For those of us who tend to worry about what others think, whether we will or have upset someone, whether the work we have done is or was or will be good enough, whether we are, in fact, good enough in ourselves – whether we are worthy, deserving beings of others’ time, attention or admiration – perhaps it is time to turn the tables and ask ourselves that question: is this (person/situation) good enough for me?

Lost in another captivating Tracey Rees novel this week, I read those words as one character challenged another to ask herself that question in every moment of a date she was going on. The challenge dropped into my psyche the way just the right lens does when the optometrist is doing a refraction test and suddenly everything on the board in front of me becomes very clear.

An old acquaintance read one of my musings this week and encouraged me to keep following my heart. They believe that by doing so, this makes the world a better place, as do I. It reminded me of one of the dimensions of compatibility that Briana MacWilliam talks about on her courses – having unconditional regard for another person.

She defines this as having appreciation for someone because you believe in who they are, regardless of what they give you. And you believe that in simply being who they are, they contribute to the good of humankind and you like being around their energy.

I can honestly say that this is a quality I look for and attract in most friendships, yet, I’ve allowed its absence in many of my romantic relationships. As I’ve mentioned a few times recently, it’s our subconscious mind that is in charge of our instant biochemical attraction to someone.

As it is much more primal and in charge of our emotions, this allows us to become attracted to people who fit its definition of love, which is largely driven by what it felt like to be at home (in childhood) and be around our siblings and parents growing up.

Most of us experienced conditional love that has painful associations that then lie at the root of problems in our love relationships.  We might subconsciously form the belief that love hurts, that it’s a roller-coaster, or that it’s a chase. Or we might be conditioned to expect let down, or have low standards for how people show up for us in our lives. 

I always felt growing up that life is far more relative than the absolute rights and wrongs I was taught. And that those rules were shaping me into someone that was not entirely me, and pressing parts of me into an oblivion that I have slowly started to uncover and unravel as life has taught me some harsh lessons.

Often in romantic relationships I’ve perhaps unsurprisingly attracted people who also wanted me to fit their shape of what was right for them and – perhaps because I was used to doing it – that is what I often did. I still catch myself doing it at times and then I rebel in all sorts of covert ways, maybe in being overly analytical, psychoanalyzing people and situations in order to understand and cope with them.

Not so long ago I found myself apologizing to a friend who, in other circumstances, may have been more of a romantic relationship. But I had found myself psychoanalyzing their situation uninvited and it was creating resentment. The truth was I was probably doing it because I had become resentful of the energy imbalance in the relationship; I was overinvested and insecure, giving too much, and trying to rationalise out the imbalance.

In other words, I was not receiving what I needed from the relationship so I was feeling that I was not good enough and doubling down my efforts to be more, do more, give more. All this instead of presencing my needs, taking the reaction to that as information about whether and how to proceed with the relationship, and recognizing that it was not good enough for me in the form it had taken.

Old habits die hard, but when I read that question and asked whether this relationship was good enough for me, I realised straight away that it is not, and the many ways in which I’d given away my own boundaries in a repeat of the times previously when I’d unconsciously followed the same pattern.

This isn’t about assigning absolute levels of worthiness to individual beings, it’s about wherever they are/the situation is in relation to my priories and needs. We are all different and inherently worthy, it’s simply about finding a match rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I have to say, relationships are both an art and science, and they can’t be forced. It would be like forcing a flower to open, destroying its beauty in the process.

Yes it is hard to walk away from something that is a part match, because those parts that are compatible and do feel good are alluring for a time. But as Glennon Doyle says, once we imagine more for ourselves there is no going back; to stay is to become bitter and sick and live in quiet desperation.

This is as applicable in romantic relationships as it is in a career, or any close friendship or relationship. If I haven’t been clear about what my needs are, that is down to me to presence them, but understanding that it is no one’s duty to meet them, that is their choice.

I am now committed to a path where, if I’ve presented my needs, and that situation or person cannot or will not meet them, then it is up to me to reposition that relationship accordingly (for example, a potential mate may become a friend or an acquaintance, a potential career may become a short consulting assignment etc) or walk away.

