what is it that you need from a relationship?

Whether you have initiated the break up or have been broken up with it’s important to understand the lesson you are supposed to learn from the experience.

It’s so easy to focus or dwell on the good times and the things that you miss about the relationship but it is important to recognize what you didn’t get from the relationship as well.

There is a saying, a popular one that states when one door closes another one opens.  I believe in this.  Think of it this way, the door is closing for a reason and once you determine what that reason is, it can open you up to so many possibilities.

The other piece of this is, some people are just not meant to be together long term.  There may have been a short term compatibility but people do change and grow over time.  Basically because we do not stay the same person throughout our lifetime (thank God).  With that, our needs and interests change as well, drawing us to new people and experiences.

Since I am on my own personal Journey I figured I would share my list of non-negotiable’s with you in hopes that you will draft up your own list and start focusing on what you need vs. what you have lost 🙂

Here are the basic things I need from a healthy relationship, that he could not give me:

Trust
Respect
Honesty
Humility
Appreciation
Healthy love
Patience
Support
Truth, always, no matter how it hurts
Honest communication
Conflict resolution
Comprimise

In my opinion they are as basic as it gets.  There are others, but they fall into another category meant for another blog.

Basic needs sometimes are the hardest to have filled.  If you ever talk to someone who is in a toxic relationship they will tell you all the reasons why they are together but you learn right away their basic needs are not being met.

It has taken me nearly two years to understand that these simple and basic needs, I deserve to have them met.

Everyone deserves to have someone appreciate them, support them, communicate honestly with them, to be respected, told the truth.

I ask myself often, why would I ever accept less than this?

You cannot possibly respect yourself if you are willing to tolerate someone emotionally abusing you.  Even if they are not consciously doing it, by not treating you with respect and by not being honest with you or supporting you, they are emotionally abusing you.

This type of abuse comes in many forms that are sometimes not even recognized (i.e. talking down to you, name calling, gas lighting, crazy making, lying lying and more lying.)  Its all emotional abuse.  But this is a topic for another blog, at another time.

I digress 🙂

So as I stated before I went off on my tangent, it is important to look at why the relationship didn’t work out vs. remembering all the good times and wishing you were still together.

I read a study recently about memories and how our brains recall them, here is an excerpt:

“instead of remembering the actual memory, you’re recalling the memory of the last time you remembered it and any mistakes that might have been introduced there. Like a game of human telephone, those mistakes can build on one another over time, leaving out details and introducing mistakes.”

“a memory is not simply an image produced by time traveling back to the original event—it can be an image that is somewhat distorted because of the prior times you remembered it,”

“your memory of an event can grow less precise even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval.”

So this is why it is important that we do not live in the past and we stay in the moment as much as we can because our memories are not exactly a true depiction of what actually happened.

So break out your journal and draft a list of YOUR non-negotiable’s in a relationship.  Start with the basics like I did and then move towards specifics.

Dig deep…you find so much when you do.

Love, light and happiness always

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