Challenging Your Relationship Beliefs
Part of what keeps us going in our relationships -romantic, filial, and platonic- are core beliefs. These beliefs inform expectations and help create predictability. These expectations can also keep us stuck and keep our relationships from reaching their full positive potential. Today, we’re talking about how these beliefs develop and how you might challenge these beliefs should you find them becoming problematic.
Let’s get into these beliefs. I want to be clear here, oftentimes people are not talking about what their relationships beliefs are. These are not things that are often intentionally created. Rather, they are created through repeated experiences and, oftentimes, assumptions. These beliefs can include “knowing” how your partner will react to something or what they believe about xyz. It can include assuming what your partner or loved one wants or needs in a relationship. It can be an assumption of how this person feels about you. Our brains are constantly assessing and categorizing interactions and relationships and this is typically how relationship beliefs arise. Brains love predictability and the more predictability your brain can create, the more comfortable it is.
How might these beliefs be limiting? While predictability can be helpful (and like candy for your brain in the amount of joy it brings), these beliefs become limiting when you find they are not allowing your relationship to grow and change. Contrary to popular belief, we are constantly becoming and never quite arriving in our development as human beings. In doing so, our opinions may change, our skillset (especially around communication) may improve, and we may find ourselves open to ideas or concepts that we previously were not. When you holding fast to your relationship beliefs without checking in on them in an intentional way, you are stunting your relationship at the place where you developed these beliefs.
Now, I’ve used the word “assumption” quite a bit and most of us have been raised to feel that assumptions are a bad thing. They’re not always. These assumptions CAN be beneficial and help support propinquity. *Quick aside, propinquity is a state of close kinship and sameness. It has been found repeatedly that the idea of opposites attracting is in fact, not quite the recipe for lasting relationships and that “birds of a feather” do tend to flock together.* When mutual behavior has informed or demonstrated shared values, it can help a couple, friendship, or family feel closer. It also helps to put our brains at ease and allows for rest from the constant assessing. We can take comfort in “knowing” where our relationship stands and how others both feel about and perceive us. There can be security in this absolutely.
How does someone know if they need to challenge or address their relationship beliefs? If you find yourself internally butting heads against your own wants, needs, and desires, and the beliefs and expectations that have been placed on your relationship-it may be time to challenge these beliefs. This does NOT have to necessarily cause major upheaval and does not have to mean the dissolution of your relationships. What this does require is risk. Thinking back to our previous posts on risking, this would fall under the category of allowing your loved on to really know you. In the areas that you may feel internal strife, gently have a conversation with your loved one. “hey, we’ve always done things xyz way and recently I’ve been struggling with that. Are you open to a conversation around changing that?”. Or “we’ve always been in the habit of doing this, and I think I might need something different, what do you think about abc idea?”. It’s risky certainly, but just as you have grown and changed, there’s a very real possibility that your partner or loved one has also grown and changed. You might have held a belief that you thought was very important to your partner that actually isn’t a big deal to them and this has the ability to let you and your partner/loved one build a new relationship and be intentional about it.
If you’re feeling stuck and anxious about possibly needing to rework some of your relationship beliefs, that’s okay! Change is scary. Challenging beliefs that used to fit but may no longer fit, is scary! You are not alone in having some trepidation around starting this conversation. If you want to start a conversation around your fears and get some clarity on what doesn’t fit for you any longer, click the button below and let’s have a conversation.