So ask yourself, if you worry about what others think, whether you will or have upset someone, whether the work you have done is or was or will be good enough, whether you are, in fact, good enough in yourself, what covert ways do you go about getting your needs met? And how does this usually work out for you? Perhaps it is time to turn the tables and ask yourself that question: is this (person/situation) good enough for me?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy  I Am Enough, Trust That It’s Absolutely Okay to Not Know Where You’re Going, How Do You Know When You Are the Best and Highest Version of Yourself?, Which Dimensions of Compatibility Are Most Important to You?  and How to Appreciate Our Differences Enough to Admire and Want to Embrace Them. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Having clear boundaries means that we are in touch with the healthy, loving part of ourselves to know what does and does not work for our higher good, and to choose accordingly.” ~Michael Mirdad

Over the last few years I’ve been doing a lot of work around boundaries, identifying my own needs, wants and desires and learning the skills of communicating and holding them in a healthy way. However, it wasn’t until my boundaries around sex were a bit challenged that I realised I had been unquestioningly operating from a paradigm of “sex belongs in a committed relationship” for as long as I can remember.

This paradigm had not resulted in good experiences or entirely healthy or fulfilling relationships. I twisted my priorities, compromised in ways that are not for my higher good across many of my needs and beliefs, shamed myself and tried to shape those significant others in fruitless attempts to fit “the whole of me” into this version of life.

Even if there was great sexual chemistry and intimacy, there was always other dimensions of me packed away painfully unable to fully express themselves, if at all, within the confines of those “committed relationships”. But there were also times when I found myself compatible with people in other areas and entered into a full romantic relationship with them, even although there really was no chemistry.

This was not a paradigm that allowed for free expression. It was constricting, there was always over-compromise and incompatibility.

I was brought up to believe that love was a feeling, one “you will just know when you feel it”. It turns out that “feeling” of attraction is a biochemical response, based on the neurobiology being wired through the years our childhood where our home life and relationships with our siblings and parents becomes our subconscious definition of love. For most of us this love was conditional.

This was reinforced in movies and TV, this mythical feeling seemed to have people do all sorts of major life changing things for love. So giving away parts of myself, not having all my needs met, wasn’t even a conscious concern, my biochemical reactions were running the show. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel the pain of having parts of myself locked away, it just meant I was used to that feeling, it felt normal.

Now I know the best relationships are the ones which are built on compatibility, and there are so many dimensions to that. It's far more than just whether you're friends and have chemistry, which is how I would have defined a good relationship up until the last few years.

Compatibility is multi dimensional, and there are a few models out there that attempt to define the various dimensions. But really we get to decide what is important and to what degree. These are things like values and beliefs, sexual chemistry, emotional intimacy, humour, interests, future goals, spirituality, affection, financial beliefs, how well you both contribute to the day to day routines and necessary functions of the home, how safe your nervous system/body feels around the other person, and even appreciating someone because you believe in who they are, regardless of what they give you, you like being around their energy.

I’m an ideas person, I have big ideas about the ways in which our world will evolve, and yet in very few of my relationships have I experienced people who “get me” in that way. Most often I was disregarded for my talents and capacity for ideas and steered more towards what I could bring to the table practically. I didn’t presence myself in that way, I was used to it, it was normal in my childhood home and the society I was brought up among. And that is just one way in which I’ve over-compromised.

In her first novel Amy Snow, set in the early Victorian era of high society England, Tracey Rees captures beautifully the kind of attitudes that perpetuated female oppression that were still evident in my own childhood; and still exist in many places in the world today.

The novel centres around Amy Snow, named for the bank of snow she was abandoned on as a baby. Amy was found by eight-year-old Aurelia Vennaway, the only heir of Lord and Lady Vennaway. It is through Aurelia’s stubborn wanting that Amy is allowed to remain in their home, brought up by the servants and despised by the masters. Aurelia, however, treats her as a little sister; she is Amy’s only advocate and becomes the light of her life and centre of her existence.

When Aurelia dies of illness in her twenties, the now seventeen-year-old Amy must leave her so called home and go on a journey of discovery to seek her own identity and place in the world. Aurelia has left her a trail to follow that exposes Amy to more people, places, ideas and ideals, giving her choices beyond her upbringing. It is through this journey that there are so many parallels with any of us who are making our way in the world – whether for the first time or starting over…again.

