Ep. 129 From Criticism to Connection: How to Embrace Your Partner Imperfections & Quirks This Valentine’s Day

What if the most meaningful Valentine’s gift you could give your partner also turned out to be the best gift you could give yourself?

Whether you're feeling disconnected from your partner or caught up in midlife expectations, this episode provides a practical path to creating deeper love and connection.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

1. How to embrace your partner's quirks and imperfections to cultivate a stronger bond.

2. Easy mindfulness techniques to neutralize judgment and foster emotional courage.

3. How one mindset shift  can transform your focus from "what's missing" to gratitude for "what is."

Tune in now to explore this no cost way to deepen your connection and love with your partner and yourself this Valentine’s Day. 

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In this episode, you'll discover why making peace with your partner's imperfections and quirks is the key to creating deep love this Valentine's Day. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Thursday and we're heading into Valentine's Day. I'm excited to follow up on Monday's episode where we explored the ultimate Valentine's gift for your partner. Radical Acceptance. For those tuning in today, I introduce the idea of embracing your partner for who they truly are, without judgment or need to change them. Hang on, it's worth listening to this whole episode because this is possible. By the end of today's episode, I'll share three coping skills to make practicing radical acceptance easier so you can deepen connection, love, and fun in your relationships. And yes, I'll share with you what you're getting this Valentine's Day. How do I know? Keep listening. How'd you do with this week's inner challenge? Maybe you found yourself offering a bit more grace when your partner picked your child up late from practice, perhaps you noticed how tired they looked, and instead of working on the budget, you suggested, Hey, let's watch a TV show and go to bed early if you did this, congratulations. It's not as easy as it sounds, but maybe you noticed something else. You might be more radical than accepting. As you observed your mind, you realized that your tendency to be critical runs deeper than you thought, leaving you feeling irritable when things don't go as planned. Trust me, if that is what you observed, it is still a win in my book. Learning to embrace who your partner is in midlife is an untapped, To be clear, I'm not talking about accepting addiction, abuse, or infidelity. I'm talking about embracing your partner as a separate person with unique, sometimes quirky, interests, habits, and shortcomings that you might not like, but can choose to accept as part of their reality. You know, accepting that thing your partner does that irritates you. and committing to seeing it differently. Perhaps why they do it or how it might serve your relationship can be so helpful. To do this is radical. It's often said opposites attract and one of my favorite stories from the couch is about a husband who wanted his introverted wife to talk more at social gatherings. He believed her quiet approach meant she wasn't enjoying herself. I encouraged him to trust her process and try something new. Let her be her own social chairwoman. At the next party, he mingled in his usually lively groups and occasionally checked in with her. On the way home, she said, That was a great party. I had some wonderful conversations. When he shared what he had done differently, she laughed and she said, Feel free to never drag me into a group conversation again. That small shift, accepting her social style led to a deeper understanding and respect for each other. No matter where you landed on the continuum of acceptance this week, you used mindfulness. Mindfulness can sound intimidating, but it's really just noticing what's happening in your mind without judgment. It's the without judgment part that can be the challenge. As you get better at radical acceptance, you can use your superpower of curiosity to help neutralize your thoughts. So your thoughts can move from, isn't that terrible that he's doing that? What was she thinking to, oh, isn't that interesting? I wonder what they are actually thinking. Think about one thing your partner does that irritates you. Challenge yourself to see it differently. Focus on why they're doing it or how it might be serving your relationship in ways that you really hadn't noticed. Perhaps your mindfulness brought you face to face with a major obstacle to radical acceptance. Discomfort with emotional vulnerability. Emotional vulnerability is the willingness to openly express and experience your true feelings. This can feel risky. It doesn't mean that everything you feel, you have to tell everyone else. Often that is not a good practice. But What it does mean is that you allow your own self to feel what you're feeling. And this will often require you to let go of your defenses such as judgment or control, which often masks deeper fears and experiences of disappointment, rejection, and hurt. When you were young, you were surrounded by the cultural ideas of love, which often paint a picture of soulmates with perfect careers and thriving children. By midlife, however, you've probably adjusted that image, understanding that life's complexity brings both joy and sadness. Disappointment and a lot of compromise. Not knowing how to process these hurts can make it hard to embrace your partner as they are now. Leaving a part of you always pining for how you envisioned them to be years ago, Once in a session, a client shared her disappointment with me that her husband's career hadn't reached the heights that she had imagined. In the session, she allowed herself to grieve what wasn't. Feeling the sadness And to be honest, a little anger that he had not been more successful. Radical acceptance required her to be brave and to name and tame her thoughts and feelings. It meant she had to lean into the discomfort with gentle honesty, allowing her to see a more honest and fuller and accurate picture of, this situation. This is emotional courage. Trust me, you don't need a reality show to live boldly. Living mindfully, rooted in compassion and connection, is what truly enriches midlife relationships. As my client sat in my office, allowing herself to feel the disappointment, I could see her shift her perspective, opening her heart to the gratitude for what they had. A husband who was home most nights and deeply engaged in the family. She also surprised herself and said to me, Wow, I now have more space to feel how hard this has been for him to let go of the career he imagined. It's important to clarify that radical acceptance This isn't about giving up. It's actually about updating your relationship and cultivating gratitude. It means letting go of unattainable ideas and focusing on the strengths, joys, and possibilities in the relationship you have. By embracing what is, you make space for a deeper appreciation of your partner's efforts, quirks, and contributions to your shared life. Gratitude shifts the focus from what's missing to what's meaningful. You might be thinking. MJ, this sounds too hard,, but I bet if you're a parent, or a pet owner, you practice this daily, without even realizing it. Like most of us, you're probably your best self, not perfect, pretty good when it comes to your kids and your pets. Take a moment to reflect. What allows you to practice radical acceptance so naturally with them, yet struggle to do the same with your partner? Interesting, isn't it? Of course, kids and pets are cute, and we don't go into parenting or pet ownership expecting them to pick up their clothes or join us at the gym. But when you view radical acceptance through this lens, you might realize you already have the skill, you're just not applying it to your partner. And that brings me to the gift you'll receive this Valentine's Day. I promise that if you play with this idea of radical acceptance, and I mean play, have fun with it, notice how often you are irritated about something that you could choose to not be irritated about. YOu're observing yourself and trying to shift to a more accepting, a more happy place. If you do this, you'll discover an added bonus. You'll be able to start offering the same radical acceptance to yourself. Happy Valentine's Day. Imagine giving yourself the gift of radical acceptance this year. Turn inward and embrace who you are in this moment. Not because you've stopped striving to grow, but because you're choosing to stop criticizing yourself for not being more than you can realistically be and do. Life is hard, but it's worth it. And we grow. Why not lean into gentle growth that aligns with who you are, especially given all the demands that you're juggling. That's the ultimate Valentine's Day gift. In this episode, we explored how radical acceptance is a transformative gift for your relationship. Reflected on the role of mindfulness, into the challenge of emotional vulnerability, and I shared a few examples to inspire you to let go of judgment, creating space for deeper love and connection. Most importantly, we learned that radical acceptance is not about settling. It's about embracing gratitude and cultivating compassion. This Valentine's Day, go ahead, buy the chocolates, go to dinner, and offer radical acceptance to yourself and your partner. The gift of being seen by others Understood and accepted as you are. Now that's a radical kind of love. Thanks for listening and I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.