Constructive communication is the foundation of a healthy relationship. You can’t get anywhere without it. And yet, some of the biggest challenges couples face have to do with misunderstandings and inaccurate meanings being placed on one another’s actions.

Over time, we place these same meanings on the same actions over and over again. Our “observations” lead to (potentially) faulty beliefs about our partner. We never take the opportunity to check in and say, “Hey, when I ask you to pick me up something from the store and you forget, I feel really unimportant. I feel like I can’t count on you to meet my needs.”

Instead, we just stop asking.

We establish an invisible rule:

I can’t ask my partner to do things for me because I can’t count on them, even if they said I could.

We run the errand ourselves and feel resentful. We see our partner remember things asked of them by other people and feel jealous. Emotional distance grows and we make consistent withdrawals from the emotional bank account.

In this week’s episode, we’re discussing how to identify the invisible rules running your relationship, what can happen if they go unchecked, and how to challenge and dispel the rules that are no longer serving you.