VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION – Love makes requests, not demands. Hi, I’m Dr. Dillon Wilson, The Couples Coach.
Some couples experience challenges where they describe either one partner or both as being very demanding or making demands instead of asking respectfully demands like, when are you going to paint the house? It’s not going to paint itself or when are you going to cook some actual real food? Instead of all this microwave stuff.
Realize when you demand things from your partner, you become the parent and they become the child. Now, if you’re raising children, then this strategy makes sense because children need guidance to be able to survive and thrive in life.
And in a mature adult relationship, you are both equal partners and if we wish to love each other. We need to know and value what the other person wants, their desires. It’s the way that we express those desires that makes all the difference.
If they come across as demands or ultimatums, it erases any intimacy and drives our partner away. If we make them as requests. We’re simply giving guidance. When you make a request of your partner, you are affirming their worth and their abilities. You’re literally telling them.
They can do something that is meaningful and valuable to you. This is why when you make a request, they feel they’re worth affirmed. Yet when you make it a demand, it belittled them. Plus a request includes an element of choice, because love is a choice.
That’s what makes it meaningful, yet a demand is not a choice and eliminates any possibility of affirmation, of worth or intimacy. And even if our mate chooses to do it. It’s usually out of an act of fear, guilt, and emotional manipulation, yet not love.
So it’s usually better to make requests like, sweetheart, I really like the work that you do around the house. Do you think it’s possible you could paint the house this weekend? You would really mean a lot to me.
Or, Hey babe, you know that meatloaf that you make, could you make some this week? I really like the smell of it, and it tastes really good.
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