Love, Care, Trust & Respect 1540371662, 9781540371669

Table of contents :
Introduction
Reclaiming Relationships
Are you treating you with love, care, trust and respect?
Are you experiencing love, care, trust and respect?
Resources
Acknowledgements

Citation preview




BAGGAGE RECLAIM Published by Baggage Reclaim, the trading name for LueSim Ltd. This edition first published in 2016 
 Copyright © 2016 Natalie Lue Natalie Lue asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this Work. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Cover design by Louise O’Kane, lulacreative.co.uk

ISBN: 540371662 ISBN-13: 978-1540371669

www.baggagereclaim.com


Introduction


IT’S SO CONFUSING Some people have had sex on the first date, only to never hear from the person again, while others have gone on to have a relationship and may even still be together. Some have waited several weeks/months or abstained until marriage and progressed to a loving relationship while, for others, the relationship fizzled out after sleeping together, or a multitude of problems were exposed. Some women (myself included) have called a guy after a first date and gone on to enjoy loving relationships and others got tumbleweeds. Some couples committed to the long haul within a few months and are still happily together and some decided after a few years and have broken up. There are lots of dos and don’ts about dating and relationships and they all pretty much come down to answering one question: ‘What should I say/do (or not say/do) in order to influence or even control that person into giving me the relationship I want?’ A rule that works in some situations doesn’t work in many others and so-called rules are ultimately there to stop us from having to think ‘too much’, but also to create guilt and anxiety when we misstep. Rules mask our lack of confidence, but they also hide our fear of vulnerability, intimacy and uncertainty.

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THERE’S NOTHING ‘WRONG’ WITH YOU Many people devote themselves to searching for the magic formula for relationships. They hunt for a blueprint that they can follow step by step and be assured of a successful outcome. They rely on rules, assuming that if they do X the other party will do Y and it will lead to Z (the desired outcome). As any person who has ever scratched their head in confusion, hurt and resentment over disappointment and rejection can attest to, this isn’t how life or relationships work. People break the socalled ‘rules’ all the time, possibly because they were never following them in the first place. When our relationships don't work out or we feel hungry, or even malnourished, despite us being in love or believing that this person ticks our boxes, we wonder, ‘What's wrong with me? Why am I never enough?’ or even, ‘It's not fair. I've done everything right!’ We retrace our steps, ruminating over the situation and, even if we continue to invest time trying to steer things our way, we eventually form the conclusion that it's us who is the problem. We compare ourselves to others and wonder why they’re in a relationship, especially if we think that they’re similar to us or that they’ve been too ‘naughty’ to have ‘earned’ love.

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A RELATIONSHIP IN A BOX Trusting our judgement and discerning what’s in alignment with our own values is tricky when we don’t know ourselves, or when we’re convinced that decent partners are in short supply and that being in a relationship trying to make them (or us) change to make it work is better than being single or trusting us to be in a relationship that’s not forced. We’re afraid of making the ‘wrong’ moves and that someone with the ‘right’ ones will snag this secret prince/princess. We fear missing out. We’d love a crystal ball to tell us whether it’s worth our time, energy, effort and emotion to invest. It’s like, ‘Can’t you just tell me when this is going to end?’, and wondering, ‘But what if I trust now and then it goes belly up in the year 2045?’ We want assurances that everything will be OK and that we won’t ever hurt or even struggle. We attribute our pain to us having failed to follow a rule in the past, so we feel perpetually guilty and afraid, especially because we still keep trying to figure out the rules to ‘get’ love. We lose faith and compassion, resigning ourselves to settling for far less than what we need or deserve in depleting relationships, writing off loving partners, or even writing ourselves off and avoiding relationships altogether to protect ourselves. We end up losing ourselves in our quest to gain someone else. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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THE RULES DON’T WORK If meeting a partner with whom you can co-create a mutually fulfilling loving relationship or nurturing and growing an existing relationship is high on your priorities, it’s time to throw out your internal rule book and get conscious about any external rules that you’re picking up and following. If you’ve carried the same baggage, beliefs and behaviours into each of your dating and relationship experiences and wound up with same person, different package or kept coming up against variations of the same problems and yet expected different results, the way that you see the problem of ‘getting’ a relationship and being a partner is the problem. The rules don’t work, they just make you hurt. They’re a pattern trap that’s not working for you. Using assumptions and these faux rules is setting you up for disappointment. It’s like getting on a train thinking that you’re bound for London Victoria and then getting mad when you arrive at London King’s Cross instead. No matter how many times you ride the rules train, it will not change the destination — unhappiness. You are and always have been worthy of love, care, trust and respect. It’s time for a change.

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Reclaiming Relationships 


IT TAKES TWO In order for a relationship to have a chance of going anywhere good, it needs to be mutually fulfilling. This means that it needs two people with a shared out-in-the-open agenda who prioritise similar things, which, in turn, means that the relationship they co-create generates happiness and satisfaction for each of them. There's no inferiority and superiority; there's no, ‘It's my role to be this, so your role has to be that'; there's no editing and shaving yourself down to capitulate to their agenda, or sacrificing to fulfil a hidden one. When a relationship is mutually fulfilling, it’s a loving relationship, not just in feelings, but also in actions and intentions. Each party is nourished by the relationship, not because one or both parties are hungry, or even malnourished, and so taking whatever they can get, but because each party knows how to take care of themselves and take care of the other at the same time. Mutually fulfilling relationships allow each person to become more of who they are, not less. It's not about one, but instead about both. The relationship becomes emblematic of each person feeling worthwhile and valuable, fostering the confidence to continue on together.

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THE BIG FOUR Mutually fulfilling relationships are that way because they are underpinned by four core values: love, care, trust and respect. These are universal principles that apply to every loving relationship, romantic and otherwise, and there are always some or all missing in every unfulfilling and unhealthy relationship. Love, care, trust and respect are the foundation and, while we don’t love someone as soon as we know them, living these values for ourselves, as well as within our relationships, means that we will not accept less than what we can already be and do for ourselves from others. We will be the thing that we seek.

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WHAT YOU PRIORITISE PREVAILS Prioritising the big four prevents being sidetracked by what we think are signs of one of these values, while sacrificing the presence and importance of another. Relationships don't just happen; they’re built on the consistent actions and intentions of each party. Feelings of something are backed up by consistent actions, mentality and attitude. It's a gradual and continual rebalancing that occurs due to each partner having to choose between love, care, trust and respect, or pain, fear, guilt, ego and stories. Two people coming from the same loving place do great things together. They co-pilot the relationship and navigate life's inevitables — stress, conflict, criticism, disappointment, rejection and loss. Even though they will undoubtedly each err and at times choose fear, they consistently return to the core of themselves and the relationship.

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THE 4 QUALITIES You might wonder, ‘Well, what type of partner embodies these values?' Based on how dating websites/apps are driven or the mental wish list and criteria many of us have, you'd be forgiven for having personality traits, interests, hobbies, their profession, height, how much they earn, their level of education, which religion or beliefs they claim and more on your list of musts for a romantic partner. Billions of us, myself included, have made our minds up in advance about what's attractive to us and this includes what we, on some level, believe makes a person more likely to be or not be certain things that we value or fear. In truth, what makes a loving partner (you know, one with whom you can create, forge and sustain a mutually fulfilling relationship with love, care, trust and respect), is that they have commitment to self, are emotionally available, they practise ownership (responsibility, integrity and maturity), and they have a positive outlook. No one can say that they're these things or indicate it with one factor, or present an image of it. They can only show it, and this takes time, experience and vulnerability.

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THE LANDMARKS Many people have believed that they're in a loving relationship with potential because they've met the friends/parents, because, to them, people only introduce romantic partners to their inner circle if they’re serious about the relationship. Others have assumed that their relationship has legs due to plans being discussed or intimated, because they associate talk of the future with emotionally available, commitment-desiring folk, not those who just want to get into their pants or who overestimate their interest or capacity to commit and be a loving partner. These are just two common examples of hallmarks that people rely on as an indicator of how much they should invest. What we learn through experience and, yes, disappointment which is the result of reality not living up to our hopes and expectations, is that we have mistaken our own perceptions of the hallmarks of a relationship for the landmarks — qualities of a relationship that are easily recognisable and that allow us to establish the location of it. Two people with the four qualities prioritising the four core values will build the landmarks of mutually fulfilling relationships: balance, consistency, progression, commitment and intimacy.

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HOLD UP A SECOND! You might be thinking, ‘But what about attraction and chemistry? I'm hardly going to be in a mutually fulfilling relationship if I don't fancy them, am I?' Taking an interest in, liking and desiring someone is what kickstarts every involvement but it only takes looking at your previous experiences or those of others to recognise that feeling attracted to someone isn’t evidence of you both having a great deal in common, never mind how capable they are of being in the type of relationship you desire. There’s this major trap that many of us keep walking into: we assume that who we experience attraction with is informing us of the type of person who we would experience happiness in a relationship with. The next trap is assuming that we have to have instant or very fast attraction or there’s no point in proceeding, which creates an unrealistic expectation that we should pretty much use our feelings to make us into psychics. We then spend most of our time trying to justify the attraction because we don't like feeling ‘wrong’ (even though all we essentially did was make a guess), in turn ruling us out from involvements where attraction builds over a time as a result of getting to know that person.

