Freeing Yourself from Harmful Behaviors within the Relationship Enables You to Succeed with Your Intimacy

As much as you might want to have a successful, healthy and satisfying relationship, and as much you think you do “all you can” in order to have one, you might still, unconsciously, react and behave in ways which hurt your bond.

This is normal and humane, and many share this problem. The reason being, that you, like many others, might not have the courage to be authentic, to voice your needs and wishes. You might prefer to “be there” for your partners (or dates), to “agree” and succumb to whatever they request and expect.

But by so doing you are inadvertently jailed in your own belief-system, social-cultural upbringing, fears and needs that control you. The way to free yourself from this inner prison is to develop Self-Awareness: get to understand what makes you stuck to old and harmful emotional and behavioral patterns; realize how you sabotage your own attempts at relationships; arrive at insights about what you do which hinders you from developing a successful and healthy intimacy, and consequently learn what steps you need to take in order to change.

Being jailed in your belief-system, social-cultural upbringing, fears and needs is often harmful to your relationship. Not having the courage to be authentic, to voice your needs and wishes might, at the beginning of a relationship, enable the intimacy to be “as if” you two love one another much: there are no fights, no conflicts, no quarrels. It is “as if” the two of you operate on the same level, have a “telepathic connection”, see eye-to-eye. Can it be better than that?

After time, however, things begin to change. After all, how long can you endure being told all the time what to do? How long can you endure masking your true voice? How long can you be submissive, give you hundred percent and not receive back from your partner (which happens often one when gives too much and the other “learns” to only receive).

What happens then is typical, and happens often: anger begins to boil in both you and you partner. You, as a “giver”, are angry for not receiving in return; your partner, the “receiver”, is angry at the mood-swings you go through. You become angrier at yourself for not being authentic, while your partner becomes angry at seeing the changes you are attempting to make – which might put the relationship at a risk.

This process takes time, but slowly and surely both you and your partner begin to notice that “something is going on”; slowly but surely the intimacy erodes and deteriorates, and the two of you feel more and more at a distance from one another, until it is only a matter of time until you will part your ways. But then, when you attempt to begin dating others with whom to develop a new intimacy, you might end up reacting and behaving exactly the same way you behaved with previous partners in previous relationships: the same harmful patterns will once again evolve: you might again not authentic and on the “giving” end of the relationship, being driven by neediness and the fear of being alone.

As long as you are jailed in your own emotional and behavioral patterns, in your own fears and needs, you will undoubtedly continue reacting and behaving with your partners in the same way, over and over again.

How can you free yourself from your inner prison?

The only way to free yourself from your inner prison is to develop Self-Awareness: get to understand what makes you stuck in old and harmful emotional and behavioral patterns; realize how you sabotage your own attempts at relationships; arrive at insights about what you do which hinders you from developing a successful and healthy intimacy, and consequently learn what steps you need to take in order to change.

Having gain such awareness, as you get up the courage to become more authentic, in touch with your will and wishes and the ability to verbalize it – to yourself as well as to your partners – the chance is great that you will become empowered to develop a successful intimacy, where you will feel free to be “who you truly are”.