensive look at yourself can and will be inspiring to your partner.