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ARE YOU ATTRACTED TO YOU? Attraction is necessary, as it distinguishes our romantic relationships from friendships and combined with chemistry, it’s the sum of how we connect and relate to each other. If you treat and regard yourself with love, care, trust and respect, who you experience attraction and chemistry with is entirely different to that of someone who doesn't consider themselves to be a worthwhile and valuable person. Why? When you lack self-esteem and it manifests itself as you believing that you’re ‘not good enough’, directly or inadvertently seeking out parental/caregiver replacements as your romantic partners, and repeating habits learned in childhood that keep you small, attraction and chemistry becomes a complicated, and downright painful, selffulfilling prophecy that validates your beliefs. Mutually fulfilling relationships don’t happen in the Groundhog Day of your uncomfortable comfort zone. If you want to be in a loving relationship, but who you’ve felt attraction and chemistry with has obscured that, it’s safe to say that it’s time to become more conscious, aware and present so that you can break that pattern.

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THE PURPOSE OF ALL OUR RELATIONSHIPS Relationships help us to heal, grow and learn. It’s through our relationships that we figure out what feels good and right for us, as well as what doesn’t. Each relationship, regardless of the outcome, offers a window into understanding what we need. It is only through our relationships that we gain the wisdom and insight to break patterns because, without these experiences, we would remain blind to where we need to adjust and adapt. We figure out what we want and who we are by discovering what doesn’t work and who we’re not. Sure, when we avoid relationships altogether or keep our heads in the sand, we feel ‘safe’ in our bubble where nothing is being challenged or we can kid ourselves that we’re making great changes in our thoughts without having to be vulnerable in our interactions with others, but it is only through our relationships that we resolve and heal the pain, fear and guilt that may run deeper than we think.

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THE OPPORTUNITY If you’ve struggled to create, forge and sustain loving relationships, these experiences have been cracking you open so that you can shed the emotional baggage that’s been limiting you and then truly show up for the loving relationship you desire and deserve. Relationships expose the pain, fear and guilt that we’re carrying around. These make themselves known, not because they want to make us feel bad, but because we’re being given a fresh opportunity to respond differently from how we did in the past and to gain an updated perspective, so that we can heal and move forward. Unfortunately, we tend to invest more of our energies trying to suppress, repress and reaffirm these feelings, beliefs and judgements than we do trying to declutter, feel and heal. The moment that we experience these feelings and think, ‘Uh-oh, here we go again!’, or we sense a real opportunity for change, we bolt, backtrack, act up, freak out, go into people-pleaseron-steroids mode and more. This emotional unavailability closes us off to the most loving experiences because we’re defending against vulnerability and being ‘back there’, blocking intimacy and other landmarks. Every relationship experience has been a stepping stone to not only the relationship that’s most befitting of you but also to the relationship where you will be most awakened to giving and receiving love, care, trust and respect.

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BLOCKED When you examine your emotional baggage (which affects you mentally, physically and spiritually), you will see that the unresolved and unquestioned beliefs, judgements, stories, disappointment, rejection, trauma, unmet needs, blame, shame, obligation, resentment and ’rules’, all boil down to pain, fear and guilt. None of us are exempt from emotional baggage but it’s the way that we carry it and what we choose to proceed with. Anything that stops you from creating, forging and sustaining loving relationships is a block. You might be more aware of the symptoms of the block than the block itself. Do any of these sound familiar? • Avoiding relationships or punishing yourself for previous involvement. • Feeling trapped in a dating pattern. • Toxic relationships. • Recurring complaints, issues, situations and fears. • Fear of abandonment, rejection, losing/gaining independence, or fear of loss and sacrifice. • Coming from a place of inferiority or superiority . • Taking up roles within your relationships and attendant habits including people pleasing. • Not owning your power. • Reoccurring feelings of blame, shame, resentment, guilt, sadness and anger.

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THE RELATIONSHIP BLOCKS We have a great capacity for love (just ask anyone with more than one child who worried unnecessarily that they might not have enough love to go round, or anyone who wailed, “I’ll never get over this!”, only to love again), but there’s only so much emotional baggage we can carry before it becomes a block, not just to loving relationships, but having self-esteem. This is good, because if we had the freedom to accumulate without encroaching on our quality of life, nothing would change. The relationship blocks are excessive fear, walls, seeking validation, roles, untruths, living in the past, guilt and grievances, controlling the uncontrollable, projection, and resistance to change.

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EXCESSIVE FEAR Fear is vital for alerting you to where you need to take care of yourself. Notifying you of a possible threat, when you don’t distinguish between real and imagined threats or between the past and present, plus you’re not quite sure what to expect from you from one day to the next, it blocks out love. It gets treated as the singularly most important or existing emotion when it’s on equal footing with all others. As a result, you have habits built around it which in effect are The Rules For [Your Name] Not Getting Hurt. These faux rules which always have shoulds and musts in them, are designed to protect you from a bigger future pain but, as they’re based on judging you based on a past version of you and they prompt unproductive or unhealthy responses to fear, you are in more pain from being afraid than you are from actual outcomes, plus, despite your efforts, the fear remains. Carrying excessive fear is like standing on the seashore with the soles of your feet in the water but acting as if you’re in the middle of the sea.

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WALLS Are you guarded after a negative experience that you’re still struggling on some level to forgive you for? Is your primary concern when dating or in a relationship about the possibility of getting hurt again? If so, you have walls and it’s because you fear the emotional consequences of trusting yourself and others, motivating you to limit intimacy so that you’re not ‘back there’ again, an experience from the past that you’ve vowed to avoid. Walls are often erected due to feeling that you screwed up really badly before and so now feeling that you’re not a safe bet or believing that people operate with ulterior motives and will ultimately screw you over. They keep people at a distance so that it won’t hurt as much if they reject, leave or disappoint. Frequently mistaken for boundaries, walls block, whereas boundaries filter. Blocking you from showing up for the joys of a relationship and from deviating from your comfort zone and being exposed to ‘new risk’, ironically, walls are a magnet for toxic people who enjoy the challenge of breaking them down while you mistake their intensity and persistence about doing so as a sign that you can trust them. Trying to ‘get’ love with walls is like substituting money with Monopoly money and IOUs for something you really want to own and enjoy but are too scared of something going wrong.

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SEEKING VALIDATION If you’ve ever tried to convince someone about you then you will be all too familiar with that feeling of becoming unconvinced about yourself. Seeking validation is the equivalent of being and doing things that say, ‘Tell me who I am. Tell me I’m worth it. Tell me that everything I say about me is true’ It only leads to pain, because it just reaffirms feelings of low self-worth. When you believe that you’re ‘not good enough’, you don’t believe that you’re deserving of the type of relationship that you’d really like to be in or that the person will give love willingly, so you seek validation and your relationships are used to hide your true feelings about you. The joyful feelings of being liked or liking, are often swiftly followed by the fear of losing it all. When they don’t live up to your expectations or things change, you stop feeling valuable and worthwhile. The trouble with relying on external factors to feel good about you is that, done often enough, you feel dependent on it even though it only provides temporary relief and masks the real problem. You can’t catch self-worth; it’s something you cultivate within.

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ROLES When you pretend to be something that you’re not and you do things, not because it’s who you are but because it’s what you’ve always done, what you think is expected, or what you think will ‘get’ you love or help you to avoid negative outcomes, you are playing a role, the function you assume within your interpersonal relationships. Being your true self takes vulnerability, so avoiding this via a role automatically cuts you off from intimacy. You often end up feeling more rejected and abandoned and it’s like, ‘I did everything right. I even tried to be just like you or your Perfect Woman/Man TM and you still don’t want me? I must be really unlovable!’ Your role(s) likely dates back to childhood because it’s what you learned to do to feel OK, to fit in to the family, and to get love, approval etc., but it’s holding you back and putting you in a child role, making your romantic partners the boss of you. Roles invariably lead to anger and disappointment because there’s an expectation of the part others ‘should’ play. When, for example, you people please and you’re not rewarded and still run into issues, it seems grossly unfair but you ultimately blame yourself for not being ‘enough’ and so it’s back on the hamster wheel you go. The thing is, you can’t be accepted for who you are if you’re never you for long enough that you and others would know and understand you.

