What are your beliefs about relationships?
Do you have a significant happy relationship?
Do you want one? Do you believe that it is possible to have?
What do you believe that you deserve?
I think that is quite an easy question to answer.
Look at your relationship, or lack of, and you probably get a clear picture of what you believe to be true.
Are you in a happy and fulfilling relationship?
If not, why is that?
In my experience, some of the common limiting beliefs people have include;
“I can never find the right person to love me, the way I am”
“It’s not me; he/she has changed since we first met”
“What is the point anyway; all relationships are doomed to fail”
“It’s too late for me to find love”
“I do not have time for a relationship”
“I’ll just get hurt again”
“I have to stay in this relationship; I can’t make it on my own”
Can you relate to any of the above? Most people can.
Latest statistics in the USA show that the average divorce rate is around 43% of all marriages, so I suppose that is normal to feel that the odds are against happy long lasting relationships.
Relationships are……?
Take a moment to fill in the blanks with your own answer. Say the sentence in your own mind, “relationships are……..?”
Which words did you use?
“Exciting, fulfilling, safe, caring, loving, sensual, etc.”
Or did you choose different words
“Painful, meant to finish, unsafe, scary, unreachable, etc”
Where did you shape your beliefs about relationships?
Where you brought up in a loving and caring marriage, or were your parents divorced and all you remember were the fights?
What were your first experiences like? Did you get hurt? More than once? Were you disappointed or betrayed, and now you find it hard to trust again?
Did you give many good years to a relationship, just to be put aside when the going got a bit rough?
I think that many of us have gone through at least some of the above.
It would certainly justify our current beliefs.
BUT, yes a big but, are these beliefs getting you what you want and need now?
Are they serving you? I would guess not.
I used the word “need” above on purpose. You see, my beliefs about relationships are probably somewhat different from most people.
I think, and more knowledgeable people than me think the same way, that it all starts when we are born.
It has been shown by studies, that when a baby is born needs to touched and feel a connection. (They still need it while growing up, as demonstrated by Harvard University)
Think about it, when you are a baby it is the only time in your life that you do not need to do anything to receive love. It’s unconditional!
The babies lies down, eats, drinks milk, cries, burps, and few other bodily functions, and all the people around stop and give love. Regardless of the behaviour.
“Oh, that was the cutest burp……well done……good baby…”
And the baby loves it. The baby is loved for “who” he/she is. Not for “what” he/she does.
The baby is loved just for “being”. Nothing else.
Of course, that does not last long. Eventually the levels of Oxytocins (the hormone released during child birth that also makes a mother bond with the baby to ensure the baby’s survival) decrease and things change.
Eventually the parents will start to say something like “Do not touch that or…….” “Do not do that or…..”
They will make it clear to the baby which behaviour they expect and what the reward for it is (love) or the punishment (not being loved).
For the first time the baby needs to “do” something to gain love.
Love is not unconditional anymore, it has to be earned
And I think that we go through life looking for that unconditional love again.
But it is not forthcoming.
We go to school and there are rules to follow to be considered a “good” student. (and we do not get good grades, are we going to be loved at home?)
The social group we belong to have rules for us to feel accepted. If we break them, we are out.
We go to work and there is a “culture” we are supposed to embrace to be accepted.
Religious groups do not tend to love people that do not follow their “rules”.
Then we discover relationships. Finally someone will love me just for “who” I am, right?
Well, I do not need to answer that for you. If you have ever been in a relationship you know that it does not always work that way.
The biggest mistake people make in any kind of relationships is to confuse the “behaviour” with the “person”.
“if you do…….., then you are………”.Or we attach a “meaning”. (read belief).
“If you do not call me often, then you do not love me!”
“If you loved me, then you would……..”, you fill in the blanks.
You see, we have set up a set of beliefs and rules for what it means for us to be loved.
Ask yourself this question:
How do you know that you are being loved?
It is an important question, because often we do not consciously think about it.
And even less frequently we let our partner know. They play a game without knowing the rules. (Or the rules keep changing). It is a “hit and miss” game that leaves everybody confused.
Often you hear a partner saying something like: “Never seems to make you happy, does not matter what I do.”
Would you like to start discovering your limiting beliefs about love and relationships?
You can either book a one on one session with us, or you can download your free Belief Buster Workbook here.