PERSONAL ESSAY

The Yin & Yang Of Relationships

Both can hurt, both can teach, and both can be temporary.

Relationships Often Can Fool Us

Have you ever found yourself heart-deep in a relationship that wasn’t at all what you expected it would be?

For some reason, it’s a whole lot easier getting into a relationship than it is to get out of one…at least that is how it is for me. And personally, I find that all of my relationships fit into two extremes:

• Safe, uneventful, kind enough but emotionally distant, fun for a while but I often latch on and they don’t really love me
• Unsafe, violent, controlling, abusive, starts off very passionate and moves into that unhealthy zone fairly quickly

Yin and Yang, most definitely. Why these two polar opposites? Is there nothing healthy sitting in between those two extremes? And why am I not finding that in my life?

Most Relationships Have Duality

Sure, not all relationships are quite so Yin and Yang as this, but if you find yourself gravitating toward relationships that swing the pendulum too far in one direction or another, you may find yourself always feeling like an outsider in your own life.

You may not trust yourself to choose anyone at all — since you keep grabbing onto the volatile and or the unworkable relationships.

Most relationships do have some duality. There are smooth days where everything feels normal, then volatile or confusing days that make us question the whole thing. To some degree this is normal. it’s just when the relationship swings hard in one direction that this could be signaling a deeper problem.

Why Do We Gravitate Toward the Extremes?

Now, I am no psychologist, relationship expert, or otherwise; I am merely a woman of a certain age with a certain amount of experience. This doesn’t make me qualified to sort out the why of your relationships, only one that can encourage you to do the real work.

It takes time, self-awareness, a certain level of curiosity, and commitment to working through your own personal voids, traumas, and inner messaging to decipher what is healthy for you and what is not. In other words — you have to do your own personal work.

It is when you don’t do this work, that you find yourself creating relationships that are too much of one thing and not enough of anything else.

Bad Relationships Teach Us

When I think back on the bad relationships I have had (and sometimes created) I realize these relationships play a very important role in my life…they teach me something I need to learn. “Bad” relationships form for a host of reasons but the reasons we stay in them aren’t really all that complex.

We are trying to learn something, grow, and gain the strength to move on to something better, even if that something better is taking some time alone to sort it all out.

Perhaps if you, as I have done, are doing this repeatedly in your life, you aren’t getting the message, so to speak. Taking the time necessary to learn from each relationship and incorporate some healthier strategies moving forward will help to avoid creating that same relationship over and over in your life.

Oftentimes we move on from these relationships before fully healed and before we’ve learned what we needed.

Relationships that Lack Conflict Provide Something We Are Missing

Sometimes relationships are more about stability, feeling safe, and avoiding conflict. But if there is no conflict whatsoever, it could mean the relationship is too surface-level to survive or to provide the depth we need to create a lasting relationship with a good foundation.

These relationships also fulfill our need to feel safe or comforted or stable, when on the inside we may not feel that way at all.

This is the other extreme I have been creating in my life. But just because you feel safe in a relationship, or their kindness is attractive to you, it could be a friend-zone kind of thing that just went a little romantic here and there.

The more emotionally dangerous relationships create wounds that we spend time with while we are in a more stable relationship. But this isn’t fair to you (carrying over your wounds) or to the other person who cannot build something meaningful with you, a wounded person.

Rectifying the Yin and Yang Nature of Relationships

The real stuff is between these two extremes. Healthy relationships will embody safety, some conflict, good communication to resolve conflict, and a healthy balance of needs and mutual care for one another.

When one party to the relationship still has bits and pieces of them that are unhealed or worse — still lingering in the past relationships — then the current one cannot move forward.

Be Certain About What You Need from a Relationship

If you cannot identify your own needs, then you cannot expect anyone else to recognize your needs, name them for you, and then set about to meet those needs.

You have to be able to name your terms, so to speak. What do you need in a relationship? In a partner or friendship? What are your most basic needs as a person? What kinds of people are best suited to your personality or lifestyle?

Take some time to identify your deepest needs and work toward effectively honoring yourself by communicating those needs.

Don’t Linger too Long in a Relationship

Speaking of your needs, once you are honest with yourself and you recognize a relationship isn’t suiting your needs…don’t linger too long.

The longer you spend in that relationship, the longer you are allowing it to harm you. If a relationship is not right for you and therapy and other reparative measures aren’t going to change that, cur your losses and call it for what it was — a lesson.

Be Open to Learning

If you refuse to learn, you continue to repeat the same mistakes. Perhaps the reason my relationships have served two extremes but never quite my needs is that the lessons there were simply too hard for me to accept. Because I refused to learn or wasn’t ready to learn fully (lack of experience or emotional wisdom, or trauma responses, likely) I repeated the same mistakes.

Make Sure You Heal Before Moving Forward with a New Relationship

I have always moved onto new relationships within months (sometimes weeks) of a relationship ending. There’s no way there’s the time between those relationships to do any real personal work.

So you pack up all your baggage and carry it from relationship to relationship. Gathering new bags with each relationship. It gets to be a really heavy mess to carry around, and totally unfair to any new relationship.

Let me be clear: Relationships are not therapists. Your new relationships should not bear the weight of healing you from the last one.

Now, this has all been a bit preachy, and that’s not where I meant for this to go, but on some things, I find I have lots to say. Screwing up relationships or choosing terrible ones — I have this down pat.

Now that I am working very hard in my life to identify why I chose these people and why my relationships all look like a Yin or a Yang, I am preoccupied with learning and sometimes, my thoughts spill over into an essay such as this one.

This is all one lifelong journey and each of us has a very different experience; this has been mine. Moving forward though, I hope to find fertile soil for the lessons life has been trying to teach me. And I plan to take a little time to tend that soil, water it, and let it be nourished by the sun — so when the time is right, something prosperous may grow.

Even if that thing that grows — is just me.

◦•●Christina M. Ward ●•◦ is a creative writer, well-living blogger, poet, and freelance writer. And today, she’s written down a bit of her story here. She thanks you wholeheartedly for reading.