Getting Ready For New Relationships

[NatureB]

What things have you done to heal and love yourself, and get to a place where you are whole and can have a successful, healthy romantic relationship?

 

I just finished reading The Truth by Neil Strauss. If you ever want to be triggered... READ THAT FUCKING BOOK! Mind = blown.

 

So I have been working on the feeling-place that I enter relationships from since late March of this year. I started by trying to detect and release one negative emotion per day as it relates to dating, and I have had some huge successes with this approach. Yet, this is not enough. I am not progressing fast enough.

 

I am considering doing a retreat or a week-long intensive about relationships. Would you guys recommend any? What has helped you get ready to be in a healthy relationship? What books have influenced you the most?

[Strangeloop]

I would love to hear more about this topic. 

[soos_mite_ah]

I have done a lot of work in therapy. There you can talk about your past relationships and if there are any other patterns that show up that you want to look at and you can also tackle things in regards to your family relationships. Analyzing family relationships and they dynamics that are present there can be extremely beneficial since those are the first relationships you have as a kid and can therefore often times set the tone for additional relationships down the road, especially romantic ones. Think of the ways you relate to your parents in regards to how they treated you and what kinds of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms you learned from them. Also you can look at your parent's relationship to see what was modeled for you and what patterns you're taking from there.  

You can also explore feelings and issues that came up in your previous relationships to both grieve and learn lessons from those situations. This is largely a case by case situation (idk what your last relationship was like), but if something ended, there is likely a reason (unless yall just naturally grew apart and took different paths in life but even then you could look at the flaws that were there in yalls dynamic and still improve). 

Also, this might be a personal thing, but being really in tuned with your emotions so that you can open up to people and also establish boundaries in a relationship is huge. It's difficult to know where your boundaries lie when you aren't tuned into what you emotionally do and don't like. Knowing what you are and aren't willing to tolerate can help you zero in on what kind of relationship you want and who you want a relationship with. Validating what you do and don't want and honoring your boundaries can also help with becoming more confident in a relationship as well since you aren't hiding parts of yourself for the sake of the other person rather you are letting yourself just be. 

This is by no means the end all be all of what you can do as a lot of it can vary with personal needs but I would say that this can be the start. 

Edited August 19, 2020 by soos_mite_ah

[NatureB]

@soos_mite_ah Thank you for the advice. I have not seen this comment until now but that pretty much sums up the approach that I have taken.

Are you able to recommend any books, programs, or live events that helped you aside from therapy?

I do have a therapist that I talk to about this stuff as well.