Anita Jacob

Do you ever look up and wonder how the ceiling has so many dirty patches on it? I’ve wracked my brain trying to understand how exactly there are brown or black patches on the ceiling, wondering what could possibly have happened to cause them. I guess if I just never look up, I won’t see them and they won’t bother me… but now that I know they are there, this isn’t so easy to do!

I have found that this is similar with people. We can know someone for so long and never notice something about them that actually really bothers us. One day you are just going about your life and suddenly, there it is! Perhaps you are having a deep conversation with your partner and they reveal a belief or opinion about something that they haven’t shared before. You wonder how they could think that way. You may even wonder if you can really be with someone who believes something that goes completely against what you believe?

How can you overcome this? Now that you know it, you can’t pretend it doesn’t bother you. You can’t decide to just not look at the ceiling and pretend there’s nothing there!

So what can you do with the topics in your relationship that you will never agree on? In every relationship, there will be quite a few things that you will never see eye-to-eye on. Some of these things can be overlooked as they really don’t matter a whole lot, while others are significant and can create much bigger problems. Hopefully, if you’ve been with someone for a long time, you won’t be surprised by something that is crucial to the relationship, such as if you both want children or if one of you plans to move to a different country when you both retire.

Here are a few suggestions on how to talk about the issues you just can’t agree on in your relationship:

• Try and fully understand your partner’s opinion/belief by asking questions without judgment. Remember, understanding them does not mean that you agree with them.
• Go further and try and understand how/why this opinion/belief was formed. Ask about their reasoning, what lead them to think that way. Try and put emotion aside at this stage if you can.
• Understand for yourself why it bothers you and try and understand your own reasoning and why you think something different.
• Identify the emotions that are tied to this topic. Why does the differences around this cause you to feel this way?
• Explore together what this looks like in your relationship and if/how it will affect your everyday life together and your future together.
• Figure out together if this is something you can agree to disagree on, and if not, is some space needed and decide on what the next step should be? This may include couples counselling or reading a book about the topic at hand.
• Set some expectations around what will happen if it gets brought up in the future, i.e. if either of you are struggling with it, can it be brought up to discuss again? What will this look like?

In everything about relationships, especially the difficult things, it’s always so important to remember the character of the person you are with. I assume you wouldn’t choose to be with someone who you don’t believe is good. If you can stay with the belief, “My partner is good”, you will go far. Rarely does one belief or opinion change this, though it can take time to process through the implications of discovering something that feels significant. Give yourself the time to process this new information, but always through the lens of who you already know your partner to be.

It can be hard to have these conversations without allowing hurt and frustration to take over. Please seek help if these conversations can’t happen without arguments. If left unaddressed, these types of things often fester and become resentments, driving a wedge between partners. It’s best to catch it early before this can happen so that a resolution can be found with a way to move forward.