Not all you learned about relationships came from your parents - your learning has continued throughout your life. But, what you saw your parents do in relationships, how you interpreted what you saw and how you felt about it, is the foundation of your adult relationships.
That is not to say that your parents were wrong or bad parents, or even that they had a bad relationship. The only thing that can be said is if intimate relationships are problematic for you, the source is inevitably your foundational learning.
If a great relationship, a great partner is what you are after, you must see, understand and deconstruct your foundational learning about relationships. To take apart a foundation of something is a delicate thing. Imagine trying to remove or change the foundation of a house, while leaving the house standing intact - not an easy task.
In order to have a great relationship, you need to remove your foundational learning, while leaving you intact.
To begin, you must complete with your parents. If you still have negative feelings about what they did to you or each other, you will create situations in your intimate relationships where you will confront these same negative feelings. In other words, if you can't let go of either what happened to you or what you saw happen in your foundational years, it will haunt you in every single intimate relationship you have. To see an illustration of this in your own life, go to http://www.WhatItTakes.com ---> Test Your Relationship IQ ---> PatternTracker?Quiz.
To be complete with your parents means to be both free of negative feelings and to feel compassion towards them. Let's see how complete you are. Which of the following statements are true for you?
__I am complete with and have forgiven my mother
__I see my mother first as a human being, doing, and having done the best she could
__I am complete with and have forgiven my father
__I see my father first as a human being, doing, and having done the best he could
__I know that my parents?relationship is one way to do relationships, but not the only way
Were you able to answer "true" to all questions? If you were, congratulations -you are a member of a very small minority. If you were not, you have some completion work to do regarding your parents. The question is, how do you get complete?
The first thing to know about completion is that it's not simply a feeling, but a destination, a place to get to. This means there are steps that can be taken to generate a feeling of completion. What stands between you and having a chance for a great relationship is taking these steps. Look for these steps in the "How to complete with the past" article in the upcoming weeks.
This article was originally written by Relationship Coach, Rinatta Paries, and published in The Relationship Coach Newsletter, which is a weekly e-mail publication for people who want to create fulfilling relationships. The newsletter contains tips, ideas and distinctions to help you understand and transform your relationships. If you are single, the newsletter will help you make much better relationship choices. If you are in a relationship, it will help you create much more closeness and intimacy. To subscribe, go to http://www.WhatItTakes.com/
Rinatta Paries is a relationship coach who can teach you to attract your ideal relationship and forge it into the kind of life time partnership you have always wanted. Really!