I’m not sure if it is the beginning of a new decade, or post-Valentine’s Day, but so many couples are becoming singles now, it seems.
While grieving and healing and moving on, I always recommend making the most of this valuable time in between relationships to look back at what you’ve learned about yourself in relationship. Take stock to see how you can become a better partner and/or make better choices of partners for yourself.
Our psychosexuality begins developing the second we are born. It gets “programmed,” if you will, from birth. For women, our first “boyfriends” are our daddies (good or bad!), and for men, your first girlfriends are your mommies (still good or bad!). Further, teachers, coaches, peers, media personalities, and of course even strangers, all have an imprint on our sexuality. Dr. John Money calls this the “Love Map” – – that complex network of unconscious preferences, based on our childhood experiences and influences, that creates a template of our “ideal” lover or partner. Studying your Love Map allows you to clearly see how you got where you are: who you’ve been attracted to, and why. It brings the unconscious into the consciousness, which allows you to make positive changes and perhaps re-route. It explains why you are continually attracted to certain people, how your “type” gets defined, and why people tend to date and/or marry the same type of person over and over again. It also explains codependency, dependency, fear of intimacy, and “love addiction.”
Our Love Maps become very comfortable, simply because they are familiar. To the subconscious mind, there is nothing sweeter than homeostasis. Even when it a relationship is dangerous (dating an abuser) there is a “safety” in the familiarity. This is the basis of the adage: “The hell we know is better than the hell we don’t know.” For in the subconscious, it is impossible to feel safe when there is no precedent to draw from. So it draws from unhealthy precedents in the absence of healthy ones.
A great technique to employ if you want to study your Love Map is to make a list of all the people you’ve been in relationship with, starting in adolescence. Write down how long you were together, who ended it, and why. Be very honest. No one need see your Relationship History but you; so if you really want to have a breakthrough in your relationships, please be honest. When I first did this, I literally threw it across the room! It was very difficult for me to own it, yet it was a major breakthrough. It might be hard for you to look at this as well; this can be a difficult exercise, so do it when you are not raw from a relationship…..when you’ve had some time to heal and are ready to own your stuff. Once you’ve completed your Love Map, you will be able to write out what you’d like the next chapter to look like. So when you update this in a few years, it will have a happy ending.
Know that you did not create your original Love Map….it was done to you by seemingly random opportunities and life experiences. Yet you can become a cartographer of your love life going forward.
Happy Mapping!