I see this same story reflected over and over in my work with my clients: People struggle in their relationships. They feel confused. They feel overwhelmed. They feel drained. They feel stuck. They don’t understand why things are so hard sometimes. They wish they could get themselves out of certain binds. They feel like they are constantly stepping on each other’s toes in their own relational dance.
The key lies in bringing awareness to the learned patterns that are unconsciously shaping our way of being in relationships. And it starts by looking at the root of where we learned those patterns: our original families.
There are dozens of patterns that shape our relationships. Today we’ll look at four major ones and I’ll address others in future pieces.
Your Level of Self-Differentiation
Each generation of a given family has a certain average level of differentiation and passes that average level onto the next generation. Some of the children will remain at that same level and pass it onto their own children. Some of the children will work on becoming more mature throughout life and pass on higher levels to their own children.
So, your level of differentiation is determined by your original family. You then go out into the world and find a partner that is about the same level of maturity as you. This is largely an unconscious process. It’s often understood as emotional attraction, emotional chemistry, or emotional fit.
The more differentiated you are, the more likely that you will organically attract and fit with a more differentiated person. Your level of maturity includes:
Your ability to self-observe and self-reflect.
Your tolerance for stress, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
Your ability to take responsibility for your own emotions.
Your ability to regulate your own emotions.
Your level of emotional reactivity.
Your resilience to setbacks and challenges.
Your ability to think, decide, and do for yourself.
Your ability to define your own values and principles.
Your ability to live by those values and principles
Your ability to define, set, and reinforce boundaries.
Your ability to self-validate instead of seeking approval.
Your ability to balance individuality and collectivity.
Your Attachment Style
Your attachment style shapes how you manage the balance between separateness and togetherness in a relationship. When there is stress in your relationship or in life, do you tend lean into the relationship and seek more contact, or do you lean out and seek space to recenter yourself?
In a relationship, this will create the distancer-pursuer pattern, where one person pursues connection while the other distances from it. The more one chases the connection, the more the other pulls away. Each person is just seeking what they believe they need in the best way they know how.
This pattern is shaped early in life in our families of origin. If you grew up in a family that lacked boundaries and you felt constantly overwhelmed by the emotions and needs of others, you may have learned to distance yourself in your intimate relationships as a self-preservation mechanism.
If you grew up in a family where you learned to depend on another person to help you soothe your emotions, and were never given the opportunity to learn to self-soothe, you might have learned to seek togetherness in your intimate relationships as your self-preservation mechanism.
We all thrive off of a healthy balance of separateness and togetherness. When we haven’t learned or integrated the ability to create this balance, we lean harder to one side than the other. Oftentimes, we find partners that lean the opposite way from ours. This can create polarization in our relationships that leads to a lot of confusion and hurt.
How You Manage Conflict
Ultimately, this is how you express negative emotions and manage tension in your intimate relationship. The basic premise is this:
We learn to manage our hurt and dissatisfaction in our family of origin. We take on our family’s patterns of managing conflict and tension. Our partner takes on their own family’s patterns. Sometimes our approaches align. Often, they collide.
When you feel angry, hurt, or dissatisfied in your relationship…
Do you sweep it under the rug instead of talking about it?
Do you keep it a secret to avoid ruffling feathers?
Do you confront it in an explosive way?
Do you give the silent treatment or make passive aggressive remarks?
Do you exact revenge to show your partner how it feels?
Do you blame or criticize your partner for what you’re feeling?
Do you tune out or shut down altogether?
Do you vulnerably express your emotions and look for empathy?
Do you express yourself intellectually and look for a practical solution?
Do you express what you didn’t like or do you express what you wish for?
The list can go on and on here, really, but there are two basic dispositions: leaning into conflict or pulling away from it. From there, there are numerous manifestations of how that plays out.
How You Express Love
To me, this goes beyond the traditional premise in the popular psychology book Love Languages, although that book is useful to understand this basic premise:
We learned to express love, affection, care, and concern in our original family. Our partner learned how to express the same in their original family. In some partnerships, those patterns will align. In many, they won’t.
Some of the ways we may show or express care, affection, and concern:
Listening to and empathizing with your partner.
Letting your partner be their own person.
Complimenting and validating your partner verbally.
Encouraging your partner to reach their potentials.
Giving tough love and telling the truth even when it’s hard.
Paying attention to details and recalling them to your partner.
Sharing thoughtful gifts, offerings, and mementos.
Taking responsibility for your own thoughts and emotions.
Addressing your own patterns and wounds that affect your partner.
Becoming the best version of yourself for the relationship.
Honoring and respecting your partner’s boundaries.
Giving physical affection when your partner requests it.
Giving your partner your undivided attention and presence.
Completing tasks for your partner, like cooking dinner or doing the dishes.
Allowing your partner space and time for themselves.
Making sacrifices for your partner, where appropriate.
The list can go on here, too. There are so many significant and subtle ways we can show that we are invested in the relationship and in our partner’s well-being.
A Final Note
The patterns we learned from our family of origin don’t need to be a relationship death sentence. The key to success is to cultivate awareness. Awareness requires reflecting on the different patterns you bring to your intimate relationship, as well as the patterns your partner brings to the relationship. Based on those patterns, you two will create a unique relational dance that will play out throughout the course of your relationship together.
With awareness, we can approach our relationships with more patience, compassion, and skill. We can arm our relationships against destructive unconscious forces, and instead work with each other to create more conscious and enriching relationships. We can learn to dance better with our partners, even if that means stumbling a bit along the way.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — Carl Jung
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