Relationships today are a process. A relationship today can be one of the most painful things if it isn’t working. When it isn’t working, it can be absolutely traumatising, so one of the things we need to learn is how do we discover an ideal relationship that works for us?
There are many things that happen to make a relationship exist; to make a relationship function and to make it work as a whole unit is really important.
For example, it’s a process dealing with your own upsets, let alone someone else’s upsets; however, in a relationship, you’ve got two people fighting with their upsets, trying to work out what actually happened.
When people meet in a relationship, generally for the first 18 months to 2 years, they actually don’t know if they are ideal partners; they kind of guess it. In those first 18 months to 2 years, they are in a lusty, kind of fantasy love, where neither of them can do wrong and they are just fully excited, and they are so primally driven by the urge to procreate and be an item that it takes over everything else. Their body releases all this dopamine; they’re in La-La Land, hence the term “Lover Land.” When they’re in Lover Land, there is no clarity, there is no direction, they just fall into the relationship, and then children come along and there is family and responsibility, and they’re caught in a relationship dynamic, and sometimes people are not aware that in a relationship, it takes many years to realize that there are unconscious patterns that actually attracted us to the specific person in the beginning.
We don’t just go, “Omg, they look really nice; I’d like to have a relationship with that person.”. It is actually patterns that come from our childhood, from our Mum, our Dad, and a whole range of conditioning we are brought up with as a child, that will actually drive the decisions we make in a relationship. Our training ground starts when we come into the world, and by the time we reach the magical age of 16–18, our conditioning is set to determine who we will bring into our lives.
History determines future when you are unaware!
I’ve seen many relationships when they get together and they’re caught in a dynamic where they think all of the issues are the other person’s fault and they can’t see themselves or their own behaviours. The hardest thing is to see your part of what you do in a relationship. It’s really important to have an awareness of that, and once we stop treating our loved ones as our Mum or Dad, past partners, or anyone else we have been challenged by, then the relationship has a chance.
Many years ago, if you look at our parent’s time, when someone wasn’t married or in a relationship, people would think there was something wrong with them.
That’s not the case today. Today people are choosing emotional fulfillment; they want to feel great with their partner; they want to feel compatible; they want to feel really happy with them; they want to enjoy all the moments with them, and that’s really important, but sometimes that can disappear in a relationship.
Next thing you know, the relationship is caught up, and they stay together because “This is as good as it gets,” “We’ll do this for the children,” “The world expects us to stay together,” and “I’ll stick this one out.”. There’s a whole heap of reasons why people stay in a dysfunctional or unfulfilling relationship.
On the other hand, many people will leave a relationship because it’s too painful, but they actually haven’t learnt the lessons, and so they go and set up the dynamic again in a new relationship. They have left the relationship because it’s been hostile, because it’s been aggressive, or it’s been painful or argumentative, or they’re just so flat, there’s nothing there, no passion. There are many reasons why people leave a relationship, but they actually haven’t harvested the learnings; they haven’t asked themselves, “What is this all about?” “Who was I in the relationship?” “What have I learnt?”
Real Relationships addresses the behavior dynamics that cause most of the pain in a relationship, and it also reveals the actual underlying belief system of what you think a relationship should be, of what you think your partner should be, and how you think your partner is meant to be, and it gives you a perception of what you think that relationship is meant to look like and how a lot of the time you are just hoping that that person will change to fit your ideal situation.
There are many forms of why people attract what they attract; you’ve heard of Opposites Attract? What that means is that someone who is disowned in their way of being and someone who is really distorted in their way of being will be attracted to each other. The disowned person finds someone who is really exciting to act out the parts of themselves they are unable to, and the distorted person will find someone who is really quiet and reserved and act that out because they need settling down and they can’t do it themselves.
Another form of attraction is what we call an Imago match. An Imago match is the imagery that you’ve been imprinted with as a young child. Basically, a little child takes a mental picture, imprints it straight into their mind, and says, “This is what my partner looks like.” You know how the little ducklings, when they crack out of the egg, the first thing they see represents the mother; they will imprint on that; they hear her sound, and they follow her around, and sometimes it may not be its own kind. If a dog gets in the way, the dog becomes the mother; this is imprinting; this is the Imago match, and most people operate from an unconscious Imago match.
A third form of attraction is someone who has been conditioned, women who have heard their mother say things like, “Stay away from the bad boys; find someone good; find someone who can look after you; find someone who can provide for you” or “Don’t get a playboy because he won’t stay loyal to you; he will move on.” Men who have heard, “You don’t want to have a woman that’s been around with all the guys; you want someone who is very pure and sacred; you don’t want someone that everyone’s had a go at; that wouldn’t make a great wife.” And so we are conditioned to believe this and seek out someone who is not those things.
Then there is the form of attraction, where if you have had a severe trauma as a child, the trauma will set you up to attract a certain type of person into your world.
Another dynamic is called Separation Syndrome, where people who have been in a relationship and separated and haven’t really cleaned it up get into another relationship, which turns into a mess, and then they get into another, and so on. They have a series of relationships that are very complicated, and they will definitely deteriorate the integrity of any new relationship because they have been traumatised several times. So when they meet their third or fourth partner, they’re already holding out; they’re already reserved; they have a history of bad relationships, and they generally project that into the current relationship, and the separation rate is quite phenomenal.
A really important part of relationships is polarity. Are you really, really primally attracted to your partner? If we are not sexually, primally attracted to our partner, then the relationship won’t have life; it will be short-lived; it will turn into a brother/sister relationship, and it will have no magic to it.
So with relationships, there is a lot to talk about and a lot to learn and unlearn. A great way to learn more about this topic and your own behaviours in a relationship is to attend our Real Relationships seminar. There you will examine your self-relationship as well as your dynamic with your partner. You will learn to break free of the dysfunctional things you unwittingly bring to your relationships, so you can enjoy a far more rewarding relationship that you are happy with long term.
