Episode #52 

How To Find The Right Partner For You

Do you find yourself moving from one relationship to the next, always repeating the same mistakes?

Do you feel happy and complete in a new relationship, only to feel disappointed with your partner in time?

In this episode, Dr Julie examines what a healthy relationship looks like and why it can seem so elusive to many of us. Using the power of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, she will also give you tools to help you not only find the right partner for you, but also learn how to be complete in yourself.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, my name is Dr. Julie Osborn. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

I'm here to help bring the power of CBT into your own life. And in this podcast, I'm going to share with you practical ways to apply CBT principles so you can achieve a greater level of happiness and satisfaction in your life and relationships.

In this episode. I'm going to take a closer look at relationships and how to find the right partner for you.

And it's an important thing to think about because we all tend to or most of us, I should say, tend to just kind of go out and see what happens. Right. And it's good to take time to think about who are we looking for and what's important to us, you know, even though not everybody's looking for a partner. Right. Some people prefer to remain single throughout their lives, but most people strive to connect with and live in a partnership with one special person.

And there's a lot of obvious advantages to finding relationship partner. So there's, you know, physical advantages, economic, social. But there's another significant advantage in that working through the ups and downs of relationship also allows us to come to terms with many of our own personal issues, which I don't know if many of us really think about. So, in fact, the personal issues we make or break a relationship and depending on whether we choose to work on them, if you're single now, you can really use this time to learn more about yourself.

What makes your relationships work? There's lots of evidence that in families we come from, which is called our family of origins, they have a profound influence on how we behave in relationships we create for ourselves in adulthood. So a lot of times, you know, have people come to therapy like I don't want to talk about my childhood and I say, that's OK. We can focus on what's going on now. But if we all end up circling around to our pasts, whether it's your childhood or teenage years, you know, young adults that are families, you know, have an effect on us.

Right. One of that huge elements of CBT is your environment. Obviously, that's your environment growing up. So it is something to be mindful of at least, and how it creates who we are so many times. You know, you've heard like you're acting like your father or you might say to yourself, I can't believe I just said that I sound like my mom. And sometimes we find ourselves acting toward a current relationship partner in the same way we acted toward a previous partner, as if there was a repetitive pattern in play.

And that sometimes can be upsetting, like why am I repeating the same issues? Right. And if we look closely enough, we might discover that we do have the same pattern of difficulty. Every one of our relationships, if we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, we're not getting to a better place or be able to really create a happy relationship and find a good partner for ourselves. And we're all looking for. Right. So according to one school of thought, you know, we all have imperfect parents or caregivers as we grow up.

And the experiences we had as children left a lasting impression on us. So we all went through stages of development in childhood. Right. Sometimes our parents were there for us as we progress through a developmental stage and sometimes they weren't. And this could be due to many reasons maybe a parent is having his or her own personal difficulties at the time. There might be a birth of a new child that comes into the home. And if we have difficulty at one particular stage of development, then we have a gap in our personalities that could follow us into adulthood unless we recognize and attend to the problem.

So if we don't get through each developmental stage per theory, we can get stunted or held back on some level. We continue obviously to grow and develop, but there could be some things that still affect us later on, like, you know, as children, if we're not in a home where we can feel like we can trust our parents and those are our primary caregivers. Right. There's a really good chance you could have issues with trust in other relationships going forward.

And remember, a lot of this is very unconscious in it. You know, if you're not aware of it, don't just kind of be like, oh, no, that's not me. Just, you know, really take time during this podcast and think about the relationship I have. If I do have a partner, if I'm looking for one, my past relationships, you know, would have been the issues. Have I had issues with trust, for example, or do I trust too easy?

You know, we can always go to the other side. So I'm open. You take the time as I'm sharing to just, you know, gain some insight and some thought and awareness about where you are in your life and your partnership are looking for someone or what's working for you, what isn't. So you also want to feel whole and complete, right? So in fact, the theory goes even further and says that we all desire to be whole and complete.

This means completing our unfinished business from childhood. So as I was just saying, if I have issues with trust, I'm going to play those out in other relationships that I'm in. So in adulthood, we search for a potential relationship partner who allow us to work on our unfinished business from childhood. In fact, this is type of person will be attracted to when we grow up. So it's interesting, too, is the theory says that we're attracted to a person who carries both the positive and negative qualities of our imperfect parent or caregiver.

