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Posts tagged with “relationships”

How Highly Sensitive People Can Feel More Fulfilled in Their Relationships

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“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

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“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,

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When It’s Time to Let People Go: How I’ve Lightened My Emotional Load

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“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 …

Unconditional Love Doesn’t Mean Unconditional Acceptance

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When the People We Love Shut Us Out: What I Now Understand

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“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

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What Makes a Relationship Perfect

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Caretaking Your Sensitive System for More Love in your Relationship

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“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 …

If You’re Always Having to Be the Bigger Person

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Overcoming Codependency: Breaking the Cycle of Unhealthy Relationships

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“A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.” ~Melody Beattie

From a young age, I felt insecure in my own skin. I was a highly sensitive child and, subsequently, struggled with low self-worth for most of my life.

Although I had many friends and a good family, I consistently looked for approval outside of myself. I grew up believing that the opinions of others were the only accurate representations of my core worth.

As a teenager, I witnessed the crumbling and eventual demise of …

How Following Our Instincts Now Can Protect Us from Pain Down the Line

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“There is a voice inside of you that whispers all day long, I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong. No teacher, preacher, parent, friend or wise man can decide what’s right for you. Just listen to the voice that speaks inside.” ~Shel Silverstein

Some time ago, a guy I knew suggested I go swimming with him and a friend of his. I accepted.

I didn’t know him well. Sometimes he would say hello and be warm, while other times he would ignore me. Since he was a longtime friend of a girl I knew, …

You Deserve Someone Who Can’t Wait to Talk to You

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How Boundaries Help You Stay True to Yourself (And Two Practices to Try Today)

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“The more you value yourself, the healthier your boundaries are.” ~Lorraine Nilon

I want to talk about the direct correlation between boundaries and self-love. Because when we truly love ourselves and have a healthy self-worth and self-concept, setting boundaries becomes a natural extension of that.

Without boundaries, we either become walled off and protect ourselves from others, which creates a sense of deep isolation and loneliness, or we become enmeshed with others. We often find ourselves living on their side of the street, working overtime to manage, fix, caretake, or be needed by them, all while neglecting ourselves and our …

Are You Outgrowing Your Family? 6 Effective Ways to Manage This

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“You can’t force anyone to value, respect, understand, or support you, but you can choose to spend time around people who do.” ~Lori Deschene

I always felt somewhat different from my family growing up.

I didn’t have a terrible childhood—I was certainly loved, cared for, and looked after—but despite having two siblings, a mother, and a stepfather (who raised me), I seldom felt a sense of belonging and often times I felt very lonely.

Growing up I could never quite put my finger on what it was that was different, but I just knew that I was. I knew …

Why I Don’t Regret That I Didn’t Walk Away from My Relationship Sooner

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“The butterfly does not look back at the caterpillar in shame, just as you should not look back at your past in shame. Your past was part of your own transformation.” ~Anthony Gucciardi 

Before I finally grew the courage to walk away from my boyfriend, I contemplated walking away many times.

There was the time that he had ghosted me for a week without communicating that he needed space. Then after promising me a timeline for telling his mom about me and our relationship, when the time came to do it, he made up another excuse. And there were …

Temporary People Who Taught You Permanent Lessons

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Why Relationships Matter Most: We’re All Just Walking Each Other Home

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“We’re all just walking each other home.” ~Ram Dass

Living in the hyper-individualist society that we do, it’s easy to forget our obligation to those around us. Often in the West, we are taught to prioritize ourselves in the unhealthiest ways, to ‘grind’ as hard as we can to achieve wealth and status.

We are taught, between the lines, that our first responsibility is to create a ‘perfected‘ version of ourselves to such an extreme that it is alright to forsake our relationships with others to accomplish it.

From day one, it is embedded in us that it …

Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

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“I always wondered why it was so easy for people to leave. What I should have questioned was why I wanted so badly for them to stay.” ~Samantha King

Do you feel afraid to speak your truth or ask for what you want?

Do you tend to neglect your needs and people-please?

Do you have a hard time being alone?

Have you ever felt panic and/or anxiety when someone significant to you left your life or you felt like they were going to?

If so, please don’t blame yourself for being this way. Most likely it’s coming from an …

Your Relationships Improve Drastically When…

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Why I No Longer Chase Emotionally Unavailable People, Hoping They’ll Change

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“Never chase love, affection, or attention. If it isn’t given freely by another person, it isn’t worth having.” ~Unknown

We met at a bar with Skee-Ball and slushy margaritas for our first date.

She was gorgeous. I noticed that as soon as I walked in. I still wasn’t sure whether we’d have anything to talk about though. The messages we’d exchanged had been minimal.

It turned out we did.

Conversation flowed from one topic to the next—meandering from her passion for biology in college to how I tried to master mountain boarding at summer camp as a kid to …

Healthy Relationships Aren’t Always Glamorous

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