50 Questions for Partners to Explore
The Buddha famously established the Noble Eightfold Path, namely:
- Right Understanding or right view (right means skilful and fulfilling)
- Right Intention
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration.
If the Buddha lived today, he would surely establish the Noble Ninefold Path. Number nine would be Right Relationships. Relationships offer a major challenge to love and wisdom. There are various kinds of relationships. Here are 50 questions for relationships between partners. In the European Union, it is reported that women end seven to eight out of every 10 relationships.
Two Important Questions
Do you love your partner?
Do you consider that both of you form a team?
If your response is not affirmative to these two questions, then changes in feelings and attitudes becomes necessary to make for the renewal of love and commitment to co-operation.
On sustaining development of the relationship
- What do you appreciate about your relationship?
- What do wish to develop in the relationship?
- What do you wish to let go of?
- Do you have close friends with whom you can share your experiences?
- What do you have to offer in your relationship?
- What does your partner offer you?
- What makes you most happy in your relationship?
- What do you find most difficult in your relationship?
On the Exploration of Challenges
- What do you appreciate most about your partner?
- What do you find most challenging?
- Do you feel close to your partner or distant or both? If so, at what times?
- Do you support your partner when he/she is going through a difficult time?
- If you both had a crisis in your relationship, what did you both learn from it?
- Do difficult situations from the past, such as childhood, act like a shadow over the relationship?
- What can you develop today what was lacking in the past?
- Do you have the balance between life as a partner and life as an individual?
On Relationship to Activities
- When you come home from work, do you keep energy for the relationship?
- Do you think you know what is going with your partner if he or she is quiet?
- If you live in different homes, do you put pressure on the other to live together?
- Do you or your partner talk too much or too little about work and other activities?
- Can you initiate creative activities for the two of you?
- Can you respond in a supportive way when your partner initiates creative activities?
- Are you willing to make changes in yourself to support your partner?
- Are you willing to live in a financially prudent way in order to have more time together?
On Expressions of Intimacy
- Do you both enjoy sexual communication on a regular basis?
- Are the actions of making love rich in sensitivity, exploration and creativity?
- Are you patient and loving if the sexual energies of your partner are quiet?’
- Can you hug or hug and kiss in and out of bed without the need for such touch to go further?
- Do you recognise the language of love whether through being, words and actions?
- Do you both share your experiences about each other in a caring way?
- What constitutes the daily conversations? Is it primarily loving and supportive or too much confined to practical details?
- Do you sit down together and simply about your life together?
On Working with Difficulties
Would you consider discussing an important issue between you both away from home, such as in a coffee shop or park, in order to be civil to each other?
- Are you both willing to seek the skilled counsellor or reliable friend to resolve issues?
- Are you able to apologise for an outburst or for letting the partner down?
- Are you able to accept an apology for an outburst or for being let down?
- Do you find fault with your partner’s family or friends?
- If your partner loses their temper, do you hold onto that memory in the future?
- Do you tend to keep finding fault with your partner?
- Does your partner keep finding fault with you?
On becoming Parents
- Do you want to become a parent?
- What are the positive factors to become a parent?
- What are the negative factors?
- Are you committed to sharing the full responsibility for the role of parenting?
- What is a wise response if one partner wishes to become a parent and the other does not want to become a parent?
- How would you describe your childhood?
- What mistakes did your parents made that you do not wish to make?
- Is there commitment to becoming a parent or pressure from within or without?
It would be unusual for a relationship between partners to be completely nourishing and fulfilling. It is important to have an expansive view of a relationships otherwise a partner can place unreasonable demands upon the other. Nourishment can develop through many resources.
Relationships require:
- Concrete expressions of love
- A genuine inquiry together into questions that arise
- Never taking the partner for granted, no matter how long the relationship
- Creative initiatives
- Living affordably
- Mindfulness of speech, loving rather than demanding or faultfinding
- Being vigilant so as not to get stuck in habits
- Making opportunities for adventure.
MAY ALL PARTNERS LISTEN TO EACH OTHER
MAY ALL PARTNERS LIVE WITH LOVE
MAY ALL BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY.