How has the last year and a half affected your relationships?
With your spouse? Children? Parents? Co-workers? Clients?
Friends? Other family members?
Most healthy, happy relationships (except the unusual one in
which it feels like no time has elapsed when you reunite)
require maintenance, regular check-ins to see how you’re both
doing.
Otherwise, if too much time goes by, you could begin making
assumptions or projecting your biases onto them, “Are they
upset with me? Did I do something wrong? Why aren’t they calling
me back?”
My Husband, Steve’s, 46th Birthday Party (Aug 2015) From left to right first row (Angie, daughter Maddie, Steve, friend, Bre). Back row left to right (Niece, Sara, daughter, Chelsea, niece, Megan, SIL Theresa, and Mom)
I believe this is worth exploring because research backs me
up that Happiness = Healthy Relationships. We must invest
in them to have any sort of fulfilling life at all, to feel a sense
of emotional security and support.
Yet relationships are one of those important, but not urgent,
things that we humans tend to neglect until it’s too late,
because digging around in our hearts can feel messy; it can
dredge up aspects about us that we don’t want to see.
No one wants to go through life alone, and even if we’re in a
long-term, committed relationship, if we are disconnected from
our partner, it will feel like we’re alone and lost.
Life may feel fragile right now, tenuous. Having a few people
we can trust to have our back (and still love us even when
we’ve shown them our “not so pretty” side) is everything.
Do you have someone like this in your life? You really only
need 1 or 2 people who are loyal to you like this. It’s definitely
more about quality over quantity.
If you have people-pleasing tendencies, worried about what
everyone thinks of you and work really hard to maintain a
certain image, relationships may be tricky to navigate.
You may wonder who you can trust. This happens if we don’t,
on some level, trust ourselves or Life itself. We doubt our ability
to know who or what is good for us.
In addition, we have a tendency to take over-responsibility for
everyone, their feelings, thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. This
can begin to wear on us after a time.
When we realize we can’t control what others think of us
no matter how hard we try, it becomes frustrating. We may
even feel like giving up on relationships, and so we retreat into
our inner world even more to avoid their judgments.
In a sense, there is this innate drive to isolate in order to protect
ourselves. Look around. The world situation today makes it even
easier to cocoon ourselves. Who knows what people are thinking
about us? Even worse, they may be very forthright in a very
mean-spirited way about what they think about us.
People have become scared and reactive and in so doing, they
trample all over others who share a diverse belief. If we have a
differing belief from theirs, they make us wrong or different.
This is a relationship buster!
And let’s be honest. We do the same to them. We judge them,
even if it’s for judging us. We ask, “Are they in my camp of beliefs
or are they the misinformed on the other side?” This determines
how “safe” or authentic we can be in their midst.
Understanding all of this, I hope that you will be more gentle on
yourself than normal, because you can’t possibly control what they
think of you, and what they think truly isn’t personal, although it
sure feels like it is.
In addition, YOU are the main person who must have your back.
If you are loyal to yourself and give yourself the benefit of the doubt,
you’ll find yourself being much more resilient.
Then we can use the current happenings of the world as an opportunity
to get stronger and better understand how to navigate our personal life
and relationships.
Often when we feel like life or people have abandoned us and
that we can’t be our authentic self or don’t fit it or belong, it’s
because there is a part of us who rejects ourselves.
So what do we do? To prevent the pain and hurt that come along with
feeling rejected, we do the rejecting first. We abandon life by
not taking risks to open our heart to others.
We don’t trust others. I know this is true because I’ve done and
have been doing it. And I’m ready to change this because it’s
lonely when we feel disconnected from life. We certainly can’t
fulfill our potential and feel fulfilled.
There will always be people who don’t like us and will continue to
judge us. They don’t understand our experience of life because no
one else shares what YOU or I have specifically been through. No one.
We must accept this as a fact of life. Make peace with it. Stop resisting
it. It’s OK. It’s how it’s supposed to be.
If we want healthy relationships, we must heal from the grief and
unprocessed pain of our life experiences. We want to feel like we have
a fortress of protection around us so that we can go out there and
take risks and really love and live.
Let me help you with this. Check out two upcoming workshops I
am now teaching monthly on the first and second Tuesdays.
Reply to this email with any questions.
Confidently Navigate Divorce & Keep Your Kids Out of the Middle
Description: Gather with Angie and a few other women in this intimate setting online
for 90 minutes and put your painful divorce in the past and fast forward to
your next fulfilling chapter. You will have the safe space to express your feelings and
learn some tools to calm and ground yourself so that you can make the best
decisions for you and your kids from a place of strength and clarity. Note: this is
help 1st Tuesday of each month.
Click here to register for 10/5/21 at 5pm CT
Empowering Women Through Loss: Loss of a Loved One Through
Divorce, Separation or Death
Description: Gather with Angie and a few other women in this intimate setting at
her home and receive emotional and mental support to work through the trauma of
loss. Loss can keep you feeling in a chronic frozen state and not very motivated to
participate in life. Come into this safe for the opportunity to heal and talk real.
Angie has lots of tricks and tips up her sleeve to help you get to the core cause
of your pain, get relief, and replace old ways of thinking with empowering ones so
you can take steps to create your next happier chapter. Note: this is held the 2nd
Tuesday of each month.
Click here to register for 10/12/21 at 5pm
In Loving Support,
Angie Monko
(314) 422-6520
