Dream Relationship or Nightmare

Have you created the relationship of your dreams or is your relationship a bit of a nightmare?

It may help to stop and consider what you have brought to your relationship in terms of expectation, attitudes and scripts. What was your parent’s marriage like? What about the relationships of other significant people in your life? Are those marriages examples of relationships that you would like to have? If not, then you may need to consciously choose and behave differently.

We are all influenced by the examples that we have seen in our lives. However, we are not predestined to create a marriage like that of our parents, but unless we consciously choose differently we are greatly affected by the scripts that we have learned over the years.

Often what feels “true” to us is not so much based on truth as it is based on our experiences and the beliefs that we have formed. What we expect from our partner, what we expect from our self and how we react in our relationship is determined to a great extend by these scripts from our younger years.

Your past can influence and even control your future if you let it. But you do not have to be run by the past, you can choose to live in the present and live for the future. But that means being willing to stop behaviors that are not working. It means finding new ways to approach old problems.

Change can be difficult. Sometimes people are just comfortable being miserable and change seems threatening, even if change may make things better. Better the hell you know than the one you don’t.

The great thing is that often the simple act of deciding that we must behave differently in our relationship will help us wake up to the destructive patterns we have been repeating. As we begin to “see” what we have been doing, we begin to have a choice to act, rather than just react as we always have.

Susan Derry, B.Ed., M.S.Psy., R.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine