Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
—Maya Angelou
You exist in the present moment, with your past behind you and your future ahead of you. But your past is still with you—and always will be—and it shapes the lens through which you experience the present moment. Your past shapes how you love.
The family you grew up in granted you your first relationship curriculum. Your family home was your first love classroom. In that classroom, you were offered lessons about how to give and receive love, how to handle difference and conflict, and how to ask for your needs to be met. Your attachment style—an alchemical blend of nature and nurture that dictated how you reached for and connected with your caregivers—was in place before your second birthday. And, in all likelihood, that attachment style remains with you today. How you reached for and connected with your caregivers is probably a lot like how you reach for and connect with your intimate partner today. The past comes with us.
The relationship that your parents had with each other was your first template for an intimate relationship. This is true regardless of the structure and quality of that relationship: intact and loving, intact but unhealthy, or severed. The relationship between your parents was your first love template even if they never had an intimate relationship with each other—the absence of something can still have an impact. How the adults in your life navigated their intimate relationships taught you about love. Some of the learning was explicit; most of it was implicit.
In the opening scene of the 2015 movie Trainwreck, Amy Schumer’s character is a little girl sitting with her sister on the hood of the family station wagon. Their father, by way of explaining the impending divorce, asks the girls to repeat after him, again and again, “Monogamy isn’t realistic.” That was some seriously explicit teaching about love! Most of our parents more subtly offered us messages about what to expect and not expect from an intimate relationship, and we took in a great deal by listening, watching, and feeling how our parents loved.
Did your parents demonstrate compassion, tenderness, respect, and honesty in their intimate relationship(s)? If so, you probably aspire to bring those elements into your love life, as well. Did your parents demonstrate hostility, abuse, addiction, neglect, or deceit? If so, you probably aspire to break the chain and love differently than what you were shown. Unfortunately, just saying, “I’ll never end up like my parents” is not enough because many, if not most, of the messages about love that we internalize in childhood, though impactful, are quiet and out of our direct awareness. There’s a big difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. Family patterns, loyalties, and legacies are strong, and unless you are willing to explore your past, you are at risk of having old patterns in the driver’s seat of your love life, rather than you.
It can feel frightening to explore the past. Even my graduate students resist digging up their ancient history because it is uncomfortable, unsettling, and painful. But they must do so in order to become competent therapists. Think about that—these are people who are choosing to dedicate their lives to family dynamics and yet they are hesitant to explore their own! You are not alone in your fear!
Many of us prefer to believe that just saying “the past is the past” makes it so. I get it. After all, what if the past was full of pain and dysfunctional relationships? And what if it means that you are therefore incapable of love? Fortunately, I firmly believe that nobody is damaged beyond repair. Healing is always possible. I have seen people who grew up in really dysfunctional families go on to become generous and devoted partners and parents. A healthy intimate relationship is always possible—as long as both partners are deeply committed to checking themselves when the past sneaks into the present, as it always does. This isn’t just a onetime exercise—it’s a lifestyle.
During a discussion in the “Marriage 101” course about the dysfunctional family patterns surrounding addiction, infidelity, and domestic violence, one of my students, Lena, raised her hand looking worried. “All three of those things happened in the family I grew up in,” she said. “Does that mean I’m doomed to fail in my intimate relationship?” My answer was a resounding no! The fact that her family of origin—the family she grew up in—struggled in these ways does not mean that she is doomed to repeat unhealthy patterns, but it does mean that she has the responsibility (and opportunity!) to explore the impact that these patterns had on her. Awareness facilitates choice.
This notion really hit home for me when I was attending a workshop given by Dr. Terrence Real, who described it this way: “Family dysfunction is like fire in the woods that rolls generation to generation taking everything in its path until one person has the courage to face the flame. That person brings peace to her ancestors and spares those who follow.” Those of us who grew up in families that struggled to love with integrity and wholeness can break these patterns. Dr. Real’s words touched me deeply because they reminded me to reframe my own healing journey. When I think about the many hours I have spent in my own therapy and with my husband in couples therapy, I risk feeling flooded with shame about my “brokenness.” What helps is for me to become aware of how I negatively talk to myself (“What is wrong with you?”) and then to shift my perspective by remembering that I can feel proud of my deep commitment to breaking unhealthy family patterns, some of which go back multiple generations. Feelings of shame transform as I instead take comfort in my dedication to living wholeheartedly (Brown 2015).
If you want or need to be the person who has the courage to face the flames, the work you do with this book will help you chart a new course. Being honest about your past makes it much more likely that you will be able to enjoy a happy and healthy intimate relationship today and in the future. Relational self-awareness is not only essential for your intimate relationship, it is also essential if you plan to become a parent (or if you already are one). Dr. Dan Siegel (2013) explains that “making sense of your life is important because it supports your ability to provide emotionally connecting and flexible relationships with your children” (38–39).