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UNTRUTHS When something happened as a child that you didn’t like the look or feel of, you searched for reasons to explain it and made yourself the focal point of that reason even though it wouldn’t necessarily have had anything to do with you. You reached a conclusion such as, ‘It’s my fault!’, or ‘I’m not good enough/ loved’. Used more than a couple of times in situations you deemed to look or feel similar and, bingo, you had a reasoning habit, which has since been used many, many times in a host of situations that… it doesn’t apply to. At twenty-eight years old, I recognised that because I’d always blamed being not good enough on why my parents broke up when I was two, I chose unavailable partners who corroborated my beliefs. Repeating outdated, exaggerated, distorted and flat-out untrue beliefs keeps you small and stuck in patterns that are not serving you. We all act in line with our beliefs, which means that you have consciously and subconsciously altered your behaviour and choices to fit yours as a means of protection, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unquestioned beliefs and stories are behind all painful relationships. When we say that we desire a loving relationship and yet our pattern is something else, we have to look at what’s in between the two — the untruths. The funny thing is, our untruths represent double standards because we wouldn’t blame another child for the same thing, never mind another person.

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LIVING IN THE PAST Patterns occur when you’re living unconsciously and so, when you keep trying to right the wrongs of the past by repeating the same relationships and situations in an effort to create a different outcome and alleviate the pain, fear and guilt you carry from an earlier experience, you block love because you’re rear-facing. You can’t be conscious, aware and present. Living in the past also occurs when you stay in a relationship long past its sell-by date because you’re avoiding reality, or when you refuse to allow your perspective on you to grow, judging yourself on who you were in the past and then writing yourself off. Letting go can seem like a scary prospect, because there’s a security blanket and distraction in this habit and it might seem as if you can’t move forward until you have fixed something in the past, but the pain and additional fear and guilt comes from trying to undo or correct a past that’s already done, plus you are likely tasking you with responsibilities that weren’t and aren’t yours in the first place.

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GUILT & GRIEVANCES Is there a mistake or hurt that you keep reminding yourself of lest you forget? When you think of the words anger, disappointment, rejection, hurt, who pops into your head and are you surprised by the strength of these feelings? Guilt is about your sense of wrongdoing but feeling guilty and being guilty of something aren’t the same thing. If as a child, you were given or you assumed responsibility for other people’s feelings and behaviour, you will ‘over-feel’, making for painful codependent relationships. You invariably experience far more guilt than people who are actually guilty of something! To relieve this guilt, make up for the past and to also prevent it from happening again, you make more faux rules to protect yourself. Where there are ‘rules’, there’s also obligation, a sense of duty and doing things not because you want to but because it’s expected of you — yep, roles. This leads to resentment, because what you do doesn’t influence and control other people’s feelings and behaviour, leading to a host of negative feelings. Continuing to believe that you should have done things differently, that you’ve ‘made’ people do things or that you’re owed, keeps you stuck in the past and hogs vital resources, often compromising your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. In truth, you can’t keep planting the weeds of anger, blame, shame, resentment, etc., and expect a garden of love in its place.

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CONTROLLING THE UNCONTROLLABLE We love being in control. We’re afraid of uncertainty, not being liked, of not being able to handle something, and of being out of our comfort zone. As a result, we develop habits aimed at influencing and controlling other people’s feelings and behaviour and to also control our experiences so that we can feel safe, ironically leading to us feeling even less in control of ourselves, plus we often feel ‘safe’, albeit unhappy. Control is an illusion and trying to control the uncontrollable only offers temporary relief. It’s a self-depleting hamster-wheel activity because it acts as reassurance against doubts and fear… only for these to resurface like a game of whack-a-mole. If you’ve been trying to control the uncontrollable, it’s another form of self-protection designed to shield you from something from the past, but it just diverts vital resources to catering to fear instead of love. On some level, you’ve made a vow that you’ll never go through something again and then decided that the way forward was to do as much as possible to be in control, even to your own detriment, which invariably creates more feelings of helplessness, powerlessness and victimisation, which leads to more attempts to control, and lather, rinse, repeat. Of course the path to peace is taking command of yourself in a loving way, not trying to Jedi mind trick people or doing the equivalent of attempting to cup the ocean with your hands.

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PROJECTION If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship long past its sell-by date, or kept trying to go back and then felt aggrieved about how the other party hurt you and didn’t change, you’ve taken what you did and called it something they were doing to you. That’s not to say that they didn’t play a part, it’s just that fear of facing your own feelings, thoughts, actions and choices was being projected onto them. A similar thing happens when you’re self-critical and you imagine that people are thinking, feeling and saying certain things about you, when ‘their’ feelings and opinions represent your own opinions, or when you attempt to get your needs met by doing things ‘for others’ that in truth reflect what you need and want back. Anything that distances you from your feelings will block you from being available for a loving relationship, plus you run the risk of making yourself into a martyr, continuing to do something and sticking rigidly to rules and stories masquerading as principles no matter what the cost. If you don’t know where you end and others begin, you won’t know where fear ends and love begins either.

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RESISTANCE TO CHANGE It’s easy to believe that you’re open to change if you’ve tended to lose yourself in your relationships. All that morphing, blending and adapting to suit other people’s agendas though was really you catering to your beliefs about you, love and relationships. It masqueraded as compromise, love, and trying to please your partner [at all costs]. Relationship Insanity is carrying the same baggage, beliefs, behaviours and attitudes, choosing variations of same person different package or gravitating to similar situations, and then expecting different results. It’s Groundhog Day where a little voice inside says, ‘I told you so,’, and a part of you closes off, yet again convinced that you are indeed ‘not good enough’, or that it’s best to settle for crumbs, or to avoid relationships altogether. It might feel safer to keep trying to get others to take responsibility for loving and caring for you than it is to get to know and understand yourself so that you can do it, but that only leaves you with the option of ‘partners’ who want to take control, which isn’t love, so the pain would continue. Your old beliefs about you and your past only represents your understanding at that time, so not updating is akin to resisting feeling and living better. Don’t mistake trying to make things stay the same as a security blanket when it’s really a smothering blanket stifling your healing, learning and growth.

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YOU’RE A GROWN-UP NOW Whatever you’ve been doing to ‘get’ love or to avoid what you’re afraid of, it's based on you having come up with a set of conditions for being ‘OK’. Keep in mind that adulthood isn’t a giant-sized replica of your childhood, so habits designed for a small group of people or situations that cannot play out in the same way in adulthood because you have so much more agency and the freedom to choose who you want to be around and what you do and you don’t want to be involved in, become obsolete. And rightly so — they’re holding you back from being your truest, most loving self, and might be in some cases causing you to settle for less than what you need and deserve or stopping you from recognising and valuing loving partners. You’re not that kid or younger version of your adult self anymore. Addressing and overcoming present-day problems in evolved ways breaks patterns and heals the pain, fear and guilt from the past. Even though it might feel as if an issue is brand new and specific to a person or situation, your response to it and the lessons you’ll learn through the experience, reflect something from the past that’s waiting to be healed. Once you begin treating issues that arise as an opportunity to ‘clean up’ and become more conscious, aware and present, you will see that relationships offer profound opportunities for healing that propel you forward.

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FREEDOM TRUMPS BEING ‘RIGHT’ The aim of a relationship isn’t to show up doing what you always do. You don’t have a pre-defined role and you’re under no obligation to be the same person you’ve been previously if that’s cut you off from the things that matter to you most, causing you to get lost in your quest for love. Engaging with variations of the same person in different packages and using old habits to blame yourself, stops you from developing emotionally. Your associations, the connections you make with love, life, relationships and yourself, won’t get modified so, even when you want to change, it will feel ‘wrong’ to do so. The relationships where you will be happiest is where, regardless of their outcome, you are striving to be yourself and to be in the present instead of living in the past. If, instead of consciously or subconsciously seeking out people who represent hidden pain, fear and guilt, you seek to learn how to recognise healthy, stable, trusting connections, you heal, learn and grow. Letting go of your blocks and anything that isn’t serving you isn’t about making you ‘wrong’; it’s prioritising freedom and happiness over being afraid or the need to be right about something you’ve already decided. Decisions, including wrongful convictions, can be overturned. If a painful involvement has awakened you to the need to love and take care of yourself or to the need to address some issues from the past, that relationship has done its job.

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SOULMATE? Our most painful relationships are often where we experience the greatest growths. These people seem like soulmates and we fight against it not working out, but we may have needed these relationships for entirely different reasons. As frustrating, painful and even downright inconvenient as it might be, that person’s job is often to wake us up to the truth about something. When we’re still seeing things through the lens of our untruths, we see the undesired outcome as proof positive of our unworthiness. When we compassionately investigate why we wanted them so much and what was often this sense of feeling that we knew them almost instantly, we recognise that something from the past was activated and that as brilliant and amazing as the relationship might have felt at times, it was breaking us. That thirst to be the victor, to right the wrongs of the past, to capture a feeling and try to make it last forever, can turn us into someone we don’t recognise and who might even struggle to function. It’s allconsuming, which we mistake for love, often willing to ignore problematic factors because we want the dream. It not working out might feel like being abandoned as a child and, for a time, we might cling or even self-destruct, but when we are ready, we begin to heal.

