Читать книгу Getting It Right: A Guide to Healthy Relationships - Dr. Robert Puff - Страница 4

First we’ll start with you. Have you, ever heard the saying “Two half people don’t make a whole relationship”? The premise of this statement is that two unhealthy individuals (those with a lot of old emotional baggage that hasn’t been worked through), will never have a happy, healthy and whole relationship--that is, unless they get help and work on themselves. If you have emotional hang-ups that affect your own life, how do you think they will impact your closest relationship? Sometimes people end up with a codependent person who is struggling with his or her own need to care for others. Or perhaps you are the codependent who is more concerned about the needs of others than yourself. If you are the co-dependent, stop and ask yourself, are you truly happy? What is it that compels you to care for everyone else except for yourself? The truth is you need to love yourself before you can truly love and care for anyone else, and this message applies to both types of people just mentioned. People who are constantly hurting others or constantly hurting themselves, be it by direct action or indirectly by placing everyone else’s needs first--really don’t love themselves, at least not as much as is necessary.

Unfortunately most of what compels us to behave in these ways stems from our conditioning. We have spoken about conditioning at great length in a few of our previous books, and we will discuss it again here because we cannot stress enough how much it impacts our thoughts, ideas and behaviors. Conditioning is what happens when people are exposed to certain things, and then in turn they act or feel a certain way because of what they were repeatedly exposed to. In short, all those things you were exposed to as a child influence you even today: your parents’ behavior towards you as well as towards each other, previous relationships, things and people you spent time with--the life time of experiences that you have had, and all the things you’ve heard as well.

Your childhood experiences have a lot to do with who you choose as a partner as well as how you interact with and treat him or her. Without any form of reconditioning, be it through therapy, self-help and exploration, or any other form of inter and intra personal growth, you will most likely take on some of the traits of one of your parents and be attracted to some of the traits of your other parent. This phenomena is not gender specific in that a woman may end up with personality traits similar to her father (i.e. domineering and controlling) and be attracted to people with personality traits like her mother (i.e. passive), or vice versa. How you were treated and what you observed between your parents or caregivers growing up has a direct influence on your behavior towards your partner as well as what attracts you to your partner .

If you were taught that girls are “pretty and feminine” and boys are “tough,” then this is ultimately what you will believe is true. So if you see someone who goes against what your upbringing was, you typically won’t be attracted to him or her. We are conditioned to be attracted to certain individuals. There are millions of people in this world with different physical characteristics and personalities. Why is it that we find ourselves attracted to a certain “type” when that “type” may be totally unattractive to someone else? Without any changes in your conditioning or interpersonal growth, the answer is probably because that person is similar to one of your parents in one way or another.

If your parents had a great relationship and both of them were emotionally healthy, then you will most likely move in that direction as well, towards a healthy relationship with a healthy partner. But if you are like most people whose parents didn’t have a great relationship, then you may need to make changes to be a good partner or spouse. If you are a man and take after your father who wasn’t very romantic, and who often hurt your mother’s feelings because he forgot birthdays and anniversaries, then you may be like him in this way. In order to make changes toward becoming a healthier partner, you need to become aware and take steps to avoid making the same mistakes, such as using a calendar to write down the dates as a reminder to yourself. These changes are not impossible, but you do need to be aware of the behaviors before change becomes a possibility.

How did your parents’ relationship fare as they grew older? Did they get divorced? Are they happily remarried? Were they unhappily married? Even after they die, our parents affect our views of marriage. If they stuck it out until the children were grown, but they were miserable, you might say, “I’m not going to do that.” If they got divorced, you might think, “I’m never going to get married” or “I can get married and divorced.”. What happened to you, and what did your parents do? You need to be aware of the path your parents’ relationship took. How you were treated, what you witnessed growing up, and even what your parents are doing today affects you. If they are elderly and are happy and love life, or if they are bitter and angry and hate the opposite sex, there is a potential that this could rise inside of you. If you like what you see, great, but if not, then you need to be aware of it because our parents impact us until the day we die.

The relationships within your family tie into what your philosophy of relationships is or has become. You may not even be conscious of what you envision a relationship or marriage to be. The dynamics of the relationship modeled to you will unconsciously influence what you think your role should be. Jacqueline Kennedy’s husband cheated on her just as her father had cheated on her mother. Jacqueline made the global assumption that all men cheat and that it is part of their nature. She tolerated her husband cheating because she had a philosophy that this is the way “all” men are. If your mom was a depressed person and your dad’s role was always to help her, then you may feel your role is to get in there and fix things if you take after your father. A lot of this is unconscious and you fall into repeating the behaviors because this is what you saw happen in your family.