Happily Ever After…? E-Book

Janet Clegg

• Herausgeber: Splendid Publications Limited
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 302

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A must-have guide book for anyone is a relationship or about to begin one. Packed full of wide-ranging scenarios and case studies, Happily Ever After…? explores the pitfalls and issues which often lead to marriage breakups and explains how to succeed in enjoying a long-lasting, loving relationship.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title PageIntroductionChapter One LoveChapter Two Self-awareness or know yourself:Part OneChapter Three Self-awareness or know yourself:Part TwoChapter Four Self-awareness: How we resolve conflictChapter Five The ‘other family’ and the ‘other friends’Chapter Six SexChapter Seven MoneyChapter Eight ChildrenChapter Nine Warning signs or possible deal-breakersChapter Ten Second (or third or fourth) time around…Chapter Eleven All’s well that ends wellBibliographyResourcesCopyright

Introduction

Janet Clegg and Hilary Browne Wilkinson practised as divorce lawyers in London and Hong Kong.

In our time as lawyers we saw into the inner workings of several hundred failed relationships of couples who came from many and varied backgrounds and cultures. We empathised with the untold misery and sense of loss that most individuals felt on the breakdown of a long-term relationship but we were struck by how many couples we saw who had embarked on marriage or long-term cohabitation with less thought as to whether their potential partner was a good fit for a long and happy life together than they would give to choosing a new car or phone contract.

We were even more surprised how time and time again the people we saw were prepared to jump immediately into a new relationship even if their previous marriage or partnership had come to a sticky and acrimonious end. It would seem that, contrary to previous experience, the flame of hope continued to burn brightly that things would be better with another person and that somewhere ‘out there’ the ideal soulmate was waiting to wipe out all past horrendous emotional experiences.

Oscar Wilde was no stranger to the pitfalls of choosing the wrong partner. And maybe he was a little jaundiced when he said, ‘Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience,’ as recent research shows that second marriages have a marginally better chance of survival than first marriages. Still, nearly 42% of marriages seemed doomed to failure and in the UK more than 235,000 couples divorced in 2011. It is thought about one in eight separated or divorced fathers in the UK have no contact with their children.

These statistics show only the ending of marriages and not long-term partnerships and they only show the bold maths of a divorce and not the backstory of the substantial emotional and financial turmoil suffered by the individuals, the many children caught up in a relationship break-up and indeed our society as a whole. Research carried out by the Marriage Foundation in 2015 estimates that family breakdown costs the UK £47 billion a year in increased tax credits, benefits and other knock-on effects on children.

In the West, so many of us subscribe to the idea that somewhere out there, if only we look hard enough, we will find our soulmate. Blame the Ancient Greeks for that one. Plato wrote about the Ancient Greek myth that all humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Zeus, the King of the Gods, decided to split the being into two separate parts, scattering the fragments across the world, which condemns us humans to forever search for our complementary half. And, of course, some people do find that elusive soulmate, the perfect partner and the love of their lives.

The ninety-five-year-old mother of a good friend was married for over sixty-five years and on her husband’s death, when he was ninety-three, said, ‘I have been lucky. I was born into a loving family and I had a loving marriage all my life.’

But is it luck? Can you raise the odds on a long and happy partnership? Surely in the twenty-first century finding our soulmate should be so much simpler. In the last forty years we have had the loosening of attitudes to sex, cohabitation, divorce and the acceptance of same-sex relationships, having children without marriage and meeting a partner through the myriad of opportunities that the internet gives us. Economically women are less dependent on men and, indeed, in a growing number of relationships women are the breadwinners and men are choosing to stay at home to raise children. Ostensibly, we now have the tools and the freedom to seek out the perfect mate, wherever in the world they may be. If we are a Jane Austen-loving Goth living in the Falklands there is no problem because surely there will be someone out there for us (albeit living in Greenland!).

But as a society it would seem we are far from being happier than previous generations. Mental health problems in the young are soaring and in 2012 more than 50 million prescriptions for antidepressants were issued. It is a bold statement of fact that difficulties within relationships have the capacity to make us extremely unhappy.

