Healing Our Relationships

Relationships can be one of the most rewarding parts of our lives and at the same time the most challenging. It is fairly easy to figure out why they are so rewarding. Our need for love, companionship, and deep connection is met through relationships (all kinds of relationships). But why are they so challenging? Parts of human nature can make it hard to live peacefully with one another; it can take a lot of work to overcome our human limitations in relationship.

What makes intimate relationships in particular so challenging? The reasons seem to be manifold. To name a couple, these relationships bring up our deepest, hardest issues and insecurities, and we are forced to see and deal with intimate details of ourselves and the other person in all of our glory and flaws.

One great challenge in intimate relationships that is extremely powerful is that we often attempt to heal our relationship with a parent/caregiver through an intimate relationship. First, the relationship between our parents or caregivers has a tremendous influence on how we perceive relationships—the role of relationships, what is acceptable, and what to expect. Our ideas about relationships are formulated as we observe our parents' relationship(s) throughout our childhood and adolescence; this process often happens on a subconscious level. These ideas are more of a result of what we see and experience than what we actively think about it. To take an extreme example, children of an abused parent often fall into relationships with an abusive partner because it is what they know and in some way expect. In our minds we might know something isn’t good or right, but we still do it because it is what we know. One challenge this poses is that the relationship of our parents/caregivers is only one example of what a relationship can look like and is very limiting. It is difficult to understand what healthy relationships look and feel like from the role models we grow up with.

Furthermore, what we often try to do through our intimate relationships is to heal our relationship with a parent/caregiver. This again happens on a subconscious level. We attract people in our lives that embody qualities that are similar to one of our parents (usually it is the opposite sex, so for women it is their father and men it is their mother-however this is not always the case). The qualities and situations we attract are those that are painful for us, so that we can have the opportunity to heal the pain. The first problem is, healing the pain usually means changing the other person—changing those qualities that we don’t like and that are painful. Or it might be changing the situation in some way to make it better. However, the people and situations we attract are typically impossible to change. We set ourselves up for even more pain. Most of us have the experience of spending a lot of time and energy trying to change a person, and at some point we have to give up trying because it doesn’t work. The second problem is that if we want to heal this pain, we have to work directly with the parent, or with a counselor, to work through the issues. It cannot be healed through another person.

So what can we do? First we need to identify the negative pattern that we fall into, what we are attracting on a consistent basis that is unhealthy and brings up deep pain and frustration. Looking at our past relationships, what do most of them have in common in terms of the challenges and pain felt?
It is also necessary to look at our relationship with our parent/caregiver and identify what was most painful in that relationship. Sometimes we know right away what our painful experiences were, and what the qualities are that bring up pain and frustration. At other times it takes more work to uncover the pain and issues. Once we identify the issues, we must try to heal them directly with that person, with a counselor, or on our own (acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding-none of which condone the behavior-are key components to healing).
Last, we must take steps to clear out unhealthy situations and to stay clear of the negative pattern we have been creating. Part of this means that we must give up trying to change others. We must accept people for who they are now and not expect or hope for them to change.

We must free ourselves from the limitations we have accepted and created in our relationships. This is our only hope for having truly fulfilling relationships.