real life: mature relationships are work

How do you view romantic relationships?

So many of us grew up in homes where we witnessed relationships that were dysfunctional, abusive, or lacked true vulnerable and emotional connection. This created the perfect situation for us to be drawn to movies, tv shows and songs that show love as a romanticized co-dependency and an overall idea that the “perfect person” will come and rescue us from life as we know it. We go into our relationships expecting a person to make us happy, to meet all of our needs and to give us the life we have idealized - to give us what we have seen on TV, which isn’t real life. As a result,

This puts unbelievable pressure on our partners and relationships.

We have been deeply conditioned to expect that happiness will be ours once we get in the “right” relationship. It is true that being in a relationship can support our happiness but our partner will not be able to give us everything that has been missing. There is no one person that is able to fulfill all of our needs and bring limitless joy to our lives. These unrealistic expectations will cause resentment to grow and fester and we set ourselves and our partners up for major disappointment with these expectations. This can lead us to become hooked into viewing one another as “the other” - as the cause of our pain. We will blame our partner for our unhappiness, loneliness, and failure to have a thriving relationship. We begin to feel that we are incompatible and consider ending the relationship.

We can lack the ability to clearly communicate, to understand our emotional triggers and be vulnerable enough to have the deep, difficult and uncomfortable conversations that a mature relationship require. And when this happens, this is when we or our partners will usually start looking outside of the relationship to find the “fantasy” love all over again in someone else. The “grass must be greener on the other side,” right? Unfortunately, the next relationship ends up the exact same way, with the exact same patterns because we aren’t looking for a relationship that supports growth, evolution and mutual freedom. We are looking to be saved. Until we can begin to understand what mature love and relationships actually look like, we will continue to be disappointed, disillusioned, and lack the tools, skills and awareness that it actually takes to develop the healing that can exist within relationships.

A relationship is not “happily ever after.”

A relationship is a commitment to working through one another’s trauma responses and honoring our own needs and boundaries. As we learn to be in relationship with another flawed human being, we learn to love like an adult. We realize that it takes an unbelievable amount of self awareness, forgiveness and emotional maturity. Mature relationships are work. They’re triggering. The make us confront our issues and wounds. And for those of us who’ve never known a secure, safe attachment, they can be very scary and uncomfortable. Relationships take the skills that so many of us have never learned because a parent or caregiver did not, or wasn’t able to, model them to us. These skills include clear open communication, emotional regulation, nervous system awareness, introspection, conflict resolution, clear boundaries, and vulnerability.

We all learn about relationships from the first relationships we witness as children. The boundaries we see (or don’t see) the communication, the coping mechanisms, the emotional connection (or lack of) - we learn through what we witness. Again, this is not to blame. This is to realize that roles and relationship models are passed down generation to generation and we do what we see and hear. Compassion and grace is needed here. Always. We do the best we can with what we have and with the level of awareness we have. Remember that.

As we become awake to what relationships truly are, we can become better partners. We can love better. We can hold more space. We can begin to feel a true emotional connection and we can see relationships for what they can be: safe spaces for mutual growth, evolution and freedom. The commitment to heal and grow together, makes all the difference. It’s all in the work.

Are you willing to do the work? xx