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WATER SEEKS ITS OWN LEVEL If we’re beating ourselves up internally and believing that we’re not lovable because of what we inferred from our childhood experiences, it feels more familiar to be around someone who behaves similarly than it does to be around somebody who contradicts our interpretation. We have to start looking to contradict negative beliefs, not reinforce them, and one of the things that we can do to protect ourselves from continuing with toxic patterns is to recognise familiarity as a cue to wake up and be more boundaried.

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THE SOLUTION The antidote to anything blocking you from being in the type of relationship you desire, is love, care, trust and respect. You’re not going to magic up feelings or leap out of bed tomorrow declaring, ‘I’m healed! It’s a miracle!’, but you don’t get to feel, never mind live, this way if you’re not striving to choose the thoughts and actions. If being hard on you was the magic bullet, it would have worked by now. You can’t help the first thought that pops in but you do have a choice about what you heap on it. You can be conscious about being in alignment with your values. Our relationships begin before we’ve even met the person, so love care, trust and respect starts with us.

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WE ALL HAVE TO MUDDLE ALONG It's easy to assume that relationships are something that we should intuitively know how to ‘do’ or that relationships are ‘easier’ for those who’ve had an idyllic upbringing or encountered no problems in adulthood. We imagine the latter just fall into The Ideal Life™, using a VIP line that we can't. We judge ourselves by virtue of our background, appearance, mistakes, experiences and more, and draw the conclusion that if it weren't for these, we would be happier or that we would have the relationship or partner that we want. People who were raised in environments where healthy self-esteem and relationships were modelled by their parents/ caregivers can indeed enjoy a greater sense of what feels good and right for them when they reach adulthood but, the truth is, people who have selfdescribed ‘idyllic’ upbringings (or ones that we project to reinforce our own beliefs) experience the same problems as those who don’t — stress, criticism, conflict, rejection, disappointment and loss. That's not to say that experiencing abuse, neglect and trauma in childhood doesn't increase the likelihood of codependent relationships, trying to right the wrongs of the past and having low selfesteem, it's just that people who don't have any of these in their backstory do those same things too.

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UNLEARNING No one wakes up on the first day of adulthood understanding and knowing who they are to the fullest and with the confidence to create, forge and sustain healthy, loving relationships, romantic and otherwise. Adulthood is about unlearning all of the unproductive and, yes, at times, downright unhealthy lessons you’ve picked up and then figuring out and becoming more of who you really are. The wisdom and insight to not only choose a loving partner but to be that loving partner yourself, is only gained through experience. Beating yourself up for not having known how to make the right choices is like beating yourself up for not knowing what you didn’t know and for not having the ‘right’ previous experiences. Based on some of the dysfunction in my childhood, it was a given that I would need to go through subsequent experiences that would open me up to the truth and reject the pattern of the old stories, so that compassion could free me up to experience real love, care, trust and respect. Granted, there are times when you’ve erred and you’ve kicked yourself for having known what it is that you needed to be and do but then delayed on it out of fear, but, most of the time, you give yourself too much credit for being the architect of your own failure as if you have control over everything and everyone, and not enough credit for the journey that you travelled to each of those particular moments in time.

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ONE LOVE Love, care, trust and respect are the cornerstones of every loving relationship. These core values are interdependent — they have strong individual identities and where you have one you have the other. As they’re critical and non-negotiable in every loving relationship, you can essentially group them into one core value for living and loving happily and authentically, full stop. This means that in and out of a relationship, if we choose these values for ourselves, we reject fear and living a less-than life as a watered-down version of us. We choose self-love, self-care, self-trust and self-respect because we’re willing to increase awareness and knowledge of our needs, expectations, desires, feelings and beliefs so that we continue to evolve, but also so that we can make choices that are in alignment with ourselves. Once you know how these four work together and their absolute criticalness to your relationships, you will never again be sidetracked by ‘good points’ or the feeling of love without the actions and attitude.

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BE YOUR GUIDE Your values represent the preferences, priorities and principles that speak for your character and the direction of your life. They’re your decisions for how you want to live. The more mindful you are of what you prioritise and why, the less likely you are to start or continue relationships that are not in alignment with you, plus you won't overvalue anything that isn’t ultimately reflective of those core values. Without direction and purpose, your relationship has no aim. This isn't just a question of whether it's committed or casual; the direction and purpose is expressed through the individual and joint values and these are the backbone of every relationship, so make ‘em strong. Whatever a relationship’s doing or not doing, that all comes down to values. We love and are loved, care and are cared for, trust and are trusted, and respect and are respected in relationships with genuine compatibility—the ability to co-exist harmoniously because of shared core values.

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QUALITY ASSURANCE You might think, ‘Why not compassion, empathy, loyalty, equality or {insert another value}?’ If you prioritise love, care, trust and respect in yours and their actions, mentality and attitude, other core values are a natural by-product. It’s all too easy to home in on ‘good points’ or ‘good times’ and take one or a few aspects and call it everything. Next thing, we’re feeling listened to and assuming that this person is empathetic, or we’re charmed so we believe that they’re devoted, but yet other aspects erode trust and are disrespectful. Just ask anyone who’s ever been involved with a narcissist. We like the idea of thinking that we’re values driven but the one area where we are most likely to forget ourselves is in our romantic relationships. A whiff of potential, or even the prospect of rejection, can be enough to trigger uncharacteristic behaviour in people who might otherwise be some of the most together people we know when they’re on their own or at work or with friends etc. There’s internal pressure plus peer, familial and societal pressure about romantic relationships and that can prompt us to cut corners in a desperate move to fit in and avoid scrutiny. We also, quite frankly, sometimes don’t have a clue what being or doing something in actuality looks and feels like. Classic example: so many people mistake sympathy for empathy. The big four are quality assurance for doing everything else in the relationship.

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LOVE To love someone is to know and understand them. It takes time and experience, so that means we have taken the time to care, trust and respect. Love is an action, mentality and attitude, not just a feeling. We can only know the truth and extent of our feelings when we’re supporting it with love actions and love thinking, so love involves feeling all our other feelings so that we keep it authentic. Anything else is just going through the motions and simulating intimacy and love because we’re too afraid to risk the real deal or to admit that we’re in less than a loving relationship. When we love, we allow ourselves to be seen and we let ourselves see the other person instead of focusing on the picture we’ve painted in our mind. We are capable of loving and caring for ourselves as well as for the other. We give without an agenda because we don’t want guilt and obligation to poison the autonomy in the relationship. Loving someone and ourselves means being willing to have the appropriate boundaries for the relationship because love isn’t about agreeing and saying yes all the time. It’s knowledge that we’re not perfect and that we are going to piss each other off but loving each other anyway.

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GIVING As love takes knowledge and understanding, we experience it when we practise vulnerability, compassion and empathy, so love is giving and choosing to step out of fear. Love takes investment so we have to be willing to be emotionally giving, but also open to knowing and being known further. We can only do this when we also practise compassion and empathy. That’s striving to be kind, patient, tolerant and to not assume shady motives when our partner doesn’t meet our every expectation. To do this, we must be capable of recognising another person’s position (feelings, behaviour, where they might be coming from) without taking ownership of it. This means that when we love, we’re not making our partner’s feelings and behaviour about us. Compassion and empathy are full circle actions which means that we are only truly practicing these when we give these to ourselves, too. We are part of a team where their high is our high and their low is our low, and vice versa. We share the load. We are not competing or battling. We are not threatened by their growth nor they by ours. We honour the separateness and so we’re a team but we also know where each of us ends and the other begins.

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THERE’S NO NEED TO SUFFER Too many of us mistake suffering for love. It’s as if someone isn’t valuable or we even feel that we’re not valuable and doing ‘enough’, unless we’re struggling and straining. We’ve been socially conditioned to believe that dating and progressing into a relationship is force-feeding someone our affections, no matter how badly they behave or even how much we’ve stopped truly wanting them, because we think that this is how we earn the right to be loved. I’ve done all the right things and suffered! How dare you not love me! We stand by a partner, no matter how humiliated, marginalised and neglected we might be, because we think it’s what love is all about, even though we haven’t got anything left for ourselves. We’ll campaign like a telemarketer who’s doggedly focused on overcoming objections and we’ll make ourselves into a doormat and break our proverbial back in the process. Pain is not love; it’s pain. You don’t need to hurt to love, as if the greater the bleeding, the greater the love. You need to love to love.

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CARE Love is a responsibility. Some folk will talk a good game without the wherewithal to back it up with deeds, and the difference between them and someone who you can forge a mutually fulfilling loving relationship with, is that they take care, and you do, too. There’s mutual like, taking an interest, conscientiousness, empathy and consideration of each other’s needs and that of the relationship, ultimately recognising that there is no need for either of you to crush the other because you want similar things, but also because you’re on the same team. Care requires honouring the separateness, so taking time to know and understand each other. You have to step outside your own heads and be able to recognise where the other is coming from and be willing to truly see that person and be seen so that you can learn to relate to and respond to each other in the most effective and loving ways, even though it means getting out of your comfort zone. You try not to assume the worst in each other’s actions and intentions. Care is about each of you consistently showing up with caring feelings, thoughts and actions because you value the health of your relationship. Of course, we’re all human so you’ll each undoubtedly err and misfire with words, but a habit of care means that you’ll strive to overcome it, because you care more about what you’ve created together than any individual attachment to being ‘right’ or winning.