My student, Lena, voiced a legitimate concern. Unless she heals the parts of herself that were hurt by the unhealthy dynamics in her family, she is at risk of choosing a partner who is reminiscent of one or both of her parents, and she is at risk of behaving like one or both of her parents. In an unconscious effort to heal old wounds, we tend to fall in love with partners who are either very similar to our parents or the exact opposite of our parents. Either path fans the flames. Lena might be drawn to a man who is abusive like her father or a man who is submissive and voiceless like her mother. She might tolerate someone’s unfaithful behavior because she believes this is the best she can expect from a man. She might behave dishonestly or violently herself from a belief that it is better to be the perpetrator than the victim.
Or she can grow her relational self-awareness and chart a new course. Her course. Putting out the fire and refusing to re-create what she saw and experienced growing up will require her to engage in what I call the Name-Connect-Choose process. This process is our tool of change, expanding our relational self-awareness about how the past affects our intimate relationships today.
This first step—naming family dynamics—requires you to be brave. It can feel disloyal to name your mother’s alcoholism. It can feel humiliating to name your father’s infidelity. It can feel frightening to name your brother’s suicide. Yet, those experiences, for better or for worse, are with you today. When they remain unnamed, they are in the driver’s seat of your love life, shaping your relationship choices. When you name them, you take a step toward putting yourself in the driver’s seat.
This second step—feeling the impact without judgment—requires you to go deep. It’s so easy to judge ourselves out of feelings about the past: “My mom’s drinking wasn’t that bad. What’s the big deal?” I am in no way advocating that we travel to and then stay stuck in the past, as that turns us into victims. But the reality is that most of us hang out at the other extreme: refusing to allow ourselves to grieve and feel the full weight of old hurt. As therapists often say, “The way out is through.”
This third step becomes available when your expanded awareness allows you to choose a path of more intimate connection with your partner. This path is possible for you even if you were raised by people who were not able to honor themselves or their relationship with each other in this way. Committing to honoring your relationship with yourself as the precursor for your relationship with everyone else means being willing to curiously ask yourself questions like:
What happens when you surrender the belief that the key to a successful intimate relationship is finding Mr. or Ms. Right, and you instead deeply trust that the key to a successful intimate relationship is becoming and being Mr. or Ms. Right? Ask twenty-six-year-old Alexia. I have been doing therapy with Alexia for several years. Her parents divorced when she was twelve, and she is a member of two very complicated blended families. She has been in several intimate relationships with guys during the course of our work together. At first, she was blind to her role in any relationship dynamic. Her story was simply that there was something wrong with him: He wasn’t affectionate enough. He was too clingy. He had no ambition. He worked too many hours.
As we worked together to make sense of her past—looking closely at the lessons she learned from her family of origin about intimacy and conflict—she slowly began to widen her lens, seeing how patterns from the past shape her experiences in her relationships today.
Now she has a different approach in her current relationship. Instead of focusing exclusively on what her partner is doing “wrong,” she watches herself. Now, when she finds herself feeling reactive and critical of her boyfriend, the first thing she does is turn inward so that she can have an honest and gentle dialogue with herself. Again and again, she commits to taking a curious stance vis-à-vis herself, wondering whether and how her responses to the present-moment reality with her boyfriend are being shaped by old stories from her past.
This does not mean that she blames herself when things go “wrong.” And it does not mean that she simply bites her tongue when she feels annoyed and frustrated, assuming it must be just her old issues acting up again. Not at all. But it does mean that Alexia respects that she is a huge part of the equation. She knows that the dynamics in an intimate relationship are always made up of “your stuff,” “my stuff,” and “our stuff.” Taking responsibility for her “stuff”—the impact of her family dynamics on her thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about love—helps her ask for what she needs from an empowered place rather than a blaming place. She is learning to be Ms. Right, and her current relationship is her happiest one yet.
The experiences you had when you were growing up shape how you think about, feel about, and behave in your intimate relationships today.
Then and Now
Write words or phrases that capture the nature or personality of each of the people who raised you (for example, short-tempered, affectionate, opinionated, easygoing, full of energy). Next, write words or phrases that capture the nature or personality of the last two or three people you dated. Finally, place the descriptions side by side. What do you notice? What are the similarities? What are the differences?
Take note of how you feel as you do this exercise. Are you aware of feeling invested in it going a certain way or yielding a certain outcome? If so, notice that and try to approach the exercise as a detective or an anthropologist—in other words, with greater distance and neutrality—trusting that brave exploration paves the way to healthier and deeper intimate connections.
Brave Choices in Action
Write down three aspects of your family life that felt precious, beneficial, and valuable to you when you were growing up (for example, I appreciate that my father’s face lit up when my siblings or I entered the room; I appreciate that my mother valued family meals; I appreciate that my family had inside jokes and lots of humor).
Also write down three aspects of your family life that felt destructive, hurtful, and/or unhelpful (for example, My family rarely said “I love you”; my parents handled their feelings by raging and/or shutting down; my parents lied to each other).
These lists will reveal the beliefs, values, patterns, and traditions that you want to carry on in your own life, as well as the ones that you are probably eager to leave behind. The process of identifying what you admire and what troubles you about your family dynamics will go a long way toward helping you create a healthy and happy intimate relationship. The work of this book will support your efforts to embody what you value and let go of what does not serve you in your intimate relationship.