What is your relationship landscape?

We all came from somewhere. Our approach to love and relationships doesn’t just pop out of nowhere one day like some sort of random raffle prize. Your beliefs and understanding of love will have been set into motion long before you understood what love even is. 

Whether you were raised with the healthiest of examples around you or had a more complicated upbringing, you’ll have your very own unique relationship landscape today.

What exactly do I mean by a relationship landscape? It’s the many experiences and memories that have shaped your approach to love and relationships now. All the repressed embarrassments you’d rather leave buried from your school years - like when that crush colossally friend-zoned you so they could get with your best friend instead - or the ways your parents interacted with you and each other at home.

It all adds up to make one unique package - you. And whether we realise it or not, it affects how we approach relationships in our adult life. But how exactly?

We seek what’s familiar

In our relationships, we seek the familiar. We are drawn to situations and people that subconsciously remind us of our past. We look for patterns and behaviours we recognise, seeking to complete or ‘fix’ situations we never could previously. And this goes for all of us.

Let me explain.

I have girlfriends who had complicated or non-existent relationships with their fathers. The details vary, but essentially the relationships were a mix of strained, detached, or non-existent. This influenced their relationship choices, and guess what, the landscape they recognised was emotionally unavailable men - just like dad was. They’re attracted to this emotional unavailability because they subconsciously want to try to break the cycle. They want to make these distant men love them in a way they never had growing up. 

I personally didn’t know my father growing up, and it totally impacted the men I was attracted to. The more disinterested in me they were, the more I wanted them! I was trying to prove I had value and was worth loving, but they were the wrong crowd. And a side note - it didn’t need to be proven as we all have value and are all worthy. I know that now, of course. 

I also have two super secure friends - now smug marrieds - who naturally fell into a wonderfully healthy relationship with each other. They both had relaxed, stable upbringings and it shows. And now they’re chill, happy, and secure - together. One example of their chill factor is how she didn’t write stories about how much he loved her or wanted to see her when he forgot to pick her up from the station when they were just dating. She was travelling to a different country and his dad would scoop her up, then she would tease him for being a sleep monster in the mornings. So many of us might have made that mean something it simply didn’t mean. 

This is by no means the norm, but it does happen. They’re just doing the same as anyone else; finding aspects of the relationships they knew growing up in their own upbringing. It just so happened to be healthy examples they were copying, whereas a lot of us copy the unhealthy examples in an effort to fix now what we couldn’t before.

So my point is we don’t seek out someone who’s necessarily right or good for us; we look for energies we recognise and repeat the landscape we grew up with.

Improving your awareness

Step one of taking better control of your relationships is accepting these forces. Get curious about why you’re butting heads with your partner. What do they do that triggers you? And why does it trigger you? What past experience of yours is it bringing to the surface?

We’re naturally less invested in working out why we approach our relationships the way we do because it’s easier blindly repeating patterns. So we end up in a cycle of repetition continually going after the same types of people. With every new relationship, we gather more emotional baggage when we don’t stop to learn what’s going on and we keep on blaming the other person. We tend to present ourselves inauthentically, avoiding the difficult stuff, to bypass feeling vulnerable or exposed, and it’s not our fault - it’s because we don’t know we are doing it, it’s all subconscious. 

What really works is when we get super honest with ourselves about where we came from. What’s your relationship landscape? What does your mind recognise and find most familiar? What will this create in your relationships in the future?

Owning your history

So listen to the arguments you make, the little voice in your head that mutters away internally or the threats you hiss out. Ask yourself, where does it come from? 

Once you understand the impact of your past and how that plays out in your life today, you can begin to share and explain this with those around you, especially with your nearest and dearest. For me, understanding the sense of worthlessness I had from feeling abandoned by my father helped me see how I was attracted to partners who were disinterested or cool with me. But then it gave me the courage to explain how I needed to feel secure and valued.

It also helped me understand why I didn’t back down in disagreements. My step-father was an unpredictable and mercurial man who would be very aggressive with my mother all too often. If partners ever raised their voices at me, I was right back into protective mode defending myself, albeit feeling like jelly on the inside. When I explained this to my now-husband, he understood that raising his naturally deep voice at me was never going to go well. 

In looking at where we come from, we can start having really open and vulnerable conversations. There’s no shame in coming with a past - we all do - and owning the agenda you come with, being honest about what you truly need, sets us free from unhelpful cycles and patterns. 

What’s the alternative? You continue to repeat the same cycles, in relationships that aren’t good for you or constantly clash heads with your partner about the same old shit, day in and day out. Wouldn’t it be better to just lay all your cards out on the table now? Work together towards real, long-term solutions to make the relationship last? And don’t forget, if you can’t have these important conversations, then you’re possibly talking to the wrong person about it. Sometimes they’re clues to move on because some people don’t want to sort their stuff.   

Embracing all the ways our experiences influence us means your relationship landscape won’t be the big fat elephant in the room. It will influence your relationships whether you acknowledge it or not, so let’s start making it work for us. Then we can get on the same page as our partners and work together (or move on) to achieve a more healthy and happy relationship for everyone. 

If you want to work towards becoming your best self - both in your personal relationships and wider life - I’d love to chat. Together, through courses or coaching, we can unlock the future you’ve always dreamed of.