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ZERO HOURS An increasing number of companies use zero-hour contracts, agreements where an employer isn’t obliged to provide any minimum working hours although the employee often has to be available for work as and when required, making it difficult to plan amongst other things. A casual relationship is one where the fringe benefits of a relationship such as sex, attention, and a shoulder to lean on are enjoyed without the commitment and expectations that come with an out-in-the open, bonafide relationship. If it’s about getting laid, it’s defined as Friends With Benefits, or some other seemingly palatable term, or there’s a reluctance to be defined, it’s the romantic equivalent of zero-hour contracts. Unless this is exactly what you’re looking for, which I doubt because you’re reading this book, don’t settle for ambiguity, ambivalence and instability. Most people aren’t OK with being treated and regarded casually, picked up and discarded at will. We want and need to matter in our relationships, not more than the other party but as much as. We want to be treated with due care, which can’t happen if they’re going out of their way to ensure that they don’t have to be concerned about us and we’re acting, whether it’s intentionally or not as if we don’t care about ourselves either. We must start as we mean to go on.

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TRUST Trust is an exchange of faith. It’s the confidence we place in others (and ourselves) that represents our belief that our perception of them or our expectations will consistently hold to be true. It’s believing that we can rely on someone enough to feel assured that they won’t screw us over for their shortterm desires but also that they will be mindful of the value of building a long-term relationship together. As such, trust is a gamble, one we have to make if we’re to enjoy benefits and resources that we couldn’t on our own. It’s allowing us to depend on others, while also retaining our sense of self. Past experiences of trust (or perceptions of them) significantly influence our ability to trust and be trustworthy, determining whether we consider ourselves to be a safe bet. If we’re still judging ourselves based on the past and are not confident in which version of us is going to show up tomorrow and in the future, this creates a wall, so trust is the almighty differentiator between the past and the present.

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DO YOU GIVE PERMISSION? Trust takes vulnerability. In essence, we have to be willing to give permission for our heart to be broken, but also be willing to positively learn from experiences where our hopes and expectations weren’t met. It’s not because we actually want them to [hurt us] or for us to get things wrong, but we can’t see what’s possible without showing up. It’s not possible to wait in the wings with our walls until we get the nod that we’re guaranteed the perfect outcome. We have to expose ourselves to risk so that we can fine-tune trust and use our greater awareness and understanding of ourselves and what we need, want and expect, to trust and choose better next time.

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WHO DO WE TRUST? Ever wondered why you felt distrusting of someone even though you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, or someone was super suspicious of you even though you were being legit? Trust is built on shared core values, so we trust people with whom we share similar character values and preferences in the areas of our lives that matter most. This is why greater awareness of your own values matters; you recognise similar and complimenting values in others but you also acknowledge your discomfort when it arises, so that you begin paying attention to what you don’t have in common, which is what distrust represents. If you don’t trust a partner, they’ve either failed to earn your trust as a result of their actions or they have earned it but you don’t trust yourself or them. Without trust, your relationship has no foundation for love, care or respect.

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DEBIT OR CREDIT? As trust is rooted in your relationship with you, interacting with a basic level of trust is critical in allowing you to be open to life and evolving. Trust works on a debit and credit system, so when you are willing to have your own back, which includes being willing to exercise judgement and discern feedback on your interactions, it means being willing to give the equivalent of 70% trust when you first meet someone. Based on real experience of this person over time, you’re either going to maintain a steady level of trust and increase from there or you’re going to roll back. As you have this foundation and so, as such, you genuinely value trust, there will be no need to increase trust on a willy-nilly basis or be tight-fisted, plus if you have less trust than what you started out with, you’ll honour this by ensuring that you don’t attempt to build a more intimate relationship. You will pay attention to yourself.

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RESPECT We all want to be accepted and we all fear rejection. When we truly know and understand a partner and are open to knowing and understanding them further, we are accepting them not just for who they’ve been so far and who they are right now, but who they might be in the future. Conversely, when we’re willing to know and understand ourselves and to allow us to be seen and heard as part of that process, we are accepting not just of who we are right now but also our past and future selves. This is respect. It’s accepting our partner for who they are instead of trying to change them into who we want them to be and vice versa. It’s being aware of and responding to the needs of another without losing sight of our own. There’s equality in individual rights and responsibilities, so there aren’t power issues where we’re putting them on a pedestal and diminishing ourselves. We honour the separateness instead of seeing a partner as an extension of us. Respect is character and action not provoked, so respectful people have it from the outset and don’t switch it on and off to suit their own agenda or mood.

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WHAT’S THE BAGGAGE BEHIND IT? In order for respect to happen in practice, each partner has to know where they end and the other begins, because the true test of a relationship is how we behave when we give or receive no, are disappointed, stressed or experiencing conflict or criticism. Without mutual respect, partners forget that they’re on the same team even when they don’t see eye to eye or aren’t having their best day, or even their best week. A partner gets treated as a threat and a lot of blame gets thrown around and unless they’re focused on responsibility, which is figuring out what happens next and growing their mutual understanding, the focus becomes on who’s right instead of on what’s right for the relationship. When we strive to recognise ours and our partner’s humanity and to be conscious, aware and present, we recognise the baggage behind what we do in those moments where we’re maybe not our best selves. We see our partner, not our parents/siblings/ bully/ex. Instead of avoiding conflict, criticism or dealing with stress due to our fears, we respect the need for these to be faced in order to protect the integrity of the relationship. Being willing to recognise our part no matter how small but also being willing to acknowledge that each of us has a backstory that influences how we behave in certain situations, prevents the disrespect of self-blame and promotes love.

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THE TRUTH Despite winding up feeling taken advantage of or abused, far too many people are terrified of boundaries, often regarding them as ‘selfish’, ‘oppressive’ and ‘unloving’. Their relationships are codependent because they’re excessively emotionally reliant on others, and their core activities of sacrificing boundaries means that they mistake losing themselves for love. Bad boundaries are also a magnet for toxic people who seek to influence and control other people’s feelings and behaviour by force. Not having boundaries is one of the most selfish things we can do because we lack compassion, assuming the worst in others (and ourselves) because we associate boundaries with love being taken away, people are seen as a means to an end, turning boundaries into obstacles to getting what we want or mistaking them for rules and power that we can wield, and we reject ourselves. Without healthy boundaries we reduce our options to suffering, battling, and being manipulative or punitive to get what we want and need, automatically cutting us off from love, care, trust and respect.

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BOUNDARIES Boundaries are the invisible and much-needed lines between us and others that communicate our comfort levels, but also communicate to others how we feel about ourselves. Have boundaries? People know we value love, care, trust and respect, but if we don’t, we communicate that it’s more important for us to be liked at all costs, which leaves us open to being taken advantage of or even abused, plus we will do things with a hidden agenda because we won’t have the healthy boundaries to represent ourselves authentically in the relationship, including communicating our needs and how we feel. Boundaries let us us know our line and our limit. They are, for us, first and foremost because they communicate discomfort that lets us know where we are out of alignment with our values and that we’re choosing to see fear instead of love. Boundaries are dependent on us being able to distinguish our emotions, thoughts, bodies and actions from those of others and so much like how we only learn to trust by trusting and learning from where it does and doesn’t work out, boundaries are a muscle — the more you strive to have healthy boundaries, the stronger you get at having them and the more you realise that who people are is about them, not you. You then get to own your own and let others own theirs.

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BOUNDARIES ARE FORGIVENESS Boundaries liberate you from the self-blame that comes with believing that you’re capable of Jedi mind tricks. The mistakes you think you’ve made, and the guilt, pain and fear that you carry as a result, superglue you to the past. Boundaries are the dissolver, allowing you to feel better and to show up to your relationships conscious, aware and present. They’re forgiveness made simpler because instead of clobbering you with blame and shame and repeating unhealthy patterns, you acknowledge the truth of what happened and your part, no matter how small. You make adjustments at your end so that you are no longer open to the situation going down in the same way that it did before. Note that ‘your part’ is not about taking responsibility for other people’s behaviour but it is about acknowledging anything that you’re thinking, feeling and doing that is causing you to bust your boundaries. If you’ve just spent twenty years blaming yourself for someone else’s crappy behaviour and carrying their shame, healthier boundaries will energetically send that baggage back to where it belongs and, as a result of you no longer blaming you for their behaviour or for not being ‘enough’ to control other people’s feelings and behaviour, people who reflect those old beliefs can’t step to you or impact you in the same way because you’re not in that space anymore. Boundaries release you.

