How to attract better relationships

I write a lot about toxic relationships; how to avoid them, what to do when you are in them, and how to recover when they are hopefully over. Until the next one that is.

We need a true change and shift, not a reprieve. But what l want to write here now is about how to find a wonderful happy relationship and relationships of all kinds that enrich your life and confirm that you have left unhappiness behind you.

Realistically not all relationships last, but in the good ones, there will be something of mutual value that remains. Something shared to cherish and remember. This is not the same when toxic relationships end. The feeling is entirely different.

And so, how do we hope to herald a change that prevails? This absolutely starts with your relationship with yourself.

Now l know that you might have heard this many times before and thought... "Yeah sure, easy when you are feeling happy and not traumatised to feel better about yourself," and you would be right, it is easier when you are not feeling heartbroken and profoundly disappointed. 

However, we have to somehow take that deep breath and remember that each new journey starts with one single step and galvanise ourselves enough to move beyond this and into another energetic state by investigation.

Park it – the bad stuff, all of it – and don't let it rule not only your life but your future.

Here’s how.

Firstly everything we undertake should have the goal of serving our happiness. Staying in an unyielding collaboration with someone or something does not serve us. Instead, it results in suffering, unhappiness, illness and destruction, all of which have a negative effect on our lives. 

It sounds so obvious doesn’t it? And yet so many of us remain and repeat, thinking that our choices that yielded disappointment will change on their own. But they don’t because if we don’t discover their origins and the lack they left embedded within our own psyche, we will believe that we need “saving” and that “saving” will be found by and through others.

Sometimes we stay in something and also with someone, because we feel we have invested too much and so much, that we cannot let go. This is a choice. 

At first, like anything new, it is unfamiliar, but the more you change your thoughts and the way you behave, the more new pathways will form in your psyche which will become familiar and known to you. There is science that supports this.

Letting go and garnering a new focus on what we need, what feels in rhythm with our innate sense of self becomes so much easier when we allow who we are to surface and take precedence. We then begin to feel whole.

This is in contrast to feeling hollow, which is how we feel when all nurture, security and sense of our own presence is outsourced. It is how we feel when we exist solely “through” another’s approval and love and acceptance.

This dependency and its ill effect leaves us subjected to the vagaries of another’s mood and also their whims. It is an undesirable place to be, and a perpetuation of victimhood, because your happiness and security come from something and someone, outside of yourself.

A wonderful relationship is the mutual exchange of respect on all levels whether they be choices or ideals. This is so much easier to find when you no longer feel shame or guilt, are expressing who you are and where someone else can or cannot go with you.

If you truly learn about self-care, first you will attract more people who reflect this back. Also, we cannot truly change anything about others by “fixing” or manipulating their behaviour towards us. This is exhausting and draining, and never feels valid anyway.

We can focus on our own values and be realistic and honest with ourselves. Self-care, slowly eliminates dependency and outsourcing. This also builds a deeper sense of our own worthiness.

It's also important not to invest our belief in the “issues” of others that insist there is something wrong with us. Those relationships are unlikely to ever truly sustain us or lead to happiness. Far better to cut and run and invest our time in finding out why we were in them in the first place. 

So few relationship problems have their origin in the relationship itself, they are far more about our own unhappiness with the misconceptions that we were taught and the attachment styles we adopted merely to cope and survive.

Give and take. Mutual respect. Realising who your “tribe” is relationally. When this happens, covert disputes are far less likely to exist because there is a deeper understanding of one another. Ultimately, mismatching is also less likely because your inner self-belief is less corruptible.

We are wired to belong and to connect, it is a fundamental human need. But if we always go to “empty wells” for water, we will never find what we need.