This paragraph, expressed by Aurelia’s mother – Lady Vennaway - captures something of the attitudes I was brought up regarding sex:

“She had loved every moment with him she told me. More than anything she had loved their coupling – in the hay loft behind the dairy! She felt her soul flood with light, so she said. I stopped her there, I would listen to no more. I had extensive experience of these things after all, and her suggestion that it could be enjoyable was obscene. Profane!”

But the young heiress had found her own way in these matters, despite not marrying due to her illness, and advises Amy posthumously through letters of a love affair she had:

“I pray for you that you might experience what I felt, when you are ready and the time is right. It was as soft and silky as the twilight and as luminous as the stars. It felt as though the whole world was ordering itself around me. I felt I were drinking him in through my fingers, palms, lips…absorbing every inch to store in my memory. There was a fever to it, Amy, that was greater than I could have imagined. It felt ancient. It felt sacred. I am still marveling, years later, at the wonder of it and that it is so forbidden.”

As Amy starts out on her journey she meets two very different men, one she falls in love with, the other she is rather duped by in a way that “offends her sensibilities”. Again, I could relate to this from the kind of men I was warned about growing up:

“Thinking of Quentin Garland’s shameless usage of me makes my skin crawl. I feel so horribly stupid when I remember all the moments that my instincts told me the truth and I barely noticed, so bedazzled was I by the elegant figure he cut. I felt honoured and validated by his attentions when I was in low spirits, when I felt like an outcast, yet it was all mixed up in a sense that something wasn’t right. My instincts whispered to me but my insecurities made me deaf to them….By what right did he decide that my life, my heart, my future might be employed to serve his interests! Despicable regard for humanity!”

One of the people Amy has met on her journey is the indomitable and rather formidable elderly Mrs  Riversthorpe. She sets Amy straight:

“Pfff, sensibilities! Amy, you were born into disgrace and have been treated as such most of your life… You’re a young woman travelling alone in a society that reviles independence in a woman, you invite censure and misunderstanding! You can’t afford sensibilities!

I was young when I was seduced by a scoundrel who abandoned me.. A similar thing had happened a few years earlier to another young lady of my acquaintance. She killed herself for the shame of it…Clearly I made a different choice, anyone who would rather be dead than disgraced s a fool…

That was sixty five years ago. They have not all been easy years, they have not all been pretty, and they were filled with trials, but they were my years – all mine – and no one can tell me I should not have had them.

I have been talked about, you may believe it. Many of the stories are true, and many are not. That is the way of it when you step outside the cage. But I will not deign to correct a single one of them. So here you are, you find me not respectable but powerful, which is a different thing altogether.”

I suspect we all need a Mrs Riversthorpe in our lives to set our priorities straight. Now that I have weeded out this limiting belief that was taught to me but actually doesn't belong to me, that sex has to be part of a committed relationship, I am on a different track. I have a different view of it.

After a long, hard look I’ve discovered that my own truth is as long as I feel like I can delight in someone - and vice versa - with reverence, then that is what matters most. There has to be attraction, desire and respect. 

I am sad that I allowed the oppression that “sex only belongs in a committed relationship” brought, instead of allowing myself full and free expression. But I am wiser now, softer, more relaxed and in myself.

This part of me says I need not commit myself to a relationship if it were to mean giving away other parts of myself, I am free to express those also, I just need to sit people at my table accordingly. The other part was an illusion, a constriction of society’s making, a mother trying to do the right thing protecting her daughter’s virtue.

But I was never flighty of nature, I was always as deep as the ocean, there was never any real need to protect. Instead it created alarm, stagnation, held me back. I know pleasure and I know pain, I am now free to choose the former where there is attraction, desire and reverence. There is sanctity and healing to be found here in the empowerment and full expression of oneself in the embodied form.

There has been grief that it has taken me so long to learn this, but also gratitude that I finally have. If I can borrow from Tracey Rees for one final quote as Amy comes to the journey’s end that Aurelia set out for her, and she burns her letters to ensure her secrets remain so:

“My own chronicles too I set alight, the pages that I have covered with heartache and memories… they flare and flourish and suddenly they are gone. I say farewell to that whole part of my life. I shed my misfortunes in the fire, they do not define me. And in this way I claim another blank canvas on which to paint my identity – and my future.”

