Your true colours are beautiful – deepen your relationship via pop songs

Here’s a fun exercise to make your relationship deeper. Listen with your partner to Your True Colours are Beautiful by Cindy Lauper, then talk about your true colours; I’ve suggested some topics. That’s it, listen and share, and your relating will move a step towards deeper intimacy.
I got the idea from some great research by Dr. Ron Rogge that newly-wed couples can halve their divorce rate simply by watching and discussing five movies about everyday relating. I don’t claim any such dramatic results for this playlist of pop songs. But listen together to these tracks, discuss them together, and you will at the least have a more loving understanding of each other.

Your true colours are beautiful by Cyndi Lauper

Youtube Cyndi Lauper – True Colours

This is a truth that’s sometimes very hard to believe.

And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colours
Shining through
I see your true colours
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colours
True colours are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

If you want your relationship to change; if you want your own life to change; two essential foundations are these. You need to trust and experience that your own true colours are beautiful. And you must, you absolutely must, come to see and respond to your partner’s beautiful true colours. That’s not to ignore hurt and negativity, but if you mainly focus on hurt and negativity, the relationship will shrivel.

We all of us have a feeling of a darkness inside us. And it sure does make us feel so small. Mostly we cope by avoiding it – having a secure niche or keeping restlessly busy or living a mask. But if we are rejected or criticised or lose our jobs, there it is, the feeling that “I’m not good enough” or “I always get it wrong” or “No-one ever sees me.” (To cope, some people bury the dark place so far inside they can convince themselves it doesn’t exist. But it’s not just you, everyone has it.)

The remedy is this. You need to start to trust that yes, the feeling of being weak or no good is a genuinely perceived feeling. But it’s not the real truth of who you are. It’s less like a tear in a jacket, more like a stain that can wash out completely and reveal colours that are indeed beautiful.

And this song is true universally. Your true colours are beautiful. Maybe, in whole or in part buried under hurt and fear and protection. But for sure still there somewhere inside, still intact and for sure beautiful.

Yet, that is often hard for us to believe. People find a loving relationship, they’ve got the love right there in their hands. But they do not let the love in. They are loved, but the old habit of feeling not lovable dies hard.

Sit quietly where you can take the music in. Imagine that Cyndi Lauper or John Legend are singing this song to you. Here are some things you might like to talk about. Take turns in some manner that you have equal time. Speak and listen without interruption. Answer whichever questions you like, they’re just suggestions.

Tell your partner some specific memory (it’s good to be very specific) when your true colours were present in your life. It can be small, it can be at any age. And another memory, and another. you can’t have too many!
Tell your partner some memory when you took a risk, large or small, any age, based on believing in your true colours. How was that? What did you learn?
How is it, talking about your true colours? Scary? Easy? Have you done it before, or is it new?
Then a memory of when you’ve held back, for fear your true colours are not beautiful.
What have you learned in this relationship, that makes you trust more that your true colours are beautiful?
If you totally believed that your true colours are beautiful, what would you do not not do in your life today? What would you do or not do in the relationship?
Tell your friend some very specific moments when his or her true colours shine out in the relationship, big or small, today or in the past.
What matters to you most about this song? What is the deepest way it touches you?
… and just keep going, you can’t do this too much!
What is the true colour in yourself you are nurturing, that’s not ready to be seen yet? Could your partner help you to nurture that?
Is there a true colour that you see your partner not trusting as much as you feel he or she could?
What in your childhood did you need to protect, that is a specially vulnerable treasure?
What in this relationship, do you specially protect, but you would love for it to have more space, if that was safe?