I have not just learned that I am a perfectionist.  Like many,  I sometimes hold too high of expectations of my SO.  It is important to remember that relationships have stages.  Not only that, but each partner brings a history with them, often deeply rooted, unconscious actions/reactions from childhood, early adolescence, early adulthood, etc., that affect how they interact with everyone, including YOU!  In their book, “Actually, It Really IS All Your Parents’ Fault”,  Philip Van Munching and Bernie Katz, Ph.D state the following relationship stages:  Attraction, The Honeymoon Stage, Reality (Early and Late), Commitment, and Marriage.  I found much useful information from reading these stages.  I suggest skipping the corny stories (unless you like corny stories).  I found much valuable information that I used to enlighten myself about the role I play (and whad I can do to be more empathic) in my closest relationships.  I am hoping you will find this information useful too!   Other questions the book contains that were helpful to me include:   1. Who is this person I’m with? 2. Does he/she have what it takes to fulfill me emotionally? 3. Do our personalities mesh….or conflict?  4.  Is there something I’ve been doing without for the sake of getting this far in the relationship?  These are wonderful questions for self-reflection.  When answering try to be brutally honest.  Write the answers out.  The questions can be used as a guide to get us thinking about our own needs, instead of focusing on if we are doing enough for the other person in the relationsihp.  Please email some real-life stories on this subject, I would LOVE to hear from you!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.