What I have come to believe is that sex is sacred, it is ancient, empowering, healing and should be treated as such. But the only relationship I need to be committed to is the one with myself. What is your relationship with your sexuality? And is it one that limits you or does it set you free?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy  Should We Abandon Happiness as the Impossible Dream? Do You Need to Change Your Narrative Around Sexuality? Relationships are Just a Series of Moments – True Love Lies Within and How Do You Know When You Are the Best and Highest Version of Yourself? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I have spent many years of my career doing what others saw as useful in me, rather than what I wanted to do myself. The problem was I never really knew what I wanted to do, so I would just get pulled from pillar to post doing what others thought I would be good at.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, it certainly helped me discern what I don’t want, but it only narrows the field to a point where there are still more possibilities than I could ever explore. Now with the benefit of experience and hindsight I can see that what is most important, is knowing who I am and presencing that in the world, following any intuitive nudges I get about which direction to take next.

I always envied those people who knew what they wanted from early on. Right back to the days of seeing a career counselor at school, to choose which subjects to study, there were people who knew what they wanted and didn’t want.

That said, there was also a standard list of careers that got presented, as if life consisted only of these limited choices. The realms of teaching, engineering, railways, banking, office work and human resources were my heritage, and – in those days – technology was in its burgeoning stages as a brand new study option in higher education for those who felt called to computer programming.

None of it really inspired me, which is why I ended up with a bit of a “pick and mix” degree in science – which consisted of a range of topics from psychology (which I loved) to mathematics (which I hated and failed miserably at several times) to business studies (which I aced). To be fair I think I really only went to university because the infamous Margaret Thatcher’s government was funding higher education and it seemed easier to carry on than leave.

However, after a postgraduate diploma in human resource management (or personnel management as it was called back then), I finally entered the workforce proper. Along the way I had had many part time and casual jobs to fund my social life while I studied, and most of those were face to face customer service type roles in various industries.

But when I presented myself to recruitment agencies in the hope of finding something to get started, they saw my qualifications in human resources and wanted me in recruitment. Despite it having a heavy sales component, which I hated, I ended up working for three different firms in that industry before finally getting on track with something more me.

That period in my life was coupled with a huge amount of self driven personal development. I read my way through so many books of the era, which were really driven by the “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right”  (Henry Ford) approach, which emphasizes how much attitude determines success or failure. It also emphasizes having a goal (and thus assuming knowing what one wants to do) – which I didn’t.

I then landed a customer complaints management role and found that, while I was well equipped for the day to day practicalities from the various jobs I’d had through university, what I was really drawn to was driving change and transformation from the feedback that was received from customers. I ended up doing this on various projects on behalf of the owning group of the company I started in, and in industry bodies.

Along the way it became obvious that the people component of change is where my real talents and enthusiasm lay. I was involved in a number of large transformation programs across different organisations and industries, until eventually I became disillusioned by the constant changing tides of company ownership and shareholder focus, along with school playground type antics in the management structures that most often led to any meaningful change never really getting off the ground.

This came simultaneously with the intense years of birthing and parenting small children, which began the next huge phase of personal growth in my life. I realised that when up against the grain, it wasn’t enough to simply have a good attitude. Conscious awareness of thoughts, goals and such forth seemed very distant when in a place of chronic stress. What came to the fore were constantly self sabotaging patterns and so began the years of study on what causes those and how to overcome them.

This has been a deep dive into psychology, consciousness, trauma, relationships and human potential at a deeper level than ever before. And as my children are getting more independent I have been asking “what now?” Really I have felt no surer in some ways than I did sitting outside the career counsellor’s office when I was thirteen years old.

Of course, that is not entirely true. The journey evidenced by these weekly musings for the last eight years points to a thorough examination of life and how I show up in all my aspects. It’s compass has been pointed in the direction of revealing authentic desire versus conditioned responses. I take in information from the world around me like a sponge and use it like a game of warmer-colder where one person gives the other players directions to an object in temperature words depending on how close to the object they are.

I resonate strongly with Ross Caligiuri’s words “If you feel like you don’t fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one”. I resonated with Briana McWilliam’s words about how much I value talking about ideas versus issues of the mundane, and I resonate with so many aspects of the main character, who is a writer, in the latest Tracey Rees novel I’m reading.

Not that I see myself writing anything so Goliath as a book at this point, but to be able to explore and ponder ideas, yes, and in writing, yes, that is me certainly. And I start to wonder, do I need a name for what I want to do at this stage? Perhaps it’s only something I will see so clearly in the rear view mirror?

