You are not bad at choosing partners, maybe you are good at tolerating bad behaviour.

Maybe it was love at first sight or maybe you got attracted to them and then took your time to fall in love. Both ways there was something ‘good’ or ‘great’ in them that landed you in that relationship. Let’s call them hot spaces, spaces where you intensely feel love and pull towards your partner. As you move forward with your relationship, at times you can feel distant. It can come up as you feeling ignored, your needs not being met or as ugly fights. Let’s call them cold spaces, spaces where you feel a push in the relationship making you feel shitty or unsafe. How to keep a check on this push and pull behaviour? Ask yourself these questions.

1. What is the intensity and frequency of the pull in your relationship?

Keep a check on how frequently you are fighting or feeling these cold phases in your relationship. And secondly how intensely are these pulls impacting you?

Constant push and pull can be exhausting emotionally and physically. In a healthy relationship, through mutual acknowledgement, active work, care and/or external help both the frequency and intensity should lessen.

2. Do you have increased tolerance for cold behaviour

While growing up if you have observed a lot of cold spaces where fights, being distant, shame, authority were common then you have unconsciously developed greater tolerance to accept these cold behaviours. You might feel a push (feeling shit or not safe) but you don’t let go (which is understandable) and just wait for the pull to come back, because that is what is keeping you in the relationship.

3. How safe do you feel during a fight?

How comfortable or more importantly safe do you feel during these phases? Are they ignoring you to hurt you? Are the fights crossing your emotional threshold repeatedly? Is there any active repair happening to work through such spaces in future?

It is of utmost importance to be able to feel safe even during a fight, which is a quality of a safe partner and a safe relationship.

Honestly, when I experienced feeling safe even during the biggest of fights with my partner it felt so alien. I was so used to feeling crazy during fights. Slowly, I realised how essential and basic this is. How non negotiable it should have been from the start of my very first relationship. Oh, how I wish I could go back and make my younger self not feel ‘crazy’ while dealing with abandonment and unknowingly begging, craving for my needs to be met during a cold phase.

All the theories of a secure relationship that I once studied came back rushing and started to make sense. These are some complex topics and I don’t think I can do justice by talking about them on one post. So, I would also encourage you to read the link provided for a deeper dive into this topic. Hopefully it helps :)“

https://www.academia.edu/9263077/Healthy_Versus_Unhealthy_Relationships_Characteristics_and_Symptoms https://www.academia.edu/55652774/Relational_Red_Flags_Detecting_Undesirable_Qualities_in_Initial_Romantic_Encounters?ri_id=32765