WHY RELATIONSHIPS DON’T WORK
Posted on January 18, 2023 by Valentina N, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
We often start a relationship based on emotions and miss red flags. When feelings cool down we realize we don't have much in common with this person.
I would say this is because of a lack of a due diligence while choosing a partner. We have a pressure from the society to get a partner, get married, get kids. If we don’t have anyone for a period of time, we are afraid of many things – of being alone forever, of how we look in the eyes of the others as single people, looking unpopular among the opposite sex, feeling bored, not having someone completing us wherever we are incomplete, not having someone taking responsibility for our lives, how to finance our living, along with many other reasons. We are basically looking for someone to putty those holes in us. So, we are very anxious to get paired as quickly as possible without understanding whether this person is the right match for us.
What is the most common way of choosing a partner? When we go on a date, first thing we value in a potential partner is whether we can feel the chemistry or not – it is pretty much physical and emotional – not rational and often can be called love, even though it has nothing to do with the actual love but a sexual attraction. Attraction is very important in a relationship but not the only important thing overall. Once we get those butterflies in our stomach and high on hormones, we go blind and tend not to notice all the red flags, completely different values, interests, and goals in life thinking we will figure them out over the time, probably by changing and adjusting this person to our liking without realizing that this person is intending to do this same thing with us. Or we are letting them change us and eventually loosing ourselves in a relationship, forgetting what we like and want ourselves, which later leads to a destruction.
Once the emotions cool down, we start noticing that our partner’s world is far away from ours and we have nothing in common. And once we realize that this person has nothing to do with the picture we have created in our head about them and fell in love with, we break up. The result is – we waisted a lot of time of our precious life with the wrong person, we must deal with the emotional luggage gained from the failed relationship, we now share a custody of our kids, we lost half of our fortune, we need to start over. Back to square one – searching for attraction, jumping into a relationship, facing the same problems, breaking up, thinking all the men/women are the same bad people. Why do we keep on stepping on the same rake repeatedly and expecting a different result?
To understand the nature of an attraction we go back to our childhood. Whatever feelings we were experiencing during the first 5 years of our lives – whether they are negative or not – is what we will be searching throughout our lives and confuse it with love. If our parents were emotionally unavailable, abusive, toxic, manipulative, neglecting us, we will be searching this in our partners. That is what will be creating an attraction to people we meet – either friends or potential partners. We will be liking men/women who will be emotionally unavailable, abusive, toxic, manipulative, neglecting us. Even though in our brain we understand those are the bad things we don’t want in our lives, our programs will dictate otherwise. Every time we feel incredibly drawn to someone, maybe we can pause for a moment and try to analyze where this emotion is coming from, whether this is the cause of some old childhood trauma or some unhealthy attachment style and try to see the true value of this person objectively.
Another way to start a relationship is when we are rational, by starting a friendship. This is how we see a person with sober eyes which will give us time to learn their values, mental health, goals in life, character, habits, hobbies, interests and grow the feelings gradually. But before doing this, it is important to fix all the negatives programs and become a healthy person to attract a healthy person into our lives and be attracted to a normal person. For example, if we are at work, we are not starting dating someone the first day we meet them in the office, we get a chance to observe them in the live environment, understand them, get a feeling of their nature, and only later we dare to go out with them.
This is a harder way as it requires a lot of work on ourselves, and also a lot of patience, and at the same time this may reward us with a chance to a happy lasting relationship.
It does often happen though, that despite doing it the right way people still grow apart, and this is very normal. We still should be grateful for the time during which we share our lives together and continue our journey.
Whatever way we choose, it might be useful to remind ourselves what we really want. Whenever we experience the behavior we don’t like or we don’t understand, it is always worth asking a question – is this how I want my man/woman to treat me?