Like my degree at university, I like doing a bit of a pick and mix in life. I like learning new things about myself, the world and the way we all interact. I like pondering ideas and applying the thoughts in new ways, to new things. I love helping people and I adore the ways in which we can evolve and transform and how nothing seems to change day to day, but look back a year or two or twenty and the whole world has tilted on its axis.

I doubt a single moment has been wasted on this meandering journey of mine, each step leads to another, and sometimes there’s a sidestep, but it all adds up of that I am sure. It’s all useful and in the service of whatever I’m doing at the time.

I’m at the beginning of life’s most fun and productive years, those between fifty and eighty where a lot of the years of striving are behind me. The soil has been created, planted, harvested and dug over afresh. The question is what shall grow now?

I feel far more at peace now in my life not knowing where I’m going, yet surer of who I am and having the faith to trust that if I follow what feels right for me, I’m on the right path. That is the part that was missing all those years ago as I meandered, it was a journey of getting to know myself.

So what about you? Do you know yourself well enough to presence those parts of you in the world that you wish to put to use, rather than be swayed by someone else’s plans for you? How comfortable are you in following the serendipities and things that feel right? Can you trust that it’s absolutely okay to not know where you’re going?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Want to Make a Heartfelt Change to Your Career?, How Do You Know When You Are the Best and Highest Version of Yourself?, Who Do You Need to Become in Order to Realise Your Dreams?  and What Possibilities Can You Get Excited About Right Now in Your Life? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’ve been having some beautiful conversations this week on compatibility in relationships and some major insights into my own drivers and patterns that have – until now – led me towards some very incompatible partners.

As I talked about in How to Make Home a Happy Place Where You Are Loved, Supported and Encouraged, it’s our subconscious mind that is in charge of our instant biochemical attraction to someone. As it is much more primal and in charge of our emotions, this allows us to become attracted to someone who fits its definition of love, which is largely driven by what it felt like to be at home (in childhood) and be around our siblings and parents growing up.

Most of us experienced conditional love that has painful associations which cause the problems in our love relationships.  We might subconsciously form the belief that love hurts, that it’s a roller-coaster, that it’s a chase. Or we might be conditioned to expect let down, or have low standards for how people show up for us in our lives. 

Not appreciating any of this as I ventured into womanhood, my only guidance to the question “How do I know if I'm in love?" was that it is a feeling "you will just know". This was reinforced in movies and TV, and this mythical feeling seemed to have people do all sorts of major life changing things for love. So giving away parts of myself, not having all my needs met, wasn’t even a conscious concern, my biochemical reactions were running the show.

As I gained more experience in the mirror of my relationships, I started to define successful love relationships as having two components: chemistry and friendship. Even then, I ended up committing to relationships that really only ever had one of those at best.

I was pondering the definition of a good friend a little yesterday, and concluded that friendship is as subjective as chemistry, and dependant on our personal experiences and priorities. It can also be very multidimensional – like I may have certain fun friends, others to ponder my ideas and deep thoughts with, others to engage in certain activities with and so forth.

Last year when I was doing a course on Attachment Theory with Briana MacWilliam, she talked about the different dimensions of relationship compatibility. We looked at values and beliefs, as well as things like sexual chemistry, emotional intimacy, humour, interests, future goals and spirituality. Other dimensions were introduced that I hadn’t thought about before:

• Unconditional Regard – appreciation for someone because you believe in who they are, regardless of what they give you. And you believe that by being who they are they contribute to the good of humankind, and you like being around their energy
  
• Domesticity – how well you both contribute to the day to day routines and necessary functions of the home. Affection – the importance of physical affection, outside of sexual intercourse or behaviours
• Intellectualism – how much you like talking about ideas versus issues of the mundane
• Generosity – a willingness to be generous in the relationship and towards each other without feeling depleted, manipulated or taken advantage of
• Cultural influences – the impact of culture and tradition (and potentially intersecting systems of oppression) on you and your partner

And I added in a few of my own around financial beliefs, maturity (the degree to which we each take responsibility for our own reactions and behaviours, lean into any conflict and are willing to grow personally) and the degree to which my body/nervous system feels safe.

