Dear Derek:

In your original post you wrote that you over-studied. You wrote: “I valued myself solely on my educational successes and anything less than an A was never good enough for me.” Your partner doesn’t have much education.

Taking into account the title of your thread, “Judgmental Thoughts” and the content of your posts, clearly you judge him as lacking personal value because he lacks formal education. You have this core belief formed in your early childhood that a person’s value is in a person’s education. No education- no value.

You argue with this core belief:  but he saved his family’s business, selflessly, “such a caring side to him, a loyal side and a side that shows a strong character”!. But the core belief argues back: “we won’t be ‘intellectually compatible’.. he doesn’t spell great, or have ambition to return to education”! The other part of you argues back: “We are so much more that what a title or university course says about us!” and the argument keeps playing out.

You wrote: “I really feel like I am becoming my mother and treating him with irrationality about education just like she did me”- you have a point. A core belief is formed in a child, formed by a parent. A child believes anything that the parent will communicate to a child. Your mother communicated to you that a person’s value is in his education and that belief stuck. naturally. If she communicated to you that a person’s value is in his loving nature, that would have stuck.

What you shared about your partner reads wonderful, that he supports you fully, told you (and otherwise communicated to you) that he loves you no matter what you achieve, that he doesn’t care how much you earn, that it is okay to make mistakes, to not be perfect. The two of you  communicate so well about anything and everything. You have a very valuable partner, an exceptionally valuable partner, if your sharing is true to reality.

But your mother taught you that he is not valuable because he doesn’t have education. And you believed her because you were a child and she was your mother.

You wrote: “But then I have days that I feel so clear about it all and look at him with such love”- these are days when you are temporarily free from that limiting and false core belief.

This core belief is raining on your parade, so to speak and it is raining on his as well. You have been communicating to him, intentionally or not, that he is not valuable because of his lack of education. This is hurting him. It is not fair to him.

It is possible to examine core beliefs in quality psychotherapy, to determine if one is objectively true, true in this context but not in the other context, and change, adjust or dismiss a particular core belief. It may be worthwhile for you to attend such therapy (CBT, I believe would be the therapy).

anita