1 Advice That Changed The Way I Look At Relationships
Changes the perspective about relationships.
I’ll be the primary to admit that over the years, I’ve gotten into the habit of getting high expectations for the people in my life. I’m someone who gives tons to the people I like while rarely prioritizing myself. It’s honestly toxic, and it’s led to some disappointment in most of my relationships. Luckily, I’m more self-aware than I want to be, and it’s something I have been performing on through therapy.
I was recently venting to my therapist about the people who I feel have let me down in some way, mostly by not loving or protecting me within the same way I might for them. My therapist validated my feelings but also gave me a bit of recommendation that transformed the way I check out my relationships.
She said, “You cannot expect someone to offer you something that they only do not offer .”
She explained that we’re all on different journeys and have our own burdens that impact the way we love, protect, and interact with the people in our lives. You’ll be frustrated with someone you care about for not treating you the ways you are feeling you need to be treated, and you’ll prefer to remove those people from your life, but you cannot project your expectations onto someone and demand a particular treatment if they genuinely just do not have that to offer to you. There are certain things we’ve to understand about ourselves to be evolved enough to offer love, and if we’ve not faced our demons, sometimes the love we give isn’t easy for people to receive. My therapist explained that the people in my life love me, but maybe they do not have it in themselves yet to offer me what I’m trying to find.
This advice has caused me to actually check out why I’m not satisfied with my relationships, and one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I even have a hard time verbalizing my feelings. I have been counting on others to only know what I’m thinking, which isn’t fair and puts tons of pressure on my friends, family, and romantic partners. I do not invite what I would like, and that I expect people to understand how I want to be loved, how they’ve hurt me, etc. without telling them. Most of the frustration I’ve felt has come from this internalization and inability to speak.
Applying this recommendation to my relationships has already varied my life. My biological father and that I have had a strained relationship for the past five years, and that I recently told him where my frustrations and apprehension to spend time with him stem from. I explained that I feel he doesn’t care about me, and he explained he thought I just enjoyed my space and didn’t want him to butt into my life or be intrusive. We’ve spent goodbye on rocky terms just because he wasn’t giving love the way I wanted him to, but now I do know that perhaps he doesn’t have that to offer to me. Now we’re communicating better, and that I can alter my expectations of him to be more in line with what he has got to give.
I know I even have to inform people what I want, then understand what they need in their emotional capacity to offer. I know I need not accept people that aren’t giving me what I want or deserve, but I’m looking forward to communicating with the people I like most to form sure our relationships are satisfying and working at their highest potential. Also, if someone can’t give me their all, I know often that perhaps I need not give them my all, either. And that is OK.