This gives me a much clearer picture, and also plays into that pondering about the definition of a good friend and the concept about where people sit at my table. It really all comes down to compatibility. And if I was going to live in the same house and share a life with another person again I'd want that compatibility to be high.

By the same token, there's nothing wrong with incompatibility if it's your soul's calling to growth, but I will attest it is often a painful way to grow. After 50 years of incompatibilities I'm grateful for the resultant lessons, but personally I’m happy to try out something more compatible now.

There are different ideas on dimensions of compatibility used in various approaches and captured in different studies, it’s worth doing a search to have a look through and see which resonate most with you if the ones mentioned here aren’t capturing your needs.

While Briana’s purpose was to make me think about what aspects in a relationship are most important to me, it is not a blueprint for a partner so much as an aide to look at the different dimensions of a current/possible partnership and get very clear on where I may automatically be giving parts of myself away instead of making conscious, thought out choices.

As mentioned, Giving away parts of myself is a concept I am familiar with in love partnerships. I had never thought of any of it in a logical way, it was just a case of following the feeling. The consequences, as Robin Norwood opens with in her 1985 book Women Who Love too Much:

• When being in love means being in pain
  
• When most of our conversations with intimate friends are about him, his problems, his thoughts, his feelings – and nearly all our sentences start with “he…”
  
• When we excuse his moodiness, bad temper, indifference, put-downs or problems due to an unhappy childhood and we try to become his therapist
  
• When we read a self help book and underline all the passages we think would help him
  
• When we don’t like his basic characteristics, values and behaviours but we put up with them thinking that if we are attractive and loving enough he will want to change for us
  
• When our relationship jeopordises our emotional wellbeing and perhaps even our physical health and safety
  

All these are things I have experienced and all are signs of giving too much, because what I am giving away is parts of myself, my own wants, needs and desires. When I looked at Briana's compatibility dimensions, and added a few of my own, and the degree to which each is important, it soon became clear just how much I'd been compromising myself in so many areas.

Especially when I look at things such as how much I enjoy talking about ideas versus issues of the mundane, and appreciating someone because you believe in who they are regardless of what they give you. Being an ideas person myself, while it's not so important to me to match with another ideas person, it is important that they hold my ideas in high regard.

And yet in very few of my relationships have I experienced people who “get me” in that way. Most often I would find I was disregarded for my talents and capacity for ideas and steered more towards what I could bring to the table practically. This is a reflection also of my childhood experiences.

That then got me thinking about what it might be like to be with someone with big ideas of their own, maybe a humanitarian type, or ecologist, someone with ideas and ideals about something bigger than themselves. I'd certainly love to be around more thinkers, movers and shakers who want to change the world.

I can see now that being led by that biochemistry in the past (which arises from our subconscious childhood wiring) thinking that's "love" and therefore make everything else work, really suppressed so many parts of me. Something I’m no longer willing to do.

So what about you, which relationships are regularly causing you to feel constricted and unhappy? What parts of yourself are you unconsciously giving away? And is it time to look more closely at the various different dimensions of compatibility and how important they are to you?  

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Let Go of Your Attachment to Your Feelings, Expectations and Beliefs, What Resentment, Frustration and Pain Have to Do With Your Boundaries, Draw Solitude Around You Like a Warm Blanket - Get To Know Yourself and What Do You Want From Your Relationships - Time to Take an Inventory? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was drawn by a simple exercise this week, when asked “What did it feel like to be at home (in childhood) and what did it feel like to be around your siblings and parents growing up?” The output of this is our subconscious definition of love, of what feels normal for “home”.

In her article on Why Relationships Hurt, Teal Swan says “If you really think about it, I bet you could come up with a description of what your perfect relationship would feel like. The relationship you consciously want would be unconditionally loving and supportive, intimate and fun. But no matter what you do, you can’t find that relationship. It’s like you are cursed. You keep ending up with partners who make you feel, unloved, unsupported, undervalued, unseen and stressed”.

She makes the point that it’s our subconscious mind, the one that is in charge of our instant biochemical attraction to someone, which is much more primal and in charge of our emotions, which only allows us to become attracted to someone who fits its definition of love. “For many of us” she says “home was a mix of good feelings and bad feelings, but it’s the painful associations that we have with home that cause the problems in our love relationships”. 

