The life arc of your relationships.
From womb to tomb, Erich asks "are we chasing the relationship rainbow?"
What's the longest you've been in a relationship - she said.
Um.. there's my last which was three years, my first was only six months but it took me forever to get over it, so I guess it is my current relationship - we are together just coming up seven years.
Think about it again, I asked you what is the longest amount of time you've been in a relationship.
Oh, well I suppose you mean - who have I known the longest, like who is longest in my life.
Go on - she said.
Well obviously it's my family, my older brother because he was already there when I was born, and off course, my Dad and then my mum. She carried me, so if you mean who is the person I've had a relationship with first, it would be my mother.
Anyone else? - she said.
Who else could know me longer than my mother..?
You don't have to look very far - she encouraged.
...me?..I'm not sure what you mean? Do you mean Me? ..Can you be in a relationship with yourself?
Are you asking me or are you asking yourself - she said.
Mother
Father
Sister Brother
Uncle Aunt
Partner
Son
Son-in-law
Daughter
Daughter-in-law
Grandchild
Niece Nephew
Colleague
Wife Husband
Friend
Me
Oh, and Me
Relationships are critical and primary to emotional health and well-being.
Are we born into it?
The particularly rich traits of human relationships and relating to an 'other' exist from the earliest moments of conception; from cellular growth to full-term development and so on.
Being held by the birth mother, a baby - the individual that is you - embarks on the life-long journey of aggregate relationship development. Layer upon layer of relationship development.
Think about it. In the earliest moments of life an infant is unaware that it is a separate being to the birth mother (or caregiver). Yet studies show that infants can also sense the presence of an 'other' while in the womb.
This means that infant You was already developing a relationship with your birth mother, your father, and anyone else in the vicinity for that matter, before you were born. And if you were one of the lucky ones, this was a warm, nourishing, life sustaining, primary needs relationship.
So how is it that we, the genetically and environmentally disposed social beings that we are, so often find ourselves in adult life struggling to sustain, engage with and flourish in our given relationships?
Think about the expressions, opinions and laments that are featured below.
Why after generation upon generation of relationships, millennia of acquired knowledge, experience and emotional intelligence is it that we modern, educated, civilised people still search for ideals in our partners which just do not exist.
What is the most important goal or aspect of the human experience when we think about being in a relationship. Is it perfection? Is it happiness? What makes a ‘good’ relationship? Are we getting it all wrong?
“It is difficult to trust the integrity of a relationship when there are no models of people who understand that good relationships include pain, acceptance of another’s challenges and hard work, with the result being growth and joy. We don’t get an either-or on relationships. They take time and are a package deal. Any notion that we throw out the old one, and the new one will be better is, [except in the case of abuse or addiction], just selling snake oil”
The phrases quoted below are commonly used to sum up a person's sense and experience of their relationships. Frequently they are expressions based on assumptions, based on past experiences and/or they are based on what we believe are the rules and critical criteria that make a 'good relationship'. But, who says they are? Do you?
Do you identify with these common phrases? How well do you think they serve you?
How often do these kind of rules, social norms and assumptions get in the way of seeing the other person?
Inside Out
The Internal versus The External
Much of who you are is experienced through (and influenced by) your externally dependant connectedness to others....
“I live..I thrive from the relationships I experience with someone else; someone other than me. I depend on their presence, their words and responses, their expressions, their physicality, their engagement with me to know that I am connected. To know that I am alive...to know that I am not alone. Ultimately to know that I am not alone.”
…and when you think about it much of who you are is also experienced (and influenced) by your internal experience. The internal experience of negotiating with different parts of your self and your own dependant threads, experiences and communications. This is the internal connectedness to your self.
“I also experience my world through the internal relationship I have with my self - the internal dialogues which are my feelings, my thoughts, my physical self, and the spirit or the ‘me’ of my self. I guess where my emotional and my cognitive or thinking selves meet my physical and spirit or ‘me’ self. I suppose it is my own internal congruent crossroads. The meeting point of my physical, mental, emotional and me superhighways! ”
Who I am?
Let's take a step back for a moment. Let's look a little closer to home. Take a moment and think about who you are, in the eyes of others.
I am a man.
I am a psychotherapist.
I was a son, I am still a son. I am a partner, a brother, a friend. An Uncle and God-father.
