The Role of Personal History in Love - Notes from episode 2
This is a bonus episode (5) where I discuss issues brought up in episode 2 of the Yearning Heart Podcast. In this short podcast, I address more deeply some of what Janice discussed when I interviewed her. I include: high drama relationships, self worth, looking at patterns of behavior, trust and safe relationships, the impact of family history on your relationships and developing new skills.
Takeaways
High drama relationships stem from a misunderstanding of love.
Self-worth plays a crucial role in relationship choices.
Understanding personal history can illuminate relationship patterns.
Healthy relationships require trust and security.
Boundaries are essential to prevent bad behavior.
The 'in love' feeling evolves over time.
Communication skills are vital for relationship growth.
Reactivity in partners can create challenges.
Recognizing different growth paths is important.
Learning to pick battles can improve relationship dynamics.
Chapters
00:00Understanding High Drama Relationships
08:15Navigating Relationship Dynamics
Transcript
Jennifer Lehr (00:03.47)
So These are my notes on episode two of the Yearning Heart podcast with Janice. And in this conversation, Janice shares her transformative journey through relationships, and she's brought up a number of really valuable insights and things that are worth looking at more closely. So why do we get in high drama relationships?
It means that we don't understand what love is and as the saying goes, we're looking for love in all the wrong places.
Jennifer Lehr (00:40.782)
Generally, high drama relationships are not safe and secure relationships, which is the kind of relationship that you can lean back into and relax and feel protected and heard. And ultimately, that is the goal for most of us of relationships, probably not everyone.
Jennifer Lehr (01:04.836)
So high drama relationships are often fueled on this desire that the other person will make you feel whole. And that is why we put up with the ups and downs because the ups feel good and the downs, but the downs do not feel good.
And when you're in a high drama relationship, it often indicates low self-worth, at least in that area, the area of relationships, the area of being valuable to another person.
the area of being valuable to another person.
Jennifer Lehr (01:45.641)
So for example, if you were to fall in love with someone who is unreliable,
Jennifer Lehr (01:53.73)
It would indicate that you find your connection with that other person more important than your connection with yourself and your groundedness within yourself.
Jennifer Lehr (02:06.026)
And so you would be willing to go on a roller coaster with that person, a roller coaster ride with that person as they, you know, did things that elated you or did things that really were disappointing or crushing to you.
Jennifer Lehr (02:24.132)
And this causes difficult situations because high drama often means fighting. It means struggling. It means that something is out of whack.
Jennifer Lehr (02:42.83)
Something isn't working.
The hope of course is that these difficulties and challenges will cause you to want to change to want to grow to figure out what isn't working why have you attracted this kind of person into your life.
to help you want something different, to want a better connection with yourself so that you make better choices.
Jennifer Lehr (03:13.696)
Ultimately, it means you want more self-worth and you want a different kind of relationship.
Jennifer Lehr (03:22.926)
This also means the need to develop better boundaries. Where you stop boundaries, where you stop putting up with bad behavior.
Jennifer Lehr (03:37.277)
and that you will come to understand what real love is.
Jennifer Lehr (03:48.494)
and that you will come to understand what real love is and that building trust is more important than that in love feeling. Now, I'm not trying to get rid of the in love feeling. You want that in love feeling, but you also want to have it with someone you can build a safe, secure, and trusting relationship with.
Jennifer Lehr (04:09.028)
Janice also talks a lot about her history and we often don't explore our history enough and the impact our history has had on our relationships. So have you explored your history? Do you know why you're picking the kind of people you're picking? Do you know how your history is impacting how you relate to your partner?
Jennifer Lehr (04:37.294)
How did it impact you if you saw one of your parents sacrificing, basically being a martyr, and the other partner sort of accepting it all and being the one in control, being the one who deserved to be treated a certain way? Whereas, you know, that kind of watching that stuff, you might not know consciously how it affected you, but for sure, it affected you unconsciously.
And often people model themselves after one parent or the other, depending on how they interpret what happened and how they feel about it. So you might be a kid of those parents and you might think, I don't want to be selfish like my, let's say father was, I want to be more giving. Or you might say,
I don't want to give up all my needs like my mother did. And you might not do this consciously. So then you're picking people that fit into that formula and you don't know why you're getting the people you're getting and why your relationships aren't working.
Jennifer Lehr (06:00.438)
Another example would be growing up in a family with lot of anger and you might decide anger is dangerous and you're getting rid of anger period, including healthy anger that allows you to protect yourself, defend yourself. Or you might decide that anger is important because that's how you can get what you want or control someone or feel safe because you're not the one being bullied.
And that again has a lot to do with our unconscious perceptions, how we make sense of the story going on in our family, what we internalize, and it completely affects who we become. So this is why looking at our history and understanding how we were impacted by our history is so incredibly important, not just in picking partners, but in navigating through our relationship. Because when we navigate through our relationship,
We are using these ideas and tools and patterns that we've developed and we might not, we need to be able to sort of dissect them and go, I need more anger. I just don't want to use it in a bad way or I'm really not giving my partner equal, fair space for them to protect themselves in or express themselves in because I'm monopolizing.
the energy of this relationship with my anger and controlling it. So these are things that have to be unraveled and understood to really go deep and develop a better understanding of who you are, what you want, how to navigate through the challenges of a good relationship.
Jennifer Lehr (07:47.732)
Janice also talks about how her marriage works because she picked a good partner. After ups and downs and difficult relationships, she finally found someone who would have been good partner. And even though she didn't fully trust that it was going to be okay, she went with it. She picked someone who was trustworthy. So relationships make us learn and grow.
The challenge of relating to a completely different human is immense. Again, look at the histories. We have different things going on and you take these two different worlds and try to combine them. There can be a lot of friction.
Jennifer Lehr (08:33.764)
So the love feeling will sooner or later subside. Our actual chemicals in our body change. The dopamine becomes more oxytocin, becomes more oxytocin. So the high starts changing to like the cuddle hormone. And when assuming we have a safe trusting relationship. So what happens when the in love feeling starts to fade?
the challenges feel insurmountable sometimes. And that means that we need to develop new skills, new capacities to deal with these new challenges if we want our relationship to grow and thrive rather than collapse and disintegrate.
Jennifer Lehr (09:23.652)
So for an example, one person's reactivity might be really difficult for the partner who pushes away his or her feelings. They can't deal with reactivity. They can't deal well with reactivity. Or they might be someone who doesn't want to make waves and they also don't have a good skill set at dealing with reactivity. They don't know what to do, how to navigate through that.
Jennifer Lehr (09:54.142)
So how do these two people get through this? And there are...
The skills needed include
Jennifer Lehr (10:05.806)
learning to communicate differently instead of fighting.
understanding that we may each have a different growth.
Jennifer Lehr (10:16.98)
learning not to take things personally and instead seeing the other person as not perfect and giving them some grace around.
Picking your battles.
Jennifer Lehr (10:34.398)
These are some of the things that came up for me in episode two with Janice in the Yearning Heart podcast that I wanted to sort of bring out and open up a little bit. And I hope you found this.