And we carry an image around with us. If we're a perfect partner, will be a lot of us fantasize what that would be. And we search for a person who embodies these qualities. So when we find a person with these traits, we feel like we found the person we've been searching for our entire lives right in the last. We can feel whole and complete. And it feels as if the gap from the childhood is now filled. And we tell people that we're in love and we find this person, we feel fully alive and we have a profound sense of well-being and we have found happiness at last, or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

Right. There's our thoughts. Over time, however, the negative qualities found in our parents begin to emerge in our relationships with their partners. And this is expected in totally predictable. In fact, a mature love commitment will not occur until we have worked through more of the negative issues. Right. So, for example, if we have a caddick parents, we might find happiness that lasts in a partner who gives us a feeling of security. So this is the partner's positive trait.

But then the negative parts creep into the relationship. Right, which is to be expected. And he or she will not always be there on time or tell the truth or in other ways provide us with the security that we need. And of course, nobody's perfect. And sometimes our partners will indeed engage in behavior that dredges up our old fears and chaos. And in fact, because we need to work on our own issues with cars, we may even perceive the presence of cars and there really isn't any there.

So we accuse our once beloved partners of threatening our feeling of security. And as our childhood fears return, we might blame our partners for not understanding us after all and for deliberately trying to undermine the relationship. So at this point, the power struggle begins and the person you were in love with not so long ago can now seem like your worst enemy. So I hope you're starting to see where your issues are coming into play and it really may not be your partner.

And that's where we want to start being able to differentiate and separate. Is this me? Is it my partner? You know, what can we do to to fix this? And breaking up is not always the answer. So many people have been through a series of relationships, say that they seem to have the same problems time and again, are in the same types of relationship problems emerge regardless of who they're in love with. So this suggests that the problem resides with you and not in the choice of your partner.

So the clue is to look within in order to see why the problem recurs and why you become attached to the same kind of person. So going back to an old podcast's, if you haven't listened to yet and core beliefs, I share my story and how I was repeating patterns and I completely relate to the theory. So let me say that many people will rather break up the work through an old childhood issue. As I said, I have so many clients that come in and say, I don't want to talk about my childhood.

I want to figure out why I'm anxious right now so people can get to the stage of a power struggle in a relationship and they're not able to work past it. Maybe old childhood fears are dredged up at the stage and it feels safer to bury them. And the fears that come up with that and run away, you know, rather than face it. And unfortunately, when people break up with their partner, they also deprive themselves of the opportunity to deal with the issues they need in order to face and have a successful relationship.

So, you know, I like to look at adversities and instead of saying like, oh, no, I don't have to break up or there's never going to work out and say, oh, you know what? Here's an opportunity for me to deal with something or to figure something out. So if you can, you know, just using that wording and saying to yourself, you know, this is an opportunity I think creates a safer place to work it out.

It decreases some of our fears, creates hope, right. That I can change things. And I'm not just stuck in my old stuff and avoiding and having to repeat itself over and over again. I'm not finding any happiness. So let me say an aside, which is important. There's always times when breaking up is advisable, of course. Right. And that involves when there's situations with physical, sexual, emotional abuse, when that's present in the relationship.

So, you know, one or two people in the relationship are in danger. So I want to just put that out there. So we just keep that in mind. I'm not talking about staying with anybody that puts you in danger in any possible way, any kind of abuse. So I'm talking about just real issues that come up, conflicts, communication, trust issues that we want to work through. So that's what we're talking about here. So I just wanted to kind of make sure we're clear about that.

So what is a healthy relationship? So. Right. So so rather than searching for the right person, it might be more helpful to think of being the right partner. Right. What can I bring to this relationship? And that might mean bringing our old issues from childhood to awareness. And we need to understand the impact of the events in our childhood and our choice of a partner in adulthood. We should examine why we keep making the same mistakes again and again in our relationships as once we completed this task in our lives.

You will then be free to enter into a conscious, mature relationship, right? Just imagine going into a relationship where you're not bringing all this old baggage, basically. So again, rather than searching for the right partner, it might be more helpful to think about being the right partner. And I think there's just so much more empowering versus, you know, what are you going to give me? What do I need from you? Can you meet my needs that makes you so dependent on another person?

And when they're not meeting your needs, then you're miserable, right? Versus what's best for me. Who am I going to be in? This relationship and how can I communicate my needs to get them met and also meet my own needs, right. So let me give you a few ways to look and to kind of define, I guess would be a better word to use, you know, what is a mature relationship even look like? Right.

So one is that both partners acknowledge that their childhood wounds are likely to emerge in the relationship and they make an attempt to understand how these wounds developed and how they influence the relationship. So that's a fabulous start. Each partner also owns up to his own faults and talks about them freely with the other. So this is tough. This is tough to own your stuff. Each partner identifies what he or she needs in the relationship within reason, and the other person tries to provide that for them.

