Have the relationships you want

Are you happy with the relationships in your life? Fill in the questionnaire to find out what, if anything, you want to change about your relationships.

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How did you do? Is there anything you want to change about your relationships? If so, it’s useful to look at these issues in conjunction with how you feel about yourself. For example, low self-esteem can be either the cause or the result of relationship problems. Spring cleaning your relationships can be both cleansing and liberating.

Are you single?

If you’re single, is this through positive or negative choice? If you enjoy being free and independent and you’re happy, that’s great. There is nothing wrong with being single unless it’s not what you want.

However, if you’re single because you’re afraid of getting into another damaging or hurtful relationship, I urge you to work through your fears and get back out on the dating scene. You don’t have to be looking for a spouse – in fact, it’s always much better not to be actively looking for a long-term partner but to let things develop in their own time – but you do have to keep yourself in circulation. If you hide away from the possibility of any romantic relationship, it becomes harder and harder to come out of hiding. I hid for seven years and am finding it extremely challenging to get myself out there again.

Keep seeing and meeting as many people as possible and keep your dates light. One of the problems with having hidden for years is that getting into a new relationship seems such a big deal, when actually it shouldn’t be. In fact, the early stages of a relationship are meant to be light and just fun. If you make it too heavy too soon, you risk ruining it. As with friends – only more so – if you appear needy, you will put off a potential partner. You have to believe two things:

There are millions of fish in the sea. If this one doesn’t work out, there will be others.
You are a fantastic catch.

Knowing these two facts will help you not to feel too clingy.

Your partner

happy couple Are you happy with your partner? If not, what’s getting in the way? If you don’t feel safe, comfortable and content (at the very least) with your partner, you need to look at taking some action. Maybe you feel it’s easier to ignore the issues than to go through the possible pain of confronting them and the risk of losing your relationship. If this is the case, your situation will never get better.

If you’re not happy in the relationship, the chances are your partner isn’t either – and he/she may well welcome your taking the initiative in sorting things out. Confronting your issues does NOT mean you have to split up. On the contrary, talking through your problems is the best way to resolve them, find compromise and strengthen your relationship. If you find it difficult to talk, enlist the help of a counsellor or therapist.

There are many books that may help a wilting relationship to blossom again, including this one that I recommend:

The Big Book of Us: The Workbook That Will Change Your Relationships by Nina Grunfeld

A practical workbook and guide to help you to understand yourself and your partner better and thus become closer and happier.

Your parents and siblings

If you have serious unresolved issues with any member(s) of your family, I encourage you to work through them. If it’s too difficult or impossible to do this with the person or people concerned, do it by yourself with a therapist. You may not realise how strongly your life is influenced and the decisions you make governed by your upbringing and any childhood traumas. Even if you only have a vague sense that something is lurking under the surface, talk to a therapist and sort it out. Things may get worse before they get better but it will be well worth it in the end because you’ll finally be free to be who you want to be and to live the way you want to.

I had always thought I was independent and free-thinking and I was amazed to discover, through therapy, that I’d spent 40 years trying to please my mother. This was the turning point where the path to self-fulfilment, along which I’m now moving with increasing speed, was revealed to me.

Your friends

Are your friends a source of support, comfort, stimulation and fun? Or are they a bit of a chore or even a strain?

friends having fun Of course, there will be give and take and if a friend is going through a bad patch, it may be up to you to help him or her through it. That’s what friends are for. The important thing is that it works both ways. If you’re always doing more giving than taking, it’s time to reassess this relationship. Perhaps this will mean stopping seeing this person (it’s OK to do that!) but it doesn’t have to. A good, honest chat about how you feel may be all it needs.

If you feel insecure around your friends and perhaps too eager to please them, it may be that you’ve allowed these people to become too important to your self-esteem. You are just as interesting, funny, good-looking and generally great as your friends are. If you don’t believe that, I recommend you change your friends because a one-down relationship is not good for you. The best friendships are equal.

friends having fun If you haven’t got many friends, it’s easy to allow a relationship to become too important. I encourage you to find other ways to fulfil yourself and let the friendships grow organically. As with a romantic relationship, someone trying too hard in a friendship can be off-putting or stifling. Go out and have some adventures, learn to love yourself, and you’ll find your approach to friendships becoming less needy and more equal.

To prevent your relationships becoming too intense, it helps if you’re constantly meeting a lot of different people. Here are some suggestions for how to do that:

Take a course in something that interests you
Attend lectures, seminars, book readings and so on
Join a reading group
Do voluntary work
Join an amateur dramatics society, chess club, bridge club, sailing club or similar
Join a gym or health club
Take up a sport
Travel alone, particularly abroad
Go to every party you are invited to, even if you don’t feel like it.

It’s great when you’ve got friends for every aspect of your personality: (of course, depending on your interests) a friend to go to the theatre with, a friend to go hiking with, a friend to chat to while you’re doing your ironing, friends to play social bridge with, friends to discuss politics with, friends to go dancing with, friends with children, friends without children and so on. No one person (even a partner, let alone a friend) is going to meet all your needs. That’s why we need a circle, or several circles, of friends.

A note about depression

If you suffer from depression, you may find that seeing your friends becomes a big effort. This is what I found and I dropped a lot of people because I thought they couldn’t be very good friends if I found seeing them such hard work. I regret this now and am keen to find them again (Facebook is fabulous for this).

However, with one friend I realised that I liked her a lot but just couldn’t deal with seeing her while I was so low. I explained this to her and she understood. Every six months, she texted me to ask how I was getting on and whether I wanted to meet up. For the first couple of years, I found this annoying because I felt she was making demands on me. (If you’ve never been depressed, this probably sounds ridiculous but if you have, you’ll probably know what I mean.) After three years, I was ready to see this friend again and now we meet often. I’m grateful she didn’t give up on me but, if she had, there would have been nothing to stop me getting in touch with her.

If you’re depressed, don’t end friendships that may still have some mileage in them. Put them on hold (to mix a metaphor) and come back to them when you’re ready.