by Lon and Sandy Golnick

We’re exploring another way-of-being available within couples that we’re naming Couple Respect. And in this instance we’re considering respect within a couple as distinct from respecting a Couple.

First off, when you are respecting your partner, what are you actually respecting? Probably not your partner’s hair, torso, knees, etc. Perhaps you’re respecting their ownership of their body, but we’re really interested in your respect for your partner’s personhood, for who your partner is; not your partner’s appearance, but your partner’s beingness.

It calls up the question, “Who IS your partner?”

Is your partner their name? Their body? Their strengths or weaknesses? Their talents? Their awards? No. All those are things your partner has.

Is your partner their preparing meals? Their building a career? Their taking care of the children? Their planning trips and vacations? No. All those are things your partner does.

Who IS your partner? Your partner is A Unique Point-of-View. You and your partner are unique points-of-view about everything, each seeing things as no one else sees them.

When you are respecting your partner, you are regarding and accepting your partner as a valid point-of-view about anything and everything.

You can also think of respecting your partner as granting the space for them to be—however they are being at any particular time.

You actually do know your partner’s ways of being. If you were asked to act out your partner’s different ways of being, you could do a pretty good job of it.

It could even be said that you are attached to your partner’s ways of being—even those ways of being you complain about. You and your partner are so attached to each other’s ways of being that you could reverse roles and still accurately act out the way you behave in your relationship.

Your familiarity with your partner’s way of being is what you use to relate to your partner. When we resist these ways of being, there is little space for respect.

There is power in respecting—allowing and accepting—your ways of being in your Couple.

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Lon & Sandy Golnick are in the Westworld (Online) Circle