Is Your Business Partnership Working?

Partnerships are an interesting experiment. They can be a wondrous experience, joining two harmonious individuals who work together for the sake of a common goal. However, a partnership can simply be an opportunity for you to make conscious decisions that can change the flow of your life.
If a partnership isn't working for you, what you find yourself experiencing is usually anger, fear, upset, name-calling, or any number of other negative emotions. This is also known as resistance. Resistance is a natural phenomenon. So, it does serve a purpose. It is part of what provides you with choices.
Goal-focused Partner
When you entered the partnership, you may have expected that wondrous experience of two harmonious individuals working together toward a common goal. Instead, resistance entered the picture. You and your partner seemed to be at odds. Perhaps you are actually trying to focus on the goal while the other is more focused on their ego-driven needs. Not a healthy relationship, one that will surely lead to discord. Over time, as the more goal-focused partner, you become frustrated by the copious amounts of energy required to pick your way around the ego-driven landmines along the way and start to lose your focus on the original goal.
So, what do you do now? Do you keep giving in to the thrusts and jabs, making yourself even more miserable or do you walk away? A difficult question to answer sometimes. And, you can't really answer it until you allow yourself time to get past the negative emotions that have been stirred up. Negative emotions require attention or they languish. Give yourself time to let them fade away. Then make your decision about staying or leaving the partnership based on what is best for you.
If this partnership is a repeat of other relationships in your past, relationships that have not been satisfying, then why should you consciously choose to remain in this one? You do not change your state of being by beating the resistance into a bloody pulp. You change by recognizing what is before you and making a conscious decision to not participate in such a relationship. However, your decision has to be made after you are in a state of non-resistance, a place where the negative emotions have faded away.
The resistance, the actions of your ego-driven partner, have taken you to a place of decision. Now it is up to you to apply the conciliatory force of conscious thought, free of negativity, or to apply the conciliatory force of tit-for-tat, effectively increasing the power of the resistance, to the partnership situation. Choices. They are yours to make.
Ego-driven Partner
On the other hand, if you are the ego-driven partner, you may be finding this partnership a tasty fare indeed. The battle for supremacy is a negative enterprise. Consequently, increased resistance only heightens the excitement for you. If your partner's choice is to apply tit-for-tat, you will probably consider yourself a winner. Mostly because the partnership is not about the business goal for you. It is about your ego needs.
However, life does not offer its lessons to one and not the other. You, too, have the opportunity to make choices here that can change your state of being. Because of the appeal of the negativity in the partnership, you probably won't notice this opportunity until and unless your partner chooses to walk away. Then, deprived of sustenance, you are given the opportunity for a conscious shock, a moment in time to see yourself clearly. You can make the choice to continue allowing your need for control and worldly validation to dominate your actions or you can choose another path. Choices. They are yours to make.
Are Partnerships Always A Crapshoot?
Partnerships can be wondrous experiences. It's just that life offers us opportunities to learn, to grow, and these opportunities usually involve interactions with other people. Partnerships happen to fall into that category. Not all partnerships have such potent lessons attached to them. Some simply provide smaller lessons along the way.
Whatever your experience is or has been, remember these things first: 1) There is value to be found in every negative experience 2) You must give your negative emotions time to fade away before you make a decision 3) Allow yourself to be in the moment, fully conscious.
Then apply the conciliatory force of conscious thought, free of negativity, to the situation and do what feels right for you.