Welcome to New Age Connections™

March 2008 Newsletter

The Conscious Relationship:  Lessons Learned are Lighter than “Baggage”

The classic Demotivator poster for “Dysfunction” reads “The Only Consistent Feature in All of your Dissatisfying Relationships is You”…  Not to be a downer, but there is an edge of truth in this.

The sooner we all face our own roles in our past relationships, the easier it will be to move on.

If you take the time now to assess what you can learn about unhealthy and unsuccessful relationships in the past, you can walk away with a list of lessons learned, rather than emotional wounds and scars still aching to be healed.    

Hindsight is 20/20

Draw up a “relationship history”:  a chronological list of all of the relationships you’ve ever been in.  the Write a journal-style entry about each of them. 

• ·         How did the relationship begin?
• ·         What were you looking for?
• ·         What were the good things about the relationship?
• ·         The not-so-good?
• ·         How long did it last?
• ·         How did it end?  How did you feel about the ending of the relationship?  
• ·         Close each entry  with one or two notes that you could learn about yourself from the relationship

Be Gentle, but Honest

Once you’re done with this part, take a deep breath. You now need to examine it closely for patterns. What is the overarching theme of your love life? 

If this is too difficult to do alone, it’s ok to call in a trusted friend, or even a therapist to help you with this part. 

This is not about blaming yourself, feeling ashamed or guilty about your past. This exercise is about accepting your own responsibility and role in your relationships and learning how to get beyond that next time.  Self-acceptance and self-love are very important for this process to work!  Personal accountability is part of that.    

Identifying unhealthy patterns makes them easier to see and change in the future.

Continued