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UNCONDITIONAL LOVE Just so we’re all clear, unconditional love isn’t love without boundaries, which is codependency and self-destruction due to it reflecting our lack of selflove. When we love and like ourselves regardless of what is happening externally, we love others authentically because we have the healthy boundaries to do so. Unconditional love is about choosing love, the actions, mentality and attitude through all seasons and conditions, not loving someone no matter what they do to us. It means we’re saying we’re on the same team no matter what life throws our way, which is entirely different to actions undertaken that erode love, care, trust and respect.

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RESPECT IN ACTION Respect means that while you will strive to express your feelings and opinions, you’re not going to clobber your partner with them. Honesty is the truth with respect. Being willing to admit when you’ve made a mistake, when you’re in the wrong, and being willing to admit what you don’t know, stretch you past the comfort zone of your ego. Be willing to see your part, no matter how small, but also don’t turn them into a saint by carrying on as if they don’t have a part. Before you make something about you, remember to consider your partner and look beyond personalisation because, if you don’t, you run the risk of not ‘seeing’ him/her and cutting you off from intimacy. Be willing to apologise, not because you’re being a doormat but because relationships focused on one partner winning cause both partners to lose. In mutual relationships, apologising doesn’t feel like a threat and it’s a sign of respecting the bigger picture. Avoid generalisations (‘I/you always/ never’), acknowledge both of your contributions to the relationship, and never be willing to compromise your or their wellbeing by letting any unhealthy/ unproductive habits continue for too long, so protect each other, even if that involves therapy. Use compassion and empathy to guide you to (or back to) your values.

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POWER One of the factors that distinguishes loving relationships from unhealthy ones is power, so not just our sense of personal power, but also whether there is concern over who holds power over the other. Relationships reliant on one person being in power and the other having a diminished role, can not grow. They’re draining and demoralising instead of being energising. Power struggles and inferiority and superiority create a dangerous imbalance, with the lack of respect permeating everything, making it toxic. One or both want to feel in control to feel safe and meaningful. In mutually fulfilling relationships, it’s not about winning and losing, right versus wrong; it’s about us.

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OPEN OR CLOSED? Clench your fists and notice the impact this has on other parts of your body including the involuntary facial expressions. Notice the tension. Now imagine having clenched fists all the time where you sometimes unfurl your fingers a little, but not fully, only to close them again, sometimes tighter than they were before. This is what it’s like to be distrusting of yourself and others. To enjoy love, care, trust and respect, you need to have an open palm attitude. Unclench your fingers and hold your hands open as if willing to receive and notice the difference between the two feelings.

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BE THE THING THAT YOU SEEK When seeking out partners with whom you can enjoy mutual love, care, trust and respect, what makes it so much easier, irrespective of anything else that attracts you, is that you prioritise ensuring that they have the four qualities and that you yourself are striving to embody these too. Sure, there are areas where you’re both strong and individually strong, and you might be similarly or differently flawed in others, but if you prioritise being the four qualities, you can be an evolving loving partner and recognise one too. Remember, what you prioritise prevails, so no matter where you’re starting from in your journey, you valuing these qualities will help you to grow into them.

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COMMITMENT TO SELF A partner with commitment to self, likes and love themselves (or is actively striving to do so), doesn’t abuse themselves or others or tolerate abuse from others, is secure in who they are and strives to be an action taker. Commitment with others is founded on an ability to commit to being you so, if you’re serious about love, care, trust and respect, you’ve got to have your back. Someone with commitment to self is open to increasing self-awareness and selfknowledge because it is only through this that we can adequately take care of our own needs, expectations, desires, feelings and thoughts, and be open to authentic giving and receiving with a partner, so self-care is a critical component of this quality. There’s no blending, morphing, adapting, or pretending to be perfect. Both of you need to be aware of your blind spots and past patterns, be responsible for handling your respective emotional baggage, and be willing to positively learn from past experiences so that you can evolve. Two partners who see relationships as an opportunity to become more compassionate and loving don’t power struggle together. Remember though, commitment to self is also about trusting enough to ask for help — it’s a form of letting people into our growth.

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EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE When someone has a habit of emotional availability, they feel and know their feelings instead of avoiding all or some of them to limit vulnerability. Emotional availability is about emotionally differentiating between the past and the present and being emotionally giving. We’re not threatened by intimacy and instead of trying to suppress and repress our feelings, we strive to recognise and know them so that we can share and express them. We’re striving to be conscious, aware and present, so have the self-awareness to ensure that we don’t tend to say/do things in the moment of a mood that we might not be willing to follow through on if a different mood strikes. We’re aware of why previous relationships haven’t worked and how any emotional unavailability has caused problems in the past, so we strive to evolve our habits to break patterns so that we’re not in repeater relationships. Even though we might find vulnerability daunting, we also know that walls and loving relationships don’t mix. Even if in the past we have found it difficult to express our innermost feelings and thoughts to those we love, it’s improved over time and is evolving. If we (or they) feel bad after opening up, there’s the self-awareness to take care of ourselves and the relationship, rather than throwing it under a bus and running away, so we’re available for the intimacy that comes with allowing ourselves to be seen.

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OWNERSHIP Integrity, responsibility and maturity is how we learn to own ourselves and our truth, fully stepping into being an adult. Someone who doesn’t practise ownership, doesn’t have the wherewithal to make a commitment, quite simply because they won’t honour it. Ownership is owning our own feelings and behaviour instead of trying to influence and control others in order to feel good about ourselves. When we embody ownership as a quality, we let go of our attachment to catering to the past. We stop using reasoning habits from our childhood. We don’t try and make our partners our replacement parents/ caregivers to fill voids because we recognise the duty that we have to ourselves to be our primary caregiver. Ownership is really honesty—letting go of untruths and not allowing illusions to persist. It means not accepting less than this from ourselves or our partners even when it might be uncomfortable to do so. There’s no overcompensating due to respecting each person’s responsibilities. Partners who practise ownership recognise that saying and showing no, responding to discomfort, and being willing to acknowledge their side of the street, is a vital part of ownership and protecting the integrity of the relationship. They don’t dismiss partners as ‘needy’, ‘too sensitive’ or ‘dramatic’, or blame the other for their feelings or actions, allowing for mutual empathy.

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POSITIVE OUTLOOK Good mental attitude can be the difference between being with someone who sinks the relationship whenever the wind changes and someone who has a team mentality and doesn’t treat negative feelings or experiences as a permanent statement of the future. It’s not about partners needing to be hearts, flowers and My Little Ponies all the time, but the reality is that someone who has a consistently positive outlook has trust and faith. We can’t make commitments with people who are more committed to forecasting doom and scepticism than they are to the health, purpose and direction of the relationship. They will always have one foot out the door or be ready to squawk, ‘I told you so!’ Someone with a positive outlook raises you both up instead of being draining. They don’t want to be in a victim role and they don’t blame others for their actions and circumstances. They are solution-orientated, rather than being a pro-complainer that resists improving the situation. They accept that circumstances might not be great right now, but they trust that things will get better and will work with you. Even though there will be down times and they will go through things that cause them to feel far from positive, a general habit of of a positive outlook means that there is a relationship that’s emblematic of this that reminds them of what matters.

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DON’T GET IT TWISTED Many of us have relied on hallmarks such as sleeping together over an extended period of time, having things in common, connection, passion, chemistry, future talk etc., as well as big-ticket commitment items like moving in, babies, marriage, as a barometer of the health and direction of our relationships and then wondered why they don’t work. Hallmarks doesn’t equal love, care, trust and respect, or that there will be. Without the landmarks, a relationship is all shirt, no trousers. It’s casual and/or unhealthy. To feel confident in our relationships, we need to use the landmarks to recognise whether there’s mutual love, care, trust and respect.

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BALANCE A relationship with balance is equitable. It has two balanced people because they each have, or are striving for, the four qualities, instead of catering to fear with the drama of engaging in a power struggle. There’s no inferiority or superiority, no one being in a ‘child role’ and making the other into an authority, and no one’s trying to have it all on their terms. Each partner is treated and regarded as worthwhile and valuable and they regulate each other as opposed to being sent into turmoil. There’s a willingness to share, a willingness to compromise (finding a solution you can both live with), and there’s no keeping score, so there’s no making a sacrifice to cash in at a later date. When you sacrifice but you trust, it's a give. You trust that your partner will give autonomously to you now and in the future, so there's no need to keep score. You each believe in each of your intentions and your relationship. A relationship with this landmark has two people who bring out the best in each other and who aren’t threatened by each other’s growth. Each partner brings different qualities, characteristics, strengths and flaws to the relationship, and they undoubtedly each do different things, but the net result of whatever each is doing is that the relationship feels balanced and, as a result, mutual.

