With each successive relationship you learn more about love, attraction, equality, and the destruction you or someone else is capable of. If you are lucky enough to be with one person for a lifetime, you’ll learn all those lessons in one relationship. But there is nothing like a relationship failure to create the impetus to start sorting through the baggage of attitudes and beliefs that you carry from one relationship to the next. Although you might like to avoid the inner work necessary to achieve a healthier relationship, you have to appreciate that with insight, you grow to make fewer mistakes.
Whether it is your criteria in choosing a mate that requires a second look, or the fact that in every relationship there is a pattern of frequent communication meltdowns; taking a hard look at yourself is important, especially if you don’t want your new or future relationship to fall into the same destructive patterns.
Making bad choices
The natural question arises: Do we really make the wrong choices in selecting a mate or does a relationship choose us so that we can fulfill a life lesson we agreed to learn? The answer is: It happens both ways. Conditioning sometimes drives the mate selection process forcing you to choose someone you are conditioned to believe suits you best. That is why many women choose a mate just like their father, especially if they are seeking the comfort of a familiar personality to start with. Or you may find yourself attracted to a bad boy thinking you will resurrect his soul and put him on the path of righteousness. This choice reflects a woman’s conditioned tendencies to see herself as a healer to mankind. The key is to identify the pattern in your choices and to determine if conditioning is driving them. Sometimes we can’t help attracting the wrong kind of person. They just seem to arrive on the relationship stage one after another. In this case, you are completing bad karma and you may have to acknowledge your mistake was in a previous life.
Making yourself too available
It doesn’t feel good to be left on hold wondering when he will stop playing the field and see that you were “the one” all along. You made yourself available, waited for his calls, loosened all other ties thinking dawn would break any day now. But if after two years you have not established an exclusive relationship, it’s likely you’ll never get the commitment you want. See the mistake of making yourself too available to someone who never wanted more than a casual relationship.
Communicating through
Dictatorial communication styles are often a symptom of mindsets of inequality. Whether it is you giving out the orders and venting for hours or your partner who thinks his way is the right way and you should have nothing to say, the relationship will suffer from degradation. Words can be powerful, but how you say them can be even more powerful. Examine your communication style and the mindsets it stems from. If it needs changing, change the communication dynamic by focusing first on your own style of communicating.
Ending the relationship
If you were too quick to leave a relationship in the past you know the pain you caused as well as the regrets you have. Flight behavior can represent a fear of intimacy or the inability to recognize that people can change with time when they value the love between them and each other. Fighting the urge to break up and developing some patience and understanding may very well save a relationship deemed too challenging.
Getting the right person to love
If it is love that you are after, you need to face the fact that you are lovable and that you deserve a partner who sees the sun, moon, and stars in your eyes. But if he doesn’t seem to be treating you with love and respect, keeps you at a distance and is self-absorbed, unresponsive or overly critical; the problem isn’t necessarily you. There is nothing worse than staying in a relationship that is impoverished or with a lover who is never in the mood for love. In fact, it is heart-breaking. Your mistake may be in expecting a turn-around by demanding better treatment. Demands seldom seem to work. The magical elixir may be to create a life outside the relationship that looks greener. If you matter anything to him and he see’s you’ve moved onto greener pastures, he may start to value what he lost. If not, you have created a new life to move all the way into.
The right person
If you are the type of woman who seeks the “perfect” man, you are guaranteed never to find him. In fact, you may have even passed on a man who was your divine complement (soulmate) thinking at the time you could do better. If you are in the habit of dissecting the men you attract, try instead to erect a new standard.
BY SHAMSIYA BARA’U AHMED
