In my last post, I wrote about time challenged relationships. It seems that since that post, my life has been time challenged! I want to publish a new post each week, and I am recommitting to doing that, as my life becomes more crazy.
This week I would like to talk about another kind of crazy, the crazy quilt of patterns that can occur in our relationships and our lives. The more I work with people who are healing their love lives and figuring out what is most authentic for them, the more I find that we tend to create a pattern in our relationships.
My pattern when I was out there in relationship hell was to find men who on the one hand were exciting, adventurous, and funny, and on the other hand were lost, sometimes abusive, often addicted, and not good long term relationship material. I would meet men who were kind, loving and hardworking, but I tended not to stay with them long.
These issues became the pattern of my relationships. When I took the time to write about each relationship and look at what happened, both good times and bad, I found a familiar pattern. It was even predictable after a while. There would be a couple of squares of excitement and fun, and then a dark square of abuse and addiction. When I would add in a nice guy, there might be a mellow and peaceful square.
This week I would like to talk about another kind of crazy, the crazy quilt of patterns that can occur in our relationships and our lives. The more I work with people who are healing their love lives and figuring out what is most authentic for them, the more I find that we tend to create a pattern in our relationships.
My pattern when I was out there in relationship hell was to find men who on the one hand were exciting, adventurous, and funny, and on the other hand were lost, sometimes abusive, often addicted, and not good long term relationship material. I would meet men who were kind, loving and hardworking, but I tended not to stay with them long.
These issues became the pattern of my relationships. When I took the time to write about each relationship and look at what happened, both good times and bad, I found a familiar pattern. It was even predictable after a while. There would be a couple of squares of excitement and fun, and then a dark square of abuse and addiction. When I would add in a nice guy, there might be a mellow and peaceful square.
- If you have already made a list of your relationships and looked at what happened in each, my suggestion is looking for the patterns.
- Do they always start the same way, or end the same way? Are there periods where the pattern has shifted?
- Do the patterns remind you of other close relationships, such as those with one or both of your parents?
Once you recognize the patterns it is much easier to work on changing them, or doing something different, so that the patterns change. The patterns in my life shifted as I recognized something different. The squares of abuse and addiction started to come less often and eventually disappeared. The squares of peace and fun continued to multiply and grow. Now, my love quilt, has an occasional "We really need to have a good fight square!", and a lot of enjoying out lives together squares.
If you drew a pattern for your crazy quilt of love, what would it look like? What can you start doing today, to make the pattern work better for you? Whatever it is, start doing that!
Marquita
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