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I recently fell into a pattern of negative thinking.  I wasn’t even aware of it until it encompassed all areas of my life and I felt quite miserable.  I was being overly judgemental with my partner, I was over-analyzing and focusing on all the less-than-perfect things in my relationship and I was feeling quite unhappy.

I defaulted to my old ways and started to think that I was unhappy because of my relationship.  But in fact, the opposite was true.  My relationship was not as happy as usual because I was not happy.

Nothing had changed in my relationship.  My partner was still the same person, doing and saying the same kinds of things as always.  But what had changed was what I was feeling, the way I was looking at him and our relationship and what I was choosing to focus on.

Once I realized what I had been doing, I became very conscious of my thoughts and when a negative thought tried to come visit for a while, I’d ask it to leave and replace it with positive ones.

I love my partner dearly.  We have a great relationship.  There are always things that are exceptionally great and things that we like to learn from and move on.   And, whatever I focus on (and whatever he chooses to focus on) becomes the basis for our relationship.  Every time we focus on those exceptionally great things, our relationship thrives.  And when we focus on all the challenges, things feel overwhelming very quickly.

This has been an important realization in my own life.  I wonder how many other people may still be in relationships they’ve abandoned by mistakenly thinking it was all the other person’s fault.  I think more of us would be happier in our relationships if we trained ourselves to be aware of our negative view and consciously choose to look at the positive. 

There’s always room for a rosy view in our relationships.