Posts tagged with “relationships”
11 Simple Ways to Nurture Meaningful Connections Offline
“Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.” ~Gretchen Rubin
We live in truly extraordinary times. Where once letters and telegrams took days to reach the other side of the world, we can now send messages and emails at the push of a button; and social media has allowed us to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, helping us learn, grow, and aim for the stars.…
Healing Anxious Attachment Patterns to Create Space for Love
“Anxious attachment stems from a deep sense of inner instability where old wounds make people anticipate that they will be abandoned again and again.” ~Jessica Baum
I have recently met the love of my life. Yay!!! He is the person I’ve been imagining for as long as I can remember, hoping and praying that one day I would find him.
It took such a long time that I began to suspect I was delusional for imagining that such a love was possible, and I almost gave up on the idea of him. But now he is here, and we share …
Why You Don’t Need Many Friends to Be Happy
“Introversion—along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness—is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.” ~Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
I’ll be honest, I don’t have many friends.
And it’s something I’ve always felt a level of shame about.
In fact, I recognize it’s a self-limiting belief I’ve been carrying around since secondary school: I don’t make friends easily or have a big circle; therefore, I’m unworthy or there’s something wrong with me.
That’s not to say I’ve never had friends. I’ve had friends from childhood …
The Closure in Accepting That They May Never Change
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to understand is that closure comes from within. Especially difficult if you’ve been betrayed by someone you love because you feel like you gotta let them know the pain they caused, but the peace you seek can only be given to you by you.” ~Bruna Nessif
Many years ago, I wrote a very personal post for Tiny Buddha titled Get Past It Instead of Getting Even: Revenge Isn’t Winning.
The post described the challenges I experienced with my parents as an adult and, ultimately, my decision to cease all relations with them.
5 Big Lessons I Learned After Losing a Legacy Friend
“You can’t force anyone to value, respect, understand, or support you, but you can choose to spend your time around people who do.” ~Lori Deschene
There’s a term in IT called “legacy systems.” These are computer systems that are ancient and abysmally outdated yet are kept around because organizations have centered some of their operations around them.
The exercise to replace a legacy system is challenging and possibly even painful because of the interwoven network of dependencies placed on these systems—but it’s not impossible.
The benefits of replacing a legacy system with one that is aligned with the current operational …
How to Break the Cycle of Painful, Dramatic Relationships
“No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.” ~Brad Meltzer
Had you asked me five years ago, before my healing and personal growth journey began, if my upbringing and childhood wounds were shaping the choices I was making in relationships, I would have scoffed at you and said, “No way. Are you kidding?”
Somehow, I had normalized the dysfunction I grew up in: the absentee father, the mother with mental illness, the lack of stability and safety, the enmeshment and codependency, the attachment wounds that left me spending a lifetime searching for someone or something to …
How Highly Sensitive People Can Feel More Fulfilled in Their Relationships
“Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.” ~Swami Vivekananda
Highly sensitive people naturally bring some really beautiful, love-promoting qualities to their romantic partnerships. But these same qualities can sometimes end up undermining the strength of their relationships. This was true for me in my first marriage and led, in part, to it ending in divorce.
We HSPs are known for our caring, conscientious, and considerate natures. It matters deeply to us that we do our best to be loyal and caring in our relationships.
And because we tend to have high …
How to Overcome Relationship Conflict with the Internalized Other Practice
“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” ~John Steinbeck
In the early stages of my relationships, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the other person was thinking. Hours of pondering whether they liked me, over-analyzing every text message, and worrying that every fight meant it was over.
Over time, in a good long-term relationship, these challenges settle down. While longevity is not the only marker of a successful relationship, feeling safe and comfortable with someone over a decent stretch of time is undoubtably lovely. All those fear-based worries and insecurities fade,
When It’s Time to Let People Go: How I’ve Lightened My Emotional Load
“Love yourself enough to let go of the people, thoughts, and habits that are weighing you down.” ~Karen Salmansohn
More than a year ago I started unpacking and cleaning out my ‘backpack’ of life in a different way.
I have always tried to remain friends with exes, and even though we didn’t necessarily socialize together, there was still the odd keeping in touch, helping them with a favor, or “Happy Birthday” text.
While most of them are generally nice people, the truth is that if I never dated them, I probably wouldn’t be friends with them now. We’re just on …
When the People We Love Shut Us Out: What I Now Understand
“Have patience that is all unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written like a foreign language.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
I started thinking about a distant relative on a walk in the woods. I had thought about her more often when she suddenly stopped speaking to our family, well over a decade ago. I would reach out to her through email, but after not hearing back over the years, I thought about her less and less and eventually stopped trying to connect with her.
On this particular walk, I began to
Caretaking Your Sensitive System for More Love in your Relationship
“Sometimes you’ve got to look straight into the tired eyes of the woman staring back at you in the mirror and tell her that she deserves the best kind of love, the best kind of life, and devote yourself to giving it to her all over again.” ~S.C. Lourie
I learned the hard way that in order to have an intimate relationship (and life) that feels deeply satisfying, nourishing, and fulfilling, highly sensitive people (HSPs) need to attend more to their emotional well-being than non-HSPs.
Before I knew I was highly sensitive (which is a normal trait …
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