Why do I nitpick my partner?
When your nervous system is in a state of anxiety, it is as if you are wearing a pair of glasses that are tinted with fear. Everything around you is going to have a layer of fear over it, it will appear slightly more risky, slightly more threatening. This is the experience of seeing through the lens of fear.
Seeing through the lens of love helps you broaden your gaze. It doesn’t mean that you will suddenly love everything you used to dislike about your partner, but you’re able to see these flaws as just one single part of who your partner is.
Throughout our lives we all learn the “right” and “wrong” way to do things (from our parents, caretakers, society, etc). We become the barometer for what is “right” and “wrong”. We start to view any deviation from how WE would do things as “wrong”.
If you have wounding around making a mistake, getting something wrong, being with the wrong partner and what that would mean about you, what would happen if you were in the wrong relationship, then the thought of your partner doing something “wrong” is going to be really scary for your anxiety.
This begs the question: How do I tell the difference between anxiety-fueled nitpicking, and spotting a real problem in my partner or my relationship?
As long as you are seeing through the lens of fear, you’ll never actually be able to tell the difference.
The work is not about figuring out if there is a “real” problem or not. It’s about healing the wounds inside of you that are creating the lens of fear, and beginning to see the situation through the lens of love.
This allows you to see the whole picture, not just the problem.
Lens of love doesn’t make the challenges go away, but it allows you to approach these challenges with grace, understanding, compassion, and curiosity, instead of judgment, shame, criticism, and black/white thinking.
What you are rejecting in your partner is a reflection of what you are rejecting in yourself. The energy of rejection that you are cultivating in yourself is what fuels the nitpicking of your partner.
The antidote is learning to love the crap out of ourselves. This allows you to begin cultivating within yourself the acceptance that you so badly crave for your partner. This abundance of acceptance begins to flow over into your relationship.
This is exactly what we help our clients do at Healing Embodied! If you want to start leaning into self-love and acceptance, check out our Healing Embodied Shop. It is full of low-cost resources that will help you begin to cultivate the acceptance in yourself that you so deeply desire to bring to your relationship.