And if relationships can make so many of us so very unhappy, what is the point of them? Are relationships always just for mutual love and support? Are relationships there purely to satisfy our sexual needs or our wish for financial security or status or is it simply that we are so afraid of being alone that we cling to any relationship, no matter how damaging?

At their very best relationships can sustain us on our path through life and it is certain that in committing to a partnership, whether or not it lasts, all areas of our lives will be forever affected (and, inevitably, if we have children theirs too).

There are hundreds of books out there that promise to find you the love of your life, tell you how to keep the love of your life or help you find out why the love of your life is from Uranus (cheap pun intended) so how can two former divorce lawyers add anything new? We feel that as a result of our experiences through our professional and personal lives we can pass on valuable pointers to help couples, already in a committed relationship, limit the possibility of the failure of a long-term relationship. Too often we saw the wrong end of relationships – the failed, messy and sometimes downright dangerous end – and in our opinion most failed relationships came unstuck because of the failure of one or more of the following four basic principles:

RealismIntegritySelf-awarenessKnowledge: practical and legal

A lack of any of the above four principles can put a strain on any relationship, be it a work, friendship or an intimate one. Being wildly unrealistic or dishonest (with others or ourselves) will only lead to bitter disappointment when the reality of the situation becomes clear. A lack of self-awareness can lead to relationship failure again and again and a lack of knowledge about financial and more practical matters will ensure that you will constantly make ill-informed decisions, particularly about money.

Even the best relationships have their own ‘Achilles heel’; that soft, vulnerable part of the relationship that causes more arguments and problems than anything else. The following chapters are intended to get you to take a long, hard look at yourself as well as your partner. We want you to think about what you hope to get from your emotional partnerships. We want you to be able to flag up potential problems before they become insurmountable so that you are able to avoid possible future emotional turmoil. And we want you to be able to make well-informed decisions about financial and other practical matters.

Our emotional lives can lead us on a journey that can be exhilarating, terrifying, satisfying and wonderful, with the chance that if we have been given bad emotional equipment for the trip we can lose control and end up damaged. We hope that this book can give you the tools to limit that potential damage.

So, this is not the book that will tell you how to track down the ideal partner, it’s not the book if you like to play mind games with your partner or believe Fifty Shades of Grey is the perfect template for a successful relationship. This is the book that will try to give you a good chance of making a committed relationship endure the ups and downs of life. It can be used by anyone at any stage in a relationship, whether you are setting off on a new relationship with long-term potential or if you have been together for years and wish to mend and repair a struggling relationship.

We have drawn on sources from our own experiences through our past work and personally, literature, old and new, and from contemporary newspaper and magazine articles. Most chapters contain a self-reflective element to them. There are no right or wrong answers to the questions we ask as they are intended to either provoke discussion with your partner or to get you to consider honestly your own part in your relationship. The more aware you are of your hopes about the relationship the better you are able to participate positively in that relationship and the more knowledge you have about the practical and legal aspects the better you are able to make informed decisions at every stage of that relationship.

We hope that our experiences at the ‘wrong end’ of relationships (the total failure and breakdown of the relationship) can help you to keep your own partnership on track so that you are able to experience the happiness we all so richly crave and deserve.

***

Whilst every care has been taken to check the accuracy of any information given in our book it is not intended to be a substitute for professional legal or financial or emotional advice or guidance. No case studies mentioned within this book refer to any specific individual, couple or family who we might have encountered within our professional careers and are intended for illustrative purposes only.

Janet Clegg and Hilary Browne Wilkinson

Chapter One

Love

‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’

—William Shakespeare

Love and happiness

 

Most of us have the fundamental assumption that love will bring happiness. Usually we seek happiness in a partnership but here is the first reality warning! Love is not necessarily synonymous with happiness. Love is an emotion that exists between two or more people. Happiness is our own state of mind.

Alexandra Fuller, in her book, Leaving Before The Rains Come, wisely says, ‘It’s not anyone’s job to make another person happy, but the truth is, people can either be very happy or very unhappy together. Happiness or unhappiness isn’t a measure of their love. You can have an intense connection to someone without being a good lifelong mate for him. Love is complicated and difficult that way.’