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CONSISTENCY Consistency comes down to that responsibility to ourselves and the relationship. It takes vulnerability, because consistency creates expectations and some people are afraid of that, fearing that they will disappoint or be disappointed, or that they will be trapped. We need to be able to trust in what we can expect from our relationship and the person we’re involved with. This doesn’t mean that we need to know everything that’s going to happen until the end of time; it refers to each person consistently being themselves and consistently showing up to the relationship with love, care, trust and respect so that each trusts the other to put the relationship in their hands. We can’t trust people who are consistent at being inconsistent, so a relationship with this landmark doesn’t have blowing hot and cold, managing down expectations or that feeling of being on a rollercoaster. We feel confident about making commitments and expressing our innermost feelings and thoughts in a relationship that’s consistently giving back, allowing each partner to feel safe and secure so that they can flourish.

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PROGRESSION Healthy relationships progress, so if a relationship is consistently moving forward, as opposed to standing still, regressing or going in fits and starts, it’s indicating strong vital signs. It’s important to note that intensity isn’t the same as progression, so part of the early health in an involvement is making sure that you are going at a pace that’s emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually comfortable for you, because relationships that progress at a rate of knots in the early stages tend to crash and burn or have too much drama. In dating that progresses into a relationship, you won’t have had to force you or the idea of a relationship upon them or coerce them into later commitments. Progression will be collaborative. When someone is genuinely interested in you, they don’t burn up energy, better spent nurturing and growing the relationship, on resisting you. If there are issues that prevent them from being as committed as they claim they would like to be, they address them, allowing the relationship to continue to develop.

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COMMITMENT Without commitment, a relationship has no purpose or direction. It’s just floating, possibly with one person trying to row the relationship boat with one oar in the hopes that the other will feel inspired to catch up and commit. Commitment is a decision and contrary to popular belief, commitment isn’t only about marriage which is just one expression of relationship commitment. When we make commitments, they’re a leap of faith, because we have to make them without knowing exactly how that commitment’s going to unfold end to end but also without knowing the finer details of how we’re going to honour that commitment. As a result, relationships that have this landmark are ones where each partner commits to showing up to the relationship each day. They started out committing to showing up for dates, they then committed to progressing into a relationship to explore the possibilities, and from there they’ve shown commitment to themselves, their partner and relationship by being and doing things that reflect this. It is the smaller actions, choices and decisions we make that strengthen our commitment to each other, hence if someone cannot show up for the smaller stuff, there’s no point in trusting them with the big-ticket commitments because they will leave us hanging.

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INTIMACY Intimacy is what happens when two people have gotten over the pretence that they’re perfect and have stopped being afraid that they’re going to be rejected or abandoned if they allow themselves to trust enough to get close and to be seen. They’re not holding back and having a you-go-first attitude. They aren’t threatened by closeness, so they don’t run from or sabotage it — they’re emotionally giving. The risk of intimacy is spread because they’re a team. They allow deeper understanding and knowledge on both sides, so they don’t take each other for granted by assuming what the other thinks, feels, needs, wants or expects, although the increasing intimacy means that over time they are each better at instinctively recognising where the other might be coming from — empathy. Healthy boundaries are a marker of intimacy, because they reflect the trust that each person has in respecting each other’s line and limit. They say that they’re open to respecting themselves, but also to speaking up and getting uncomfortable enough to communicate about issues that crop up. A relationship with this landmark has a deepness that comes from enjoying shared core values. Each situation, even if it’s tense or stressful at the time, results in each party deepening intimacy — they talk about feelings, growth, insights, lessons and can even laugh about it.

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INTENSITY ISN’T THE SAME AS INTIMACY When we have no idea how to trust, or intensity is seen as an escape from numbness or from somewhere we don’t want to be, we mistake intensity for intimacy. It hides feelings of low selfworth but we feel bad and alone on the come-down, or stuck in a struggling relationship wondering why we’re ’hungry’, despite the intensity. Lost and confused, we then keep attempting to recreate intensity which leads to drama and chaos. Prioritise building trust within you, because people who trust themselves can trust others from a healthy place without relying on intensity as a substitute for doing the much-needed due diligence. They keep it real instead of getting high. Intensity isn’t the same as intimacy; it’s simulated intimacy for people who are too scared to take their time and be genuinely vulnerable. It’s like, ‘Where’s the fire?’ By avoiding using intensity as a marker of trust, you also rule out the fly-by-nights and narcissistically inclined who don’t have even care, trust and respect on the agenda. Get grounded in future involvements by asking the question: ‘Why do things feel so intense?’, and use the intensity as a cue to be more boundaried so that you don’t sacrifice your own self-love, selfcare, self-trust and self-respect to get sucked into someone else’s agenda.

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THE STAGES Relationships have 5 stages: preamble, the discovery phase of dating, establishing, evolving and long haul. Recognising which stage you’re at manages your emotional, mental and physical boundaries, grounding you so that you can discern the purpose and direction (if any) of your relationship, but also allowing you to recognise if there are any gaps that are impacting the development of the relationship. At all stages, we need to be able to treat and regard ourselves with love, care, trust and respect. Remember: someone who can't keep their basic commitments in stage 0-2, can’t show up for stage 3 and 4.

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PREAMBLE Stage 0 is where we’ve been introduced online, but haven’t met and been on that first date yet, or where we have met and/or interacted to a degree but haven’t gone on that first date. It’s the preamble phase, so it needs to be pretty light here. This means that if we exchange messages with someone online for some time, we need to manage our expectations to reflect that we’re still at this stage so that we don’t consider us to be in something reflective of a later stage. In order to stay grounded, meeting needs to ideally be within 2-4 weeks otherwise we stray into building sandcastles in the sky due to living off words.

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THE DISCOVERY PHASE Stage 1 is dating and it’s part one of the discovery phase. While we are always gaining new insight and knowledge in a relationship, stage 1 is pivotal, because it’s where we’re most likely to make snap judgements, get carried away, or ignore information that might have implications for the future health of a relationship. Dating is a co-interview process not an audition, so we have to show up as an equal. Remember that dating doesn’t give an indicator of what it will be like in a relationship. People unfold, so this phase is about having fun getting to know each other and getting an initial feel for how we get on without attachment to an outcome of it becoming forever. There’s a lot of persona and assumptions, but there’s likely to be some indicators on values. Enjoying dates and agreeing to progress to a relationship doesn’t mean that you’re compatible; it means that you want to see if superficial commonalities and assumed values hold up when you both start the ‘job’ of a relationship.

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ESTABLISHING Stage 2 is establishing and part two of the discovery phase. We have moved beyond dating into a mutually agreed upon relationship and instead of doing due diligence while dating, we’re doing it in our newly-founded relationship. Core values gradually become more obvious and the relationship moves out of the honeymoon phase into establishing a more natural but also deepening-in-terms-ofintimacy rhythm. The honeymoon period has to come to an end, so that we can switch from being ‘in love’ to the loving that can truly only blossom in steadiness and reality. You can be in love on your own but loving takes two so this is where we get a sense of whether we’re willing to get our hands dirty and show up. This is a key stage, because it’s where we get a real sense of giving and receiving no, as well as a sense of how communication, conflict, stress etc., are handled. Power struggles can occur at this stage if one or both parties are trying to do things ‘their way’ due to pain, fear and guilt showing up and then unwittingly or directly sabotaging intimacy so if it proceeds from here in a healthy way, it’s because both have realised that they’re on the same time and have prioritised love over fear.

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EVOLVING Stage 3 is where the relationship is evolving emotionally, mentally and physically (the actions and content of the relationship), not just in terms of time. We evolve into something more long term, increasing in commitments and living up to them and still being on the same team as life’s inevitables like stress, conflict, criticism, loss etc., are navigated. We might be triggered again at this stage as the relationship progresses and deepens so this can represent an opportunity to strengthen our commitment and to lean in to vulnerability so that we don’t bolt or backtrack. We have the trust to not get panicked and worried about whether we’re going to break up when we disagree and we have to be ourselves and have let go of any pretences that might have snuck in at the earlier stages. Stage 3 and 4 might merge because stage 2 was so solid.

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LONG HAUL Stage 4 is the long haul. This is making and seeing through commitments that indicate that we’re in (no foot out the door carry-on) and being happy to have that permanency, which, in turn, deepens the intimacy and commitment to grow individually and together, doing our best to show up every day. We continue to weather life together even though at times it will be undoubtedly difficult and we’re committed to remaining connected and discovering each other so that, even though we’ll undoubtedly drop the ball at times, we strive not to be complacent.

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THE HAPPINESS MAKER ROLE When we make it our partner’s job to make us happy, it creates the underlying expectation that they need to prioritise making us happy, even if it means giving up their own personal responsibility to themselves. In turn, we give up our own responsibilities and it creates unrealistic expectations of the relationship — I’m gonna dedicate myself to making you happy. When we (or they) fail to feel happy, it will be all too easy to question the relationship or to blame. We’re giving up agency in the relationship and not recognising that yes, of course, there can be issues within a relationship that impact our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual well-being but if our relationship with ourselves — our self-esteem — is lacking because of certain habits of thinking and behaviour, we will expect our partner and the relationship to be a balm and a fix for everything that doesn’t feel right within, not acknowledging that there are other factors and that we have to do our part for us too. We will then feel that our partner is disappointing us and may check out of the relationship never really having understood what it was that we needed to recognise. It’s not a partner’s job to make us happy. Each of us has to be able to make ourselves happy and to also be a loving partner who contributes to the other’s happiness. This means that we’re still responsible for our own happiness and well-being in and out of a relationship.

