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How Did I Get Here?

If we hope to preserve our loving connections over a longer period of time, we must become more aware of the impact that our family traditions have on our lives. Powerful forces within our family begin to shape our sensibilities and sensitivities from the earliest days of our development and continue to exert enormous control over the way we think, feel, and behave throughout our lifetime.

— JOHN JACOBS, psychiatrist and author of All You Need Is Love and Other Lies about Married Life

“Who am I?” It may be the oldest question in the world. It was written on the walls by our earliest cave-dwelling ancestors and sung in ancient ballads, and the edict “Know thyself” was carved on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. Almost two thousand years later, William Shakespeare told us, “This above all: To thine own self be true.” The journey to understand the self drives the deliberations of philosophers, the musing of poets, and the endless chicken-or-egg debate among psychologists about whether we are formed by nature or by nurture.

For some people, the answer is simple. “It’s just the way I am,” said the Brooklyn cabdriver when I commented on his kindness in giving a homeless man a free ride to a health clinic. Conversely, “It’s just how I was raised,” said my client in response to his wife’s question about why he didn’t want the family dog in the house. “Dogs belong outside.”

Understanding who we are and how we got this way is essential to the success of our connections with other people because, at the end of the day, relationships are an inside job. Your past and the forces that have shaped you go on to shape how you love and where you struggle. When you understand these forces, you can begin to work on changing the ones that get in your way.

Nature versus Nurture

A healthy relationship requires a lot of yielding and bending as well as establishing and honoring healthy boundaries. Understanding what’s inherent in our character based on biology (“nature”) and what is learned from our lived experience (“nurture”) can help us to more skillfully develop the flexibility that is a necessary part of relationships — and manage sensitivities that may be hard or impossible to change.