“To surrender to the process found in a primary relationship, you do not give up individual choice and freedom. You are not surrendering to your partner or to another person. It means to surrender to the process of relationship that develops when two people commit to one another.
This process of relationship becomes the third party. Incidentally, this surrender is not necessarily a commitment to either monogamy or non-monogamy. Neither is it a guarantee that the relationship will remain forever intact. It is simply the recognition that the process of the relationship is a third and separate entity that has a life of its own.
If you surrender to the process of primary relationship then you must learn to listen to your partner. This does not mean that you must obey or agree with your partner,
just that you must truly listen and feel your partner’s reality. If you cannot listen or you do not hear what your partner is trying to say, then you must find out why this is so.
Why can’t you hear what your partner is trying to tell you? What stops this from happening?
You must continually give energy to the process of relationship and do whatever is necessary to move through the roadblocks that inevitably develop between partners.”
Partnering – A New Kind Of Relationship (How to Love Each Other Without Losing Yourselves), Hal Stone,Ph.D. & Sidra L. Stone, Ph.D.