I am a Dubliner, I am Irish. A graduate, a colleague. I am also an ex-partner, an old friend; I am possibly forgotten.
I am probably disliked. Wistfully I wonder if I am someone who is liked from afar.
I think. I feel.
I doubt and also I dream.
Did you notice how your thinking quickly changes from ‘who am I in the eyes of others’ to ‘who am I in the eyes of others and how does that make me feel’ I started by saying ‘I am a man’ and soon found myself internally connecting with something more emotionally contextual ‘I am possibly forgotten’.
This shows how quickly we place meaning on our relationships, how important our external roles and experiences are and how they influence our internalised roles and our internal felt experiences. It is hard to separate them out.
So, we have a whole smorgasbord of external and internal relationships all intertwined, dialogues and negotiating and happening at once.
There are relationships which connect me to the outside world of my environment, including the people in it and the context in which I experience it (i.e. my sister's child is also my godson. So I am me, an uncle and a godfather to this child).
I also experience an internal cross-communicating set of relationships - the cognitive / thinking me communicates with the emotional / feeling relationship I have with myself, as well as the physical / embodied me and the spiritual / finding meaning part of me.
All are talking to each other, communicating verbally, non-verbally, emotionally and cognitively and through my physicality and my presence.
Do I need to point out that that is a lot of relating and a lot of relationships!
I don’t feel myself.
It's no wonder that at times we lose track of who we are. We feel lost. I don’t feel myself. Sometimes we lose ourselves actively by moulding into each other's habits / looks / expressions.
Sometimes we get lost by being overwhelmed by a partner or parent or peer.
Have you ever met someone who said “My father was a doctor, my grandfather was a doctor so I became a doctor” as if they had no choice in it? As if divine intervention cast them all from the same mould?
Perhaps that person was lucky enough to grow into that identity role without much difficulty or question.
Equally we have met people saying “I felt I had no choice, it was forced upon me, I had to become a doctor because that's what we did, that is what was expected of me”.
And all too often that person struggles with their role and identity because their external relationship with their family, their peers or culture was in conflict with their internal self - and their internal self mirrored that conflict as it struggled between fitting into the status quo (becoming a doctor) and finding its own acceptable path.
It is not easy to ask yourself honestly 'Who am I' with so much interference from the world around you and the people in it.
Let's start here. Read the phrases below and Ask Yourself - do I identify with these phrases, how much import do I give them? Are they matching my beliefs, my values?
Which ones feel most familiar and where did they come from? Do they work for me? Do they hold me back? Are they good at effecting reality? Do the uphold the fantasy (and unobtainable) side of things?
Are they just a general guide I picked up along the way or am I guarded by them? Do they make me feel stuck or inspired, confident in myself or doubtful? Oppressed or open?
Ask Yourself.
How does your thinking influence your approach to & your experience of all aspects of your relationships?
Is it time for an update? Is this your relationship arc? Are you chasing the relationship rainbow?
“I don’t know who I am anymore.
Some day my Prince will come.
I will kiss as many frogs as it takes. I will find him.
She always has my back.
To be Loved! To be Loved!
If people knew how I talk to myself. If they could hear the venom, the hate. If I heard someone talk to anyone like that I’d punch their lights out. So why do I do it to myself?
In my time it was a compliment to hold the door open for a lady, hell I’ll even hold the door for anyone coming through. Nobody is polite anymore.
I’m a stranger in my own house.
When our letters crossed in the mail I knew he was the one.
It was one of those moments when you know, you just know that something is shared, something just happened. I could feel it. See it in his eyes too. We didn’t say anything but I knew.
Everybody hates me, no-one will be my friend.
I’ve never felt so complete.
It’s ok to be fashionably late
Are you thick, are you a retard? I told you already nobody wants you there.
When I am stressed I can’t cope with being the one everyone turns to, inside I am screaming ‘what about me for a change’
We don’t talk anymore.
It’s open and I’m fine with that, he can do what he likes just once I don’t know about it.
Children are to be seen, not heard
I’m just playing the field until the right one comes along
He doesn’t see me.
Did you fall and hurt yourself. Silly
Sex! What’s that? That part of our marriage retired years ago
I’m nothing without him.
My parents are sooo boring.
What do I expect from a relationship? Respect, commitment, good communication. Trust. I need to be able to trust her.
