How do I want to feel in a relationship?

A coach asked me once what my relationship values were. I said trust, honesty, respect, loyalty. He said, with respect, those just sound like baselines. Basic benchmarks. If you don't have those you don't even have a relationship. What's really, truly, uniquely important to you?

And I went blank.

He pushed again, said he could see I knew my values in business, so what were they here. And I went straight back to the old list. Blonde hair, cute, a good body. He said, these are not values.

So I went out to a cafe to answer it properly, sat down with a coffee, and had nothing. I told myself I'm not moving from here until I get the answer, and after a while I tried coaching myself instead, and a different question came out.

Rather than what is it that I value, how is it that I want to feel? How do I want to feel in a relationship?

Daniel Lawson

Three or four hours and a couple more coffees later I had twelve criteria on paper. I looked at them and laughed, because they seemed impossible. I was already picky and my standards were already high, and now this. What I didn't see at the time is that my standards weren't high. I just had huge barriers to letting anyone in. I found that same list in an old diary years afterwards and it was all still true.

Why the list of traits never answers it

A list describes a person you haven't met yet. Attractiveness, interests, body shape, qualities, attitudes, then you rank each one out of ten. Nothing in there says what a regular Tuesday with that person feels like, and the Tuesday is the thing you're going for.

This session is about moving from relationships as a checklist, tick, tick, tick, okay, this is my criteria, into more of a felt experience.

Daniel Lawson

Then there's the baseline test. Trust, honesty and respect are not values, they're the floor. If any of them is missing you don't have a relationship at all, so putting them on the list tells you nothing about the one you want. What are the values beneath those. That's where a lot of us get stuck.

How do you answer it

You answer it from moments, rather than from adjectives.

Go back to a moment where you felt what you really needed to feel. It doesn't have to come from a relationship. It could be with a friend, it could be one evening you still remember for no obvious reason. Feeling alive. Seen. Heard. Really present with somebody. If nothing comes, run it the other way round: start from the feeling you want and go and find a moment that had it in it.

Two things tend to go wrong here.

The first is that many of us are professionals at the other list. We're dialled in on what we don't want and it comes out fast. Disrespected. Strung along. Like an option. Every time I ask, okay, that's what you don't want, what do you want instead, it trips a lot of people up. A group member watched themselves doing that, caught it after a minute or two, and said, I want to feel me. Funny, silly, caring, supported.

The second is that it's not always the opposite. I really didn't like feeling judged by somebody, and I didn't need to feel accepted either. The absence of judgment doesn't mean acceptance, and inverting the bad feeling gives you a word that sounds right and isn't yours.

Then do it for the hard times too. Relationships aren't always lollipops and rainbows and unicorns, there are going to be times of challenge, and how is it you want to feel then. That half gets skipped nearly every time and it's the one that carries you.

Then get specific, because feelings don't happen in a vacuum

A feeling on its own is still an adjective, and an adjective doesn't tell anybody what to do. Feelings are activated by specific behaviours, moments and conditions, so the next sentence to finish is: I feel this when. We know how to feel everything we want to feel in life. Many of us just haven't consciously thought about it yet.

A group member did this and turned every feeling on their list into something small and observable. To feel supported, what they needed was to be asked whether they wanted a hand with something, or would rather be left to it. Not the hand. The asking. They said the question does it even when the answer is no.

Whose job is it to make you feel that way

Mine, and I got this wrong for over a year while thinking I had great awareness.

I need a woman that's going to command my attention. That's what I'm looking for in a relationship. Not demand it, but command it. And I thought that was really great.

Daniel Lawson

It took me ages to figure out what was wrong with it. Somebody eventually pointed out that I was outsourcing my responsibility. I was waiting for someone to show up and do that to me, then wondering why it wasn't happening. It was a real kick up the ass.

So criteria are still allowed. It's okay to have criteria. They just describe what you're going to create and ask for, rather than what somebody else owes you on arrival. Some of it you can't do by yourself, and that's fine too. The other person doesn't take care of the feeling for you, they lean into the experience and create it with you.

When the answer becomes another thing to execute

There's a version of this that goes wrong for the people who are already good at getting things done. You write the feelings, you write the conditions, and then you go and deliver all of it yourself, on your own terms, to your own standard. One participant said it about themselves in a session and everyone recognised it: I want to control what I receive on all the levels, not only what I'm receiving but how I'm going to receive it. And then when they chill out, things come in.

That's the trap. The reason to get specific about the feeling and the behaviour is so that it can come from somebody else.

How can I receive something I can't give myself yet? And until we know how to receive it, how can we give others the gift of giving it to us?

Daniel Lawson

Describing it is how you let somebody contribute. A partner who has no idea what makes you feel supported is guessing, and mostly guessing wrong, and you're grading them on a paper they never saw.

What to do with it this week

There's an order to this and many of us start at the wrong end. Environment first, which is the outcome and how you want to feel. Then structure, what has to be in place for that to happen. Actions are step three. Start at actions and you're doing things without knowing why you'd bother.

A group member came to a conversation about the next chapter with the whole thing in bullet points, and it was tense before they'd sat down. They could say what they wanted to do. They had no answer ready for how they wanted it to feel.

Then three commitments, which is what the workbook closes on:

1. One way you'll create more of what you want to feel.
2. One pattern you'll stop tolerating.
3. One conversation you need to have, with yourself or with somebody else.

Common questions

Isn't this just a nicer version of the checklist?

The checklist ranks people against qualities you can see from the outside. This describes an experience you want to be inside, and then the behaviours that create it. One sorts candidates, the other tells you what to build and what to ask for.

What if no moment comes when I try to remember one?

Run it backwards. Pick the feeling you want and go looking for anywhere you've had it, with friends, family, or on your own. And it doesn't need to have come from a good relationship. A dysfunctional one will often have a single moment in it where something was right, and that still counts.

How long should this take?

Longer than you'd expect. Mine ran three or four hours in one sitting and kept developing for years afterwards. If you finish it in ten minutes you've written the baselines again.

I'm not looking for a relationship right now. Is this still worth doing?

Yes, arguably better done then. This is personal development rather than a search technique. It's about who you become so you can create what you want, instead of going looking for somebody already doing it for you.

Do I tell my partner what's on the list?

Some of it, eventually, in whatever words you'd use in that moment. Not as a document handed over for review. One thing at a time: this is what I'd love more of, and this is what it looks like. Then notice what happens.

If this is you

What you can't do on your own is the check. My own criterion sounded self-aware, and I ran it for over a year before somebody in the conversation looked at it and told me I'd written a job description for a woman who hadn't arrived. I wasn't going to catch that by myself, because from the inside it read as clarity.

That's what a few other people do that a notebook can't. They hear the criterion, they hear the job description underneath it, and they say so while you're still holding the pen.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.