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YOU COMPLETE ME? Describing a relationship as 50:50 divides it in half, which is very subjective. How can anyone say what doing ‘their share’ is? This mentality causes us to keep score, so instead of answering the question, ‘Are we both being loving partners?’, it’s, ‘Is each person ponying up their half of the relationship?’ This also causes us to enter into relationships with a ‘You complete me’ mentality, but also with fixed ideas about what each person’s role is, automatically assuming that we give up 50% of who we are with the expectation that we’re each responsible for the other person’s 50%. That’s a bad foundation and invariably one or both are going to feel shortchanged.

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100:100 Each partner needs to be themselves and willing to show up for the relationship so that each can meet their own respective needs, as well as those of each other. By striving to be themselves and taking ownership of the type of relationship they want to co-create, they each pull their vulnerability weight. We can divvy up tasks and certain responsibilities in the relationship but we can’t chop up responsibility itself, compassion, empathy, vulnerability, commitment, giving, honesty, intimacy, accountability etc. We can’t effectively divide one loving partner in two. We have to be two loving people who strive to be two loving partners. Relationships are 100:100.

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ARE WE COMPATIBLE? Compatibility is about the ability to co-exist harmoniously and we do this with people with whom we share core values (character and direction). These are the values that speak for who we are and what we prioritise, in terms of how we want to live our life (relationships, economic, social, financial, religious, political etc) and it’s important to distinguish between preference (conscious choices for ourselves) versus programming (doing it out of habit/expectation not because it’s right for us). Secondary values are about taste and they cover appearance, hobbies and interests, status etc. — they’re about look and feel. They have little, if any, bearing on the presence of core values, so it’s critical to be mindful of snap judgement blind spots. If we prioritise secondary values over core ones, it lacks the substance to become a mutually fulfilling loving relationship because it’s superficial. This doesn’t mean that we can’t like secondary values, but they only add value to the relationship if there are shared core values. Big differences in core values lead to tension, trust issues and immediate or eventual incompatibility, because it means that we want different things. Needless to say, if you don’t have the same relationship aspirations and values in common, it doesn’t matter what you think you have in common, what you don’t share prevents your relationship from going anywhere.

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INVESTING Relationships are an investment. There’s an element of risk and you don't recoup your investment costs — time, energy, effort and emotion. It's the cost of getting involved. In business and decision-making, this is what's known as a sunk cost, a cost already incurred that can't be undone or recovered. That might be investing in research or advertising, or in decision-making perspective, it’s what's invested before making the decision. A business devoting its energy to recouping the costs of money spent on research into a new product will launch despite signs that indicate otherwise. Similarly, someone who feels that they need to recoup the ‘costs’ of having conversed online, hoping, spending time with that person, auditioning to be ‘chosen’, trusting etc., will feel as if they have to continue trying to ‘get’ a relationship from this person, despite not feeling good about themselves or even liking the person all that much. If you're making your life worse by continuing to do something, you're falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy. You don’t need to stay dating or continue in a relationship to justify anything. That’s short for living in the past. What you need are bloody good reasons to continue and love, care, trust and respect.

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CAN’T GIVE WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE Love because you feel good about yourself, not as a means to feel good about you. Your relationships are conceived before you even meet people, because you will choose for where you’re at emotionally. Don’t choose for your past — choose for who you are and where you’re striving to go (your values). When you treat and regard yourself as the worthwhile and valuable person you already are, you will give instead of sacrificing yourself to ‘get’. You will recognise love, care, trust and respect, because you know it within. You will be able to co-create and recognise a relationship with the landmarks because you have that kind of balanced, consistent, progressing, committed, intimate relationship with you. Prioritise self-care so that it’s part of your dayto-day rather than an in-case-of-emergency, by taking the time to figure out how to meet your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual needs with loving habits. When you do, you will want a relationship for healthy reasons rather than needing it to feel alive and whole. The quality of relationship and partner will change as your relationship changes with you. Remember that you can take care others and take care of you too.

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YOUR DUTY You do not need to be perfect or baggage-free (not gonna happen — we all have it) in order to be a loving partner in the relationship you want, but you do need to be willing to listen to yourself and recognise whether you’re ready. Big hint: you are when you won’t abandon your sense of self for someone else. If you opt to date or progress into a relationship or continue an existing relationship and you are still triggered because you’re not quite over an ex or a past issue, you have an even bigger duty of care to ensure that you’re conscious, aware, present and willing to take ownership of any baggage that might flare up.

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REMEMBER If you keep choosing and engaging at the level at which a previous unfulfilling or unhealthy relationship was, you’re sending a message to yourself that these relationships are ‘right’ for you. You will be open to similar partners showing up in your life. Whatever you’re prepared to settle for is what you’re going to get. If you want a mutually fulfilling relationship, it means you can’t be hanging out in a casual/painful one. It means recognising when it’s Mr/Miss Almost-But-Not-Quite. If you’re available for an unavailable partner, you're not available for an available one. If you’re serious about being in a serious relationship, accept no substitutes.

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RECLAIMING Prioritising healthier relationships means that we learn to have a healthy relationship with ourselves too. We become truly interdependent because we know where we end and others begin so we retain our individuality and worth while also being able to coexist harmoniously within our relationships. Love, care, trust and respect can only flourish when there's the mutual reliance and responsibility of interdependence as opposed to the fears of independence, dependence and responsibility that drive codependency and commitment resistance. When we are interdependent, we are free to be conscious, aware and present. We’re free to step into who we really are. We reclaim ourselves.

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Are you treating you with love, care, trust and respect? 1. Am I able to take care of others and take care of me at the same time? 2. Do I have a basic level of trust in myself and others? 3. Do I live my life with intention and healthy boundaries that allows me to respect others and myself? 4. Am I striving to practice self-care in my thoughts and actions? 5. Am I willing to work on revising and letting go of any untruths that have contributed to feeling bad about myself or my relationship patterns?

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Are you experiencing love, care, trust and respect? 1. Are you coming from a place of love or fear? 2. Is this relationship lifting you higher? 3. Are you free to be yourself? 4. Are you free to ask questions? 5. Regardless of who does what, does the relationship feel equitable? 6. Do you both have both feet in the relationship or is there resistance? 7. Are you emotionally open with each other and getting closer? 8. Can you have conversations and discussions without barriers? 9. Have you experienced conflict, criticism and disappointment and been able to evolve out of it? 10. Are you each able to say and show no without the sky falling down? 11. Are you both interdependent (team members who retain their identities)? 12. Does the relationship feel calm and consistent?

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13. Are you consistently honest with each other even when it’s uncomfortable? 14. Are you both in the present? 15. Do you listen to each other, as in truly hear and ‘see’ each other’s position? 16. Do you both take responsibility for your own stuff? 17. Are you you getting on with your own growth? Do you want him/her to evolve or do you feel threatened by the possibility of it? 18. Do you give wholeheartedly? 19. Are you both based in the present instead of consciously or unconsciously repeating patterns? 20. Are you each autonomously choosing to make each other a priority? 21. Are any and all assumptions you started out with or made, holding true and consistent? 22. Have they been positively consistent in who they are? 23. Are you each accepting the other for who you are instead of trying to change the other? 24. Are you both open to knowing and understanding each further?

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Resources You can download free resources including my Unsent Letter Guide (brilliant for forgiveness and compassion work) and Feelings Diary Guide from baggagereclaim.co.uk/downloads.

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Acknowledgements I had an idea for a book one very rainy afternoon while hanging about in Foyles book shop in Waterloo station and one month later, the book was birthed, just one day after finding out that my father’s chemotherapy hasn’t worked. Months before when I struggled to focus on work after his diagnosis, he firmly reminded me to keep living and to keep doing my work. I listened. Thank you. There are so many to mention but in particular, Nikki, for being first, as always, to read the book, plus Lucy, Louise, Claire and Hannah for being such a brilliant team in making this happen. Big up to Fiona, Silvio, Mun and Siobhan, for their sage advice and self-care support. To Em and our girls, I love our little gang so much. Thanks for the inspiration, patience and belly laughs. Finally, I am truly blessed and honoured to be supported and guided by millions of people around the globe who have read Baggage Reclaim in their time of need. I didn’t know when I wrote my very first blog post back in June 2004, that I was stepping into my life’s work. I want to thank every single person who has taken the time to read the blog, listen to podcasts, buy my books, courses, workshops, and more. Without you, this book would quite simply not be possible. It would be all too easy to feel like a lone ranger as I don’t have a publisher or lots of people working behind the scenes, but I’m never alone as I have a brilliant, compassionate tribe of people spurring me on. This book is for all of you. 


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MORE BOOKS BY NATALIE LUE

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www.baggagereclaim.com