She’s my soul mate.
I suppose I spend a couple of hours a week online, talking to other women - no harm, right?
He needs to be kind, have a good sense of humour, good in bed and have a plan.
But mum, you don’t understand. I have to go.
She will be beautiful, funny, my best friend, the mother of my children.
Sometimes I think I hate her for ruining my life.
We’re so cute we finish each other’s sentences.
When my father died I was angry, he left us. He left me. I wasn’t ready. I had to figure it all out myself. I was a kid and I needed him. I couldn’t forgive him that for a long time.
He, was a cruel cruel man.
When two become one.
Paul was always sensitive, ever since he was a boy he’d get upset. That’s why I keep telling him ‘take what is given to you’ otherwise people will just walk all over him.
I never thought I could get married, it was off my radar. Now that we can, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean.
I lost my best friend the day our baby was born, we were never the same.
I know what she’s thinking.
You know I still dream about him, talk to him. Sometimes I feel his presence, like he is watching over me, with me. I don’t believe he’s really gone, like completely gone. How can he be, he lives on in me!
Love sucks.
We saved ourselves for marriage.
What does friendship mean to me? Right now, I have no idea.
We’ve never spent a night apart.
Of course I’d check his phone if I got the chance, isn’t that what we do?
I felt ostracised, ashamed. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to feel that way.
It’s called co-dependant. It’s a co-dependant relationship.
I’m the middle child, you know, the one they forgot.
We don’t complete each other. We don’t feel compelled to either. We are two individuals who love each other and walk the same path.
My father ruled with an iron fist.
We weren’t great with emotions, that gooey stuff, it just wasn’t what we did.
When two people commit to each other that’s it. You are either in or you are out.
I can’t get through to her.
I’m going to surprise them all. Speak up for a change. Give them my two cents worth for once. Then they’ll listen.
A divorcee, a hypochondriac, an alcoholic and parents who seem to hate each other and oh yeah, a partridge in a pear tree. Yup, my family.
I’ve dreamed about this day since I was a little girl.
When my father had an affair I lost my hero.
Yeah I feel alive, myself when I am on the field. I know what I am doing and it feels great.
He bugs the sh*t out of me when he does that.
I can’t do anything right for her.
We knew, in no uncertain terms, that we would all go to college and we would all succeed. My father made sure of that.
I have a habit of putting people on pedestals.
It never occurred to me that he would die, not now.
He’s a complete loner.
All it takes is her tone, that way she says it and I am right back to being a snivelling scared pushover.
I feel safe when he’s around. Like I can be myself.
Am I surprised I married my mother? - no, Did I see it coming - no, Am I sure about that? -no.
Shy as a child is cute, shy when you’re an adult is just rude.
We always do it this way.
I grew up trusting that things would work out. Not like a princess in a fairytale. More like I just knew I would be ok.
I manage people. Once I keep all the balls in the air, everything runs smoothly
Sometimes it’s just easier to say nothing.
That moment when Julie Roberts says ‘Big Mistake’ and Richard Gere swoops in to the rescue.
I feel lost in groups.
Nobody questioned Mother.
I remember reading Charlotte’s web and wondering who would be my bosom friend, who would die for me. It gave me some pretty high expectations of friendship.
My father was an absentee to our family, he spent more time with his pint then he did with us.
I’m a golf-widow.
I look in the mirror and I think ugh you are ugly. My stomach drops, my heart sinks and I hate myself. Do I think about what being not-ugly would look like? No. I accept my self loathing like it is just the way things are.
My wife is my best friend.
I gave him everything. I trusted him.
That look my mother gave would stop us in our tracks. We knew exactly what was coming next.
We’ve grown old together, was it easy? no, was it worth it? yes.
I expected it to be easy. Even after watching every episode of Sex & The City. I just thought that if I found him, the one, that that would be enough.
She means everything to me.
He taught me that people cheat. They say ‘I love you’ and they cheat.
I never expected to feel so safe. The running is over.
Love is the sweetest thing.
It’s ok to dream right? The fairytale, the happy ever-after. Or have I been deluding myself the last twenty years?
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
I fell in love with his god damn vanity. His designer clothes and the big gestures. I never asked myself.. I could’t admit to myself that I didn’t even like him.
I can’t do that.
How could I have been so blind?
Love is blind.
”