Another is that each partner is seen as a whole complete person, striving to live an individual life as fully as possible. So the two partners have equality in the relationship with open dialog between the two of them. So when I say strive to live in individual life, that means, again, not losing yourself, being true to yourself, trying to meet your needs as well, and not just expecting your partner to do that and then being able to talk about that.

Also, mature partners understand that when they feel uncomfortable, they need to engage in constructive communication and they don't engage in acting out behaviors such as withdrawing from their partner or looking outside of the relationship to get their needs for an intimacy that they, you know, say, hey, we need to sit down and talk. I have some issues I want to kind of process what's going on and and see if we can work this out because I'm struggling here.

Also, both partners agree to avoid blaming or criticizing each other and they engage in constructive communication instead. So, you know, blaming someone isn't going to get you anywhere and criticizing someone is going to just get them defensive. And you're again, you're not going to get anywhere. So you don't want to have either of those when you're trying to communicate in a healthy way. And even if someone gets angry, you know, it's recognize an expression of the person's pain.

And the partners can agree to accept each other's anger as well as their other emotions. However, they agree not to dump their anger on each other. So it's different to say, you know, I'm really feeling angry about how you said this or what you did. I need to talk about it versus, you know, screaming at the person in your anger. And they can also recognize that the anger needs to be contained and you need to just express it constructively.

So what am I podcast? It's called I'm Pissed talks about anger management. And I share there that, you know, anger is a real emotion. We don't want to suppress anger. A lot of people never feel angry, which is a problem. The issue with anger is how you express it, what the behavior is connected to it. So don't think anger is bad is how you communicate and be able to share that with somebody. Also, partners in health relationship develop their own strengths rather than relying on the other to provide them, as I was saying earlier, and both partners strive to be whole within themselves and then add to each other.

Right. So we all know the famous or most of us, I think know the famous, you know, from the Tom Cruise movie. You know, you complete me and then, you know, everyone's like, oh, my God, it's so beautiful. Lovely. But, you know, it's not that you need to be completed. There's no there's not a hole in you for someone to fill. You need to fill your hole. Right.

And then feeling that wholeness, whoever you meet, I would say, is like cherry on the sun. It's just an extra it's not finding someone to fix the things for you. You need to fix your issues and then bring somebody in to add to your life. So rather than leaving a relationship in order to find yourself, it might be possible to find yourself through the relationship. Right. A mature relationship is based on commitment, awareness, having mutual respect for each other, and it's really healing and it leads to genuine wholeness for each of the partners.

So we recognize what our partners needs are and we can provide these things really being gentle, being loving and having healthy boundaries within that. So, again, rather than leaving a relationship in order to find yourself, it may be possible to find yourself through the relationship and that your partner can help heal that. So just because I share my story, I share a little about that again. Right now is again in my core belief podcast. I share more of my story in detail.

But, you know, my core belief was that I was bound to be abandoned. So I can say that I definitely chose relationships with men, that I was abandoned by them. And it just fed my core belief. When I found my husband today, I was still working through some of those issues, but being the person he was and both of us are very into personal growth and did a lot of work together. He definitely helped me heal while I was working on myself, but he helped me heal that part that I don't have that fear of being abandoned anymore or assume that I'm going to be abandoned and that doesn't enter our relationship anymore.

And then because I don't fear the abandonment, I can fully be myself in the relationship because I'm not afraid about him. Leaving so I can express how I'm feeling, I can communicate what I need because I don't have that fear anymore, which is just, you know, for me was life changing. So that's just an example that instead of leaving that relationship because I was, like, scared, maybe he'd leave. I actually found myself through it and was able to heal along with his help to get to where I am today.

So being able to give a lot of love to your partner is one of our highest goals in our relationship, right. To really be there and be loving for them and to receive that back. And it takes a lot of strength to be able to have our own needs met and also to give to another person who's made a commitment to us as well. And even though our partners behavior may cause anxiety, pain or anger, sometimes we can show the maturity by understanding and containing our own reactions in order to meet the other person feel better.

So if my partner or myself I'm showing anxiety or pain or anger, I would say that my husband, instead of just reacting to that, he knows me well enough to understand where I might really be coming from. And I know one thing my mom always used to say is she'd say, nobody can calm you down. Julie, like Anthony and I would look at her and I kind of laugh, but I totally understand what she's saying because my trust level is so high that if I am upset or, you know, I make it, I may be defensive of somebody else trying to calm me down or trying to make me look at myself.

