You Are Both Doing the Best that You Can

Try this on as your operating assumption for you and your partner dealing with each other: You are both good people, and you are both doing the best that you can.

To you, this may look ridiculous on the face of it. Your partner may be a good person, you figure; but you KNOW that your partner is not doing the best that s/he can!

To make it easy for yourself, start with accepting the first proposition: My partner is a good person, and I am a good person Presumably you know that you are a good person; so it shouldn't be that difficult to assume that your partner is as well.

Here is the application: If you accept that your partner is a good person, then you must never permit yourself to demonize that person and to attribute to him/her motives and intentions that are not "good person" motives and intentions, such as deliberately intending to hurt you or do you wrong.

The "we are doing the best that we can" proposition is admittedly more challenging to accept, particularly because you know that your partner—and you— are capable of better and have demonstrated that in the past. Fine. But how about this: At the moment that your partner did whatever irked or angered or hurt you, s/he WAS doing the best that s/he could (maybe because s/he was hampered by feeling attacked by you, by being overly tired, by being stressed.)

If you accept that your partner ALWAYS does the best that at that moment that s/he can, then your job is 1) to refrain from judgment and 2) to make it easier for your partner to do better—i.e., help your partner to out, perhaps by holding off on a provocative statement of your own, or waiting for a better moment to speak up.