Relationships can be incredibly rewarding. They can also be complicated by a variety of factors including: communication styles, each person’s prior experiences, family histories and backgrounds, attachment styles, empathy capacities, and boundaries, as well as a multitude of other personal dynamics that can interact with one-an-other.
Some believe that the relationships we form in life are truly the most important part of living
Communication
Our ability to use assertive communication to express ourselves in ways that both honor our own feelings and needs, while also respecting and honoring the needs of others is a crucial life skill-set that not all of us are taught how to navigate. Some may tend to use more passive communication patterns, due to fears of offending others or losing relationships, while others may appear aggressive or reactive, which may come from suppression of needs, or lack of trust that needs will get met. By cultivating practice and confidence in using assertiveness skills we can speak up sooner, have a firm and neutral approach that is most likely be heard, and state our needs in proactive ways (expressing what we want), rather than reactive (expressing what we don’t want), so that both parties feel understood and respected.
Personal Background Influences
Each of us have been through a unique set of formative experiences and a socialization process that have collectively shaped us in becoming who we are today. The messages we have heard from our family of origin, and throughout our environments of socialization contribute to the ways in which we view ourselves, our sense of what is acceptable or unacceptable, the defense mechanisms we have developed to survive adversities, as well as how we view and approach the world around us. For the sake of our relationships, it is very important to work towards understanding and navigating our role in the interactions that evoke the strongest reactions within us, such as a partner’s behaviors. This is because, when some of these reactions feel disproportionate to the situation at hand, they may actually originate from aspects of our past that become “triggered” or re-activated in the present interactions that remind us of them. We can therefore ask ourselves things like, “What is it about me or my past that made that so upsetting for me?“ By leaning how to understand the origins of our reactions and feelings, rather than overly focusing on the things that elicit them, we can more fully recognize, integrate, and communicate our feelings, needs and preferences without blame or over-personalization.
Attachment Style
Our early attachments to primary caregivers during crucial periods of development will lay the foundation for our future styles of interacting and attaching to others in relationships for the rest of our lives. Much research has been conducted to arrive at 4 primary styles of attachment: Secure, Avoidant, Anxious, and Disorganized (AKA Fearful-Avoidant). Our attachment style can influence things including who we are attracted to, things we will tolerate in relationships, our sense of what is healthy or expected, what our basic needs for connection are, reactions to relationship dynamics, coping methods and behaviors, and so much more. Rather than perpetuating these same patterns throughout our relationships, by learning about our attachment tendencies, we can strengthen our ability to attract, tolerate, and seek more secure forms of attachment, regardless of our upbringing.
Empathy
Empathy is the cognitive ability to relate to what another person is experiencing vicariously, or as though one were experiencing it for themselves. This deep level of understanding can be difficult to instinctively have if childhood opportunities modeling this behavior were not regularly offered. Additionally, there can be barriers to using empathy including relationship dynamics where one or both parties feel that one person’s gains or acknowledgment is the other person’s loss or invalidation, or where there are high levels of criticism, or a lack of the emotional safety that allows for true vulnerability. Even if empathy is not a person’s natural strength, the following skills can be developed to enrich relationships and healthy connection: reflective listening, perspective-taking, patience, neutral appraisal-making, practice connecting to both one’s own, as well as other peoples’ feelings, and fostering compassion through understanding.
Boundaries
Boundaries are the limits and personal expectations we set in relationships for what we are comfortable or uncomfortable with in a given situation. Clarifying and communicating our personal boundaries serves to protect our feelings of safety and comfort physically, emotionally and mentally. We may think of boundaries as guidelines that others need to respect for us, but in fact, we are responsible for establishing, expressing, reiterating, and upholding our own boundaries for the protection of ourselves and to reduce resentment. Much of the stress in relationships can often boil down to boundaries in one way or another. When we know that we can trust ourselves to uphold our own boundaries persistently in a relationship then we have nothing to fear. If our boundaries are not being respected within a relationship, despite our efforts to consistently apply and uphold them, then the ultimate boundary may be to leave the relationship altogether.
It is through navigating the complexities of human relationships, including the adversities that can come with them, that we are provided the life opportunities needed for deep and meaningful growth within ourselves, and in our capacity for connection to others.