Why Relationships Make Us Grow

All of us who fall in love want that love to stay as beautiful as it was in the beginning. This is only natural. When we finally meet our special someone and we feel the amazing connectedness we just want it to last and last and last.

Unfortunately, there is a name for this wonderful time. It’s called the “Honeymoon” period. It’s the time when everything is perfect. You get your person, they get you, there is never a hassle or disagreement, everything is wonderful.

But this time doesn’t last forever. In fact, it probably lasts somewhere between a year or two, depending on the people. This time is designed to meet our special person and that’s about it.

As humans all of us have every emotion and feeling known to man and woman. At sometime or another we might all feel that we didn’t deserve something, or that we might feel embarrassed about something else.

This is natural. We interact with others and sometimes those interactions just don’t go the way we wish. But what if you carry around some feelings like you aren’t loveable because of who you are?

When we are in a relationship with another person, we often have a hard time being ourselves. We have our own habits and likes and dislikes that are uniquely ours and not our mates. But often when we strive for what we want we create conflict with our partners.

We will never be the same as our mate. And there are plenty of reasons why. We usually think very differently than they do. If we don’t know this is very common, we might even think that there is no way that we can ever understand each other because we are so different.

Some of us didn’t get a chance to figure out what our feelings meant when we were little. If our caregivers couldn’t read their feelings it is likely they couldn’t teach us ours.

If we didn’t learn what was going on inside of us we might have a couple of different behavioral responses. In my case if I was upset I would blame the one who upset me. Since I didn’t learn otherwise, I just used this habit well into my forties.

You can see as I write this that blaming someone for my difficulty is not effective. In fact it usually makes the person you blame react with some kind of defense or their own anger…

When we get mad at our mates, we fall into one of three different categories. We might yell or get mad and stomp around; we might stuff our feelings and not say anything; or we might simply leave.

Each of these methods express our disappointment with what happened. It’s likely that we learned these habits when we were young, and now that we are mixing it up with our partners, we use them often.

Wondering how to stop blaming others for your feelings? Blame can undermine relationships and impede the love and empathy you crave when feeling hurt. Are you ready to learn where blame comes from, how to end it, and how much richer your relationship might be if you do?

Many of us in this world are fixers. When someone has a problem, we just imagine all the ways the problem can be solved. This is really the way some of us are wired. Nothing wrong with this. The world needs fixers.

But when we are in a relationship and we see what our partner could do better and we use our fixing skills to help them, well it might not go so well.

It’s not unusual to describe what happened after an argument occurs. Many of us do this. We think about who said what and how we responded and we explain that what was said was not helpful and we talk about what might have been better and we do this with complete confidence that we see things the way they are.

I have worked with couples where one person is excellent at detailing what went wrong and how those things could be avoided. I listen to the explanations that are extremely detailed and I think to myself, “But how does this help?”

All couples on the planet sometimes misunderstand each other. This is normal. After all we are in our heads and our partners are in theirs. They think their thoughts and we think ours. And sometimes we don’t read each other right and then you have a misunderstanding.

This is common among couples. Ask any couple you know and they will tell you that sometimes there are challenges understanding each other. In fact, try looking into your own life and see if you can tell me that’s not the case. I can look into my relationship and know in my bones that sometimes we just don’t read the other right or they don’t read us right.

One of the first lessons we learn as humans is about protecting our hearts. We probably learn this when we are very little people. Something hurt us and we close up and we can’t come out until the pain stops.

If this sounds like something you do as an adult, then you are doing what every human on the planet does. Everyone who gets hurt has some sort of mechanism to shield the vulnerable parts from more pain. This is just the way humans are designed.

And even though you learned this skill as a child you are probably still using the same techniques now as an adult. You may have some different words and you may even get mad at your mate when you get your feelings hurt, but all these behaviors do one thing. They close down your heart.

I'm retired.

Communication Articles

Why Relationships Make Us Grow

What to Do When You’re Feeling Unlovable

How to Build a Bridge with Your Mate

Can We Believe We Are Good?

How Our Healing Starts with Us

How to Stop Blaming Others for Your Feelings in Relationships

When We Feel We Have to Fix Our Mate

When We Analyze Instead of Connecting

It’s Not How You Fight; It’s How You Come Back to Each Other

Do You Keep Your Heart Open?