How & Why Does Self-Awareness Enable You to Succeed with Your Relationships: Two Examples

INTRODUCTION

It isn’t easy to change habits. But when it comes to intimate relationships, sticking-on to your habits is a sure way to fail. When you understand your habits, realize the damage they cause to your relationships and make the necessary effort to change them, you increase your chances of developing a successful relationship.

HABITS MIGHT HARM YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

It isn’t easy to change habits. But when it comes to intimate relationships, sticking-on to your habits is a sure way to fail. You often approach relationships with a set of attitudes and behaviors which are NOT under your control. Not being aware of this fact, you don’t even realize that you sabotage your relationships and that there is something you need to change. Consequently you continue harming each relationship you attempt to develop (or the one you are in).

SELF-AWARENESS ENABLES YOU TO UNDERSTAND YOUR HABITS – AND CHANGE

They best – and only - way to get out of this vicious cycle is to develop Self-Awareness: Understand your habits and the damage they cause to your relationships. You can then make the necessary changes and increase your chances at developing a successful relationship.

I’m describing here two examples to illustrate the importance of Self-Awareness to becoming able to develop a successful relationship. They illustrate the before and after” effect Self-Awareness.

Example 1: Danny doesn’t express love

BEFORE Danny develops Self-Awareness…
Nathalie accuses Danny of not expressing his love for her. He doesn’t hug her; he doesn’t tell her that he loves her. She claims that he treats her like just another object in the house. This annoys Danny: he buys her lots of gifts – bracelets, earrings, necklaces, rings. Isn’t that enough for her?

DANNY’S LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS HARMS THE RELATIONSHIP

Danny believes that buying gifts is the “perfect” way to show his love to Nathalie. How else does a man express love to his partner? He is angry at Nathalie’s continuous requests that he shows her love – requests that he interprets as demands. Why should he change his “loving behavior? What else does she want”, he asks himself, frustrated about the on-going fights they have over that issue.

AFTER Danny develops Self-Awareness…

When Danny develops Self-Awareness he is able to understand how narrow are the ways in which he expresses his love to Nathalie and the reasons for it.

He realizes, for the first time in his life, how messages he internalized from his father made him express “love” the way he does – with gifts. He recalls his father always telling him that “money is the most important thing”. Remembering how often he saw his father bringing presents to his mother, he now understands that he internalized the idea that “love is being shown by gifts”, a “practice” he used not only with Nathalie but with previous partners as well.

Having gained this awareness, Danny begins to express love in other ways, more in tune with Nathalie’s requests. He is happy to see how it makes a big change in their relationship.

Example 2: Mary’s inability to develop a serious relationship

BEFORE Mary develops Self-Awareness…
Mary has not had a long-term relationship for years, something that continues to stun her. It’s true: there was a time when she didn’t want a relationship and sought brief encounters just for fun. She was too busy pursuing her career to take relationships too seriously. But she always thought that when she would really want, she wouldn’t have any problem finding one.

So what’s happening now, when she really does want a relationship? How come she can’t manage to find one, and gets disappointed time after time?

HOW DOES MARY’S LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS HARM HER RELAITONSHIP?

Mary's lack of self-awareness makes it impossible for her to see and identify what is preventing her from developing a true and lasting relationship. The only thing that she knows is that she does want such a relationship. But damn! What stands in her way?

AFTER Mary develops Self-Awareness…

When Mary begins to develop her Self-Awareness, she realizes what withheld her from being able to develop a long-term relationship, in spite of her desire to having one.
Looking inwards, she realizes that she has been driven by THE FEAR OF COMMITMENT coupled with THE FEAR OF BECOMING DEPENDENT. Both fears were triggered by her philosophical perception she held on to of being a "liberated woman”.
Having developed this awareness, Mary is now able to find the balance between having a long-term relationship while keeping her independence.

SELF-AWARENESS IS THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING WHY YOU FAIL IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS AND HOW TO CHANGE IT

As the examples of Danny and Mary show, Self-Awareness is the primary means by which you can understand why you fail in your relationships and which steps you need to take in order to change.

Developing Self-Awareness enables you to see the “before and after” effect Self-Awareness has over your interactions with your partner.