Bringing Out the Best In Your Partner

Bringing out the Best in Each Other.

What does this mean? Does it mean to change them, to make them stop or start a certain behavior? I would say this is more an aggressive way that is based out of our want to control. It has a sort of toxic way about it that ends up making a person feel rejected and builds resentment.

Instead, bringing the best out of each other has more to do with growing and nourishing what is already there.

Think of it as a seed. If someone likes cooking, an aggressive approach would be to tell them how to cook, to criticize if they used the wrong pan, to sort of have an attitude of “you need to do this right.” That has more to do with us. But if we are to be supportive it is more open, there is more listening. We ask questions like “what kind of cooking interests you? How can I best show you I support you?” We know it is different because it feels different. There is a loosening in the gut or the shoulders. It feels like sunlight rather than the heaviness of a boulder.

Bringing out the best means we have to listen for what the best is first. That means being present. Once we understand it more, how it works, what it needs, then we can begin to bring it out.