But with my husband, he can't calm me down. And it's very different than I have in other relationships, which I'm grateful for. So she was she was right when she said that. And again, when you can see beyond your own reaction, when your partner's struggling and be there for them, I think that's the greatest expression of love you can have for somebody. So delving into her early childhood issues is definitely a difficult process, to say the least.

And a lot of times it can be really helpful if you do have a therapist to work with and the rewards can be measurable. So if you feel like you're in stuck in a series of relationships with the same destructive patterns emerging, time and again, it might be best to put a moratorium on getting into a committed relationship until you have time to examine your personal issues. And once you've been through the therapy process or whatever road you take, which is safe and confidence, remember, it's a really good place.

People talk and not be judged and see which whatever you're thinking or feeling, your chances of finding more mature and successful relationship are greatly enhanced. And I share a lot with my clients that, you know, we attract the person in our life based on where we are emotionally. Right. So when we're like, why do I bring in this unhealthy person while there's a part of you that's unhealthy? You know, the healthier you are, the healthier person you bring into your life.

So that's something to think about. Also, you know, what part do I need to look at myself? And again, not just blame, you know, why did I bring in this really needy person? Maybe, right. Or why did I bring in this very controlling person? Did I need that stability so a controlling person would give that to me? And, you know, the irony is, I can't tell you how many people I've met that have said, you know, I'm married, you know him for the stability because I didn't have that in my life.

And now that's the thing that's driving me nuts. Right? So somebody brings in stability, but maybe they're rigid or maybe they work a lot. Right. Maybe that's the stability was finances. And they're not just they're not as fun as you like them to be or they're not as carefree or spontaneous. And that's what ends up driving you nuts down the road. So, you know, it's really interesting. And so then you get angry at them because they're not fun enough.

But you need to own that. Why did I bring them into my life? You know, fifteen maybe it's been 15, 20 years because I really needed that stability. But instead of just leaving and finding someone who's fun, how can we work through this together and have a happy relationship? So finding the right partner really starts with looking within and seeing who you are and what issues do I still need to work on? And if I have somebody already in my life, let's work on this together, you know, we can get to the problems out in the open and talk about them objectively.

You know, that's all we can find solutions. So looking for themes in your relationship, conflicts, problems that keep reappearing time and again can be a good start. And focusing on identifying the underlying theme in most of your arguments, you know, arguments usually focus on the surface aspects of the underlying conflict, and your goal is to define the underlying conflict you have. These themes appeared in your relationships with other people, which also can include friends, not just partners in the past.

And again, you want to identify your part in contributing to the themes of relationships to people and both contribute to the difficulty. So what's your part? I know it's hard because we tend to see the problems as lying within our partner or others rather than ourselves. So it takes a lot of maturity and strength and willingness to really look at your part. And you want to also remember the positive qualities in your partner that maybe you forgot about a long time ago and you want to begin to define your partner in those terms.

Again, that can be really helpful. So not just focusing on what the negative qualities are. When you think about your partner, what are the positive qualities and what do you get from your partner, but what you want to add to that? And so using the cognitive therapy throughout everything I've said today, right. When I was saying just a second ago that a lot of arguments are surface, which they are, you know, our thoughts are very surface.

A lot of times, and that's where, you know, using a thall record, identifying our thoughts is where we get to what are the underlying thoughts that's really happening within me to feel sad or disconnected or hurt or angry within the relationship. And then when you can figure out what am I really thinking, you don't love me enough. You're not trustworthy. You're not trusting me with this. You know, whatever those probably half thoughts are, those are the thoughts you want to express to your partner.

The surface thoughts really won't get you anywhere. And then if you get confronted and if you blame, then you're going to be arguing about blaming the person and not even the issue. So, again, it really takes time to think about who are you, what are your issues to still work on? What kind of partner do I want to bring into my life? And if I have a partner already, what are some things maybe we need to address and talk about?

So as always, I recommend using the mind of a mood book to learn the cognitive therapy and one other book I would recommend. It talks exactly about what we've spoken about together today is called Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix. So that therapy in his book is called Imago Therapy. And it's really, really interesting book. Excellent book, actually talking about how you do attract someone in your life that has the positive and the negative qualities of your parents.

And then it explains how your brain kind of says, ‘Oh, that's familiar’, even if it's negative. And we can find comfort in that. So if you're looking for a book on relationships as well, that would be one I would definitely recommend.

So that's it for today. I hope this was helpful for you and got you thinking.

If you have any burning therapy questions you’d love to have answered, please email me at MyCBTPodcast@gmail.com.

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And thanks again for joining me. Stay safe. I'll see you next week.

And, as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not on how you feel.