Understanding Your Relationship Patterns

I was recently interviewed on a podcast and asked what men need to do in order to have better relationships.

One of the things I said was men need to build emotional relationships with other men.

Without men building emotional relationships with other men, there is zero possibility these men will build amazing relationships with romantic partners in their life.

This is because – how we do relationships in one area of our life is how we do relationships in ALL areas of our life.

You don’t have low-level habits of relating and communicating in your friendships and then walk into a romantic partnership and suddenly have incredible high-level habits of relating and communicating.

You don’t revel in gossip with your girlfriends and then move into a relational container having this uncanny ability to adeptly carve out deep, introspective, nourishing and emotionally intimate conversations with your partner.

FUCK NO.

You don’t walk through life having difficulty accounting for your needs and then walk into a relationship and suddenly powerfully account for your needs.

In fact – it’s quite the opposite.

Romantic containers carry the most degree of emotional fusion, which most closely replicates the emotionally fused relationships we shared in our family systems.

This means our conditioning is going to be on display.

This means what we haven’t made conscious is going to run us unconscious and reek havoc on our relationships.

This means there is zero way we can hide from ourselves in a relationship.

And if our wounding does not get exposed, there is actually no real intimacy in that relationship.

"But this is why we heal inside of a romantic container – our earliest wounding created in our family systems comes out of the woodworks for us to either work with or run away from."

We either work with our wounding and heal through a securely-attached relationship or we turn way from our wounding and either break up or just keep having a shitty relationship.

This means it’s going to be EVEN MORE challenging to have an amazing romantic relationship if we haven’t learned how to set a precedence for having incredible relationships in all other avenues of our life.

I don’t care how magical and perfect your connection is. It does not matter how much chemistry you have or that they’re your person and your soul mate. If you do not know how to build incredible relationships and have not built high-level habits of relating and communicating, you will really struggle to build a great relationship.

Sure, when you’re all caught up with the lust and love this may not seem like an issue.

Sure, you may have a relational dynamic that is more about fun that it is about really deeply revealing yourselves.

But you will not be able to create a truly extraordinary partnership without extraordinary habits and skills of relating.

This will particularly be revealed with how you move through conflict in a relationship. As couples who do no have high-level relating skills will either have a pattern of repressing conflict as they won’t know how to adeptly work through the conflict in a way that will further unite them or they will believe conflict is a bad thing and should be avoided, or the conflict begins to break them apart.

Because let me tell you – nothing reveals our inner child and inner workings of our wounding more so than when we deal with conflict inside of a romantic container.

This is why it’s particularly interesting to me when people are searching for incredible partners and incredible relationships without first building incredible relational skills.

Because it doesn’t matter who you meet. It doesn’t matter how much you’re in love. It doesn’t matter how perfect you’re for one another. You will not be able to build an incredible relationship without having incredible relational skills.

If love is an action, incredible relational skills are what drive the action of love.

You build these incredible relational skills by building emotional friendships where you powerfully speak your truth and account for your needs and hold space for each other.

You build these incredible relationships when you heal and break patterns in your family system.

You build these incredible relational skills when you fucking discover yourself and who you are and courageously turn towards all that you are, the incredible pieces and the scary parts.

If you’re single right now - I want you to know the best thing you can do right now for your future partner is build incredible relational skills.

This is the most incredible act of love you could ever make for your future partner.

Cause romantic partnership is like the relational equivalent of the Black Jack table in Vegas.

Before you play Black Jack in Vegas, you need to learn how to play Go Fish at your grandma’s house.

Go Fish relationships where there is less emotional investment. Less at stake.

Becoming a relational badass does not mean you sit around with a finger up your ass and suddenly become a badass once partnership knocks on your door.

Nope.

In fact, partnership won’t even knock until you get off your ass and open the door by building these skills right fucking now.

Expecting an incredible relationship with an incredible partner before you have developed incredible relational skills is entitlement.

Movies project this image that you meet someone and fall in love and everything is perfect.

Those things can start a relationship but they will not be able to sustain a relationship.

What sustains love are the relational skills we develop to drive the action of love.

Without these skills love just becomes chaos in action.

Yes, we learn so much in a relationship and do not have to be perfect prior to getting into a relationship but an incredible relationship does not come until we begin the process of turning towards ourselves and beginning the process of building high-level relational skills.

So practice being vulnerable.

Practice speaking your truth.

Learn to say NO.

Learn to build a relationship with your emotions.

Figure out what you need on a daily basis.

Learn how to become an incredible teammate and collaborator.

Learn how to be kind to yourself.

Turn towards the parts of yourself you’re afraid to face.

Set a boundary with a family member you have always been too afraid to set.

Tell a friend how much they mean to you and acknowledge them for what you admire about them.

Acknowledge yourself – look in the mirror and tell yourself how much you’re grateful for who you are.

Discover who you are and what sets your soul on fire.

You begin doing these things…you begin doing these things and focus less on finding a relationship and more about building incredible relational skills and developing deeper, more courageous, intimate, vulnerable relationships with those who are already in your life…you will become the embodiment of the dream you desire and you will find someone who’s also walking this path and you will share this dream together.

Because how we do relationships in one area of our life is how we do relationships in all areas of our life.

Knowing that, it’s time to get to work building incredible relational skills so we actually know how to drive the action of love when love comes knocking.

Want to join our relationship school for weekly relationship education in your inbox?

Join the Legendary Love Academy HERE