Counselling

Couple Relationship: “You are not the person I thought you were!”

In an ideal world, we would enter into healthy, trusting relationships feeling complete within ourselves and our relationshipswould be a vehicle for developing our sense of self. In reality, our upbringing, beliefs and previous experiences may leave us feeling less than whole and we can mistakenly believe that our happinessrests on finding another person to plug the gap and solve our problems.
When we fall in love, we often generate an internal ideal image of that person; this representation is a construction of fantasy,based on our own values, beliefs and the way in which we perceive the world.
We unconsciously expect the other person to behave in a way which is consistent with the internal representation we havecreated; that on its own is recipe for disaster because no matter how good a person is, they will never match our fantasy. Relationship difficulties start when we are not able to let go of the iconwe hold and have unrealistic expectations from the other. Statements such as “you should” or “you shouldn’t” are signals that we are holding onto our internal script and the other is not complying withit. If we say: “You are not the person I thought you were!” and we are not victims of foul play, it is not really an accusation but an admission of our idealism and failure to adapt to reality. Inreal life though, we don’t always have the “emotional coolness” to analyze all of the above. We just get upset and frustrated with our partner, which starts a vortex of blaming that often results indeep crises or breaking up. Keeping in touch with reality is an adult “thing” and this is why it is so much easier to fall in love when we are young, because romance and idealism rule.
My best adviceis never to lose that internal youth that helps keep us fantasising about our “prince charming” or “damsel in distress”; just be kind, appreciative and non-judgemental that will allow us to...