A Make-or-Break Skill for Long Term Relating

If you're in a relationship (of any kind) that you would like to last, there's one skill that can make a huge difference - learning how to deal with disappointment. In any long term relationship (family, friendship, work, romantic, etc) there will be disappointments - some little and some big. How we deal with those tender moments can make all the difference between staying in connection, making a repair, or choosing separation.

The work of facing disappointment often requires a great deal of emotional labor. Emotional labor is the practice of "being with" uncomfortable emotions. Our capacity to do emotional labor is often limited by the effects of trauma in our nervous systems. When we're already activated or anxious, it's unlikely we'll have the capacity to stretch into more emotional discomfort.

So the first thing to notice, when it comes to facing disappointment, is that you may not even have the capacity to hold the emotions that are coming up. In this case, it's important to get support, sleep, food, nourishing touch, and reassurance - or whatever helps to calm and ground the nervous system.

And then, once you are resourced, that's when it may be possible to work on developing the necessary skills to really process disappointment.

Here's a video in which I go over some of the skills and capacities that are necessary to deal with disappointment. As always, I am here to support you in leaning into these skills and learning new ways to cope with the complexity and intensity of intimacy and simply living in this human plane of existence. Please reach out for support!

Additionally, here's a helpful article from Somatica about the steps of relationship repair.

Also, I have put our next monthly members meeting on the calendar! Save the date! It will be Tuesday April 11th at 7:30 pm, and it will be an opportunity to talk about community. I'm preparing to launch an online community so that you all can get to know each other better and we can better support one another. I'll send more details about that in a newsletter next week.

There are three in-person events coming up in April... two cuddle parties and a play party. Click here to learn more!

Much love,

Sarah