I have had a plaque up on my bookcase for a few years that says “Home is our haven, a happy place where we are supported and encouraged, a place where we are loved and can love” so I always knew what my perfect relationship would look like. But certainly going through Teal’s exercise and then looking back at the past and present relationships where there was/is emotional attachment, specifically the negative qualities, the truth of Teal’s premise quickly revealed itself.

She says that becoming aware of our emotional drives is the first step towards becoming vigilant about the partners we choose, and it clears up the confusion we feel in our current relationships by allowing us to see the dynamics for what they are. The more awareness we have about something, the easier it is to make changes according to that expanded awareness.

Recently I have been mentally and emotionally tussling over a close friend who really struggles to express their feelings about anything or anyone, they are what could be termed emotionally unavailable.

It is unusual for me to have friends like this, more often my friend space is the one in which I’ve always taken my emotions to be untangled and brought into awareness, especially close friends. However, this friendship involves some of that biochemical attraction and thus has the potential to be rather entangled.

As I have learned more about healthy boundaries these last few years, one of the key things that sticks with me from Terri Cole’s teachings is her concept of the VIP (very important people) area at your metaphorical table. It’s about placing people “at your table” according to the levels of trust, intimacy and attention they have earned.

Now that was a new concept to me. Family members and those people I had developed love relationships with (based on our biochemical attraction) were historically granted automatic access to the VIP area without any thought to earning trust or healthy boundaries whatsoever.

So it has been an interesting experience to review all my past and present close relationships through a lens of more conscious awareness of the painful associations I have with “home” that cause the problems in my love life.

Specifically a pattern that creates a familiar ache to me is that of attracting emotionally unavailable people. This involves me on a quest to get that person to trust and love me enough that they feel safe to express their true feelings. And then, rather contradictorily, I want those people to see and nurture the real me rather than continue to treat me as a well they drain in order to fill themselves up.

Another friend of mine, who also has a history of over giving in relationships and then left feeling, unseen, undervalued and disrespected, was also likening our love relationships to wells that we try to fill with our love and knowing so that ultimately we can finally see the reflection of our self in those waters i.e. that we are seeking validation through giving to others.

Whereas, being attracted to those wells because of their potential rather than the reality is like sitting on the edges, shouting down encouraging instructions towards the switches that will surely fill their wells, but they simply just flap around in the bottom like a fish out of water, and we pour our love in anyway.

In our conscious knowing my friend and I agree this is unrealistic, unfair and unnecessary because, when we need no one to fill our cup, we stop going to the well. There is no need for someone to do x so I can feel y. That's the point we say "this isn't a compatible match" and move on rather than trying to keep flogging the same looking for a different response.

My friend and I, deep thinkers as we are, also took this into the arena of the degree to which someone is self contained versus dependant on others. But we agreed that, in general terms, the human experience is designed for interdependence, we see ourselves relationally through others and are wired for connection and security in those relationships for our survival.

Her view is that healthy may look something more like “Unless I can see that your well is full and plentiful, I ask nothing of you, because I realise how unfair of me it is to show up in all of my ability to know, and expect you to reach the same knowing as me, so that I can drink from your well”. We both also agree it’s important therefore to fill our own wells rather than expecting someone else to.

For me this has been a journey of self awareness and self respect. Using my knowing to fill up my own well with commitment to self care (which translates in my life as things like regular meditation, swims, beach walks, yoga, reading and so forth) and self respect (which has been about increasing self awareness, committing to self growth, defining and learning to hold boundaries, and learning to pick and choose where – and if – people sit at my table). 

Consciously moving people to different positions at my table has been a process of deciding how much of my personal thoughts and feelings I share with them, how often I interact with them and in what ways, and – in some cases – stopping any interaction at all. This hasn’t and isn’t always an easy process, but it is necessary and empowering, it is what strengthens my new found self respect and self love which – ultimately – attracts more of the kinds of people I consciously want in my life and the home I wish to create.

So who is sitting in the VIP area in your life right now? Are they people who are draining your well and causing you pain? Or are they the kind of people who enhance your feeling of wellness, who amplify all the best parts of you and your experience? And what can you do today to start shifting towards that more positive dynamic?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy When Life Sends You Love Go Follow Your Destiny, You Deserve Kindness, Should We Abandon Happiness as the Impossible Dream? What or Who Reminds You of How Good it Feels to Feel Good? and Surrender to Your Inner Self.  To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.