Romantic partners are well-positioned to trigger our past relational wounds or to be the healing agent, building our confidence in a safe, authentic connection.
Interaction by interaction, we choose through obvious and subtle cues of connection whether we operate as codependent or independent partners, promoting growth and authenticity.
These concepts hint at Secure Functioning. We all deserve to feel important and safe in our relationships. It goes both ways, or three ways: Partner A to Partner B, Partner B to Partner A and both partners towards the relationship, so that the relationship can continue to be a safe haven of mutual care.
I have been having this thought often lately about how many relationships sync up based on the compatibility of coping strategies, and, how coping strategies and attachment styles are intended on being situation or relationship based, meaning, they’re not meant to be our personality in all places, all relationships, all the time.
I am finally putting these thoughts into writing after a conversation at a coffee shop, where I was asked about the pacing of dating.
Reasons to slow down in dating:
- See how each other handle stress and celebrations and when life is mundane and easeful. Ensure that you are compatible in coping strategies, as well as, when most in Core Self energy.
- Time for both of your Support Systems to reflect that you are both yourselves when with your partner.
- Time to confidently discern if your stomach feelings are supporting intuition to stay and be challenged in this relationship to grow, or if what feels like butterflies is the discomfort of flight: ”Get out of here and fast!”
- Get past the phase of hormonal decision-making and see how pleased you are with the habits you’re altering and keeping as you make space for the relationship in your social battery, time, physical environment, and emotional capacity. Time to reflect that you aren’t losing yourself or routines that keep you you to appease this other person to feel loved.
- Time to ensure you are not solely motivated to move forward because of how they make you feel, to be able to also reflect you love and are growing to love the greater sense of who they are and support their dreams and values too.
- Time to see integrity: that what they say matters to them actually motivates how they budget time, energy, and finances.
- Time to grieve all that we naturally project from past relationships on this new relationship, to let go of the comparisons that make this relationship feel the “healthiest,” and sit with what is the undertone of this relationship itself that gives you a sense of safety, trust, and love.
- Time to reflect: Are you both overcorrecting? Did you both get burned by dating someone avoidant or anxious, so find relief in the appeasing or independence of each other, blinded to the protective, insecure motivation of it in one another?
- Time to see them around others who have similar quirks, passions, and meltdowns to you, and see how they handle it in the moment and how they reflect and talk about the person and their moment of emotion later behind closed doors.
- Time to reflect individually and together and to have some sense of how past informs present and present informs future. To identify somewhat from real life experiences, together, of how you can both be healing people moving one another forward towards Secure Functioning in a relationship that appears and feels more and more secure with time. Mainly, time to ensure that the you that the relationship brings out is sustainable. And the same goes for your partner too.
Influenced by Stan Tatkin’s Wired for Dating and In Each Other’s Care