In our experience the pursuit of happiness by abandoning a partner to take up with another never seemed to lead to long-term contentment. No matter how single-minded we are, it’s hard to leave behind a trail of bitter ex-partners and devastated children without there being some sort of consequence rained down upon our heads at a later date. But as we all know, falling in love can be sublimely wonderful. How many times in the course of our practice did we hear the words, ‘I feel that until now I have been sleep-walking through my life. Being in love has made everything so real’? In fact, being in love is the exact opposite; everything is very unreal. The danger is that when we fall in love we will look to our partner to become everything to us, to complete us and fulfil our hopes that, at last, we have found our long-lost soulmate and that ‘happy ever after’ is surely guaranteed. The harsh and sad truth is that it is virtually impossible for another human being to be our perfect match, although we may be more compatible with some than others.

Falling in love and entering into a committed relationship is always a blind act of faith, a leap into the terrifying abyss of the unknown, no matter how propitious the circumstances, how well suited you seem in your family connections, common interests or shared religious, political, cultural or educational backgrounds.

Love is such a small word but it encompasses such a huge range of emotions. It has, of course, inspired poets, artists and writers throughout the centuries but it has also been used to justify murder itself. Several countries in the world still treat ‘crimes of passion’ with a greater tolerance than might be expected in the twenty-first century.

***

Mythical love

The Ancient Greeks, whose myths still inform psychotherapeutic writings, worshipped Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and in that mythology Aphrodite’s great passion for gorgeous Adonis eventually led to the Trojan War. Love for the Ancient Greeks was full of potential for danger, madness or even death. The Gods made fools of ordinary mortals and their desire for love. Oedipus killed his father then fell in love and married his mother and Medea fell madly in love with Jason during his quest for the Golden Fleece but ended up killing their children after he jilted her for another woman. Even poor old Narcissus faded away after falling in love with himself, despite the attempts of admirers to entice him into a relationship with them.

The most random and cursory trawl of newspapers and magazines in the twenty-first century shows that themes described in the Ancient Greek myths are still being played out in modern-day family relationships. A drug addict kills his father, admittedly not for the love of his mother but for an inheritance to fund his habit. A grief-stricken mother kills her three children after being abandoned by her partner for another, and time and time again stepfathers kill the child of their partner. Perhaps this can be explained by primitive biology: a man is programmed to eradicate the progeny of another man. Or is it that a child unrelated by blood who has a greater claim on the love and attention of the partner is a threat that cannot be ignored?

***

The chemistry of love

Psychological research has shown that falling in love releases various hormones in both female and male brains that alter the chemical make-up of the brain. That would explain why when we feel we are in love we experience elevated happiness, butterflies in the stomach and, much, much more dangerously, the tendency to exaggerate the virtues or overlook the glaring flaws of our partners.

‘But when you’re in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can’t be thought of as cute’ —David Sedaris.

It seems that this heightened state of emotion can last up to thirty months or so, after which the slow realisation of the reality of our relationship begins to dawn upon us. That is why the quirky traits and charming eccentricities of our beloved that were all so adorable and amusing at the beginning of the relationship can transform into appalling and irritating habits within a year.

Guidance

Falling in love can be akin to temporary madness!

If at all possible it is wise to live full time with your partner for at least a year without making any major life decisions such as marrying, having a child or entwining your financial affairs.

If after the love drug phase has passed (which, sadly, inevitably it will do) and you are still friends, care deeply for one another and can see past the foibles and annoying little habits of your loved one then the chances are that the relationship will be strong enough to endure.

Kate Figes, in her book Couples: The Truth, writes: ‘The triumph of love lies in the small daily kindnesses and considerations which make one feel valued, seen and understood, not in the great romantic gushing gestures.’

However, human beings are unpredictable and one person’s understanding of what true love means or how it is communicated can be at complete odds with another’s. Beware the person who continually chases the thrills and highs of infatuation but who quickly tires of the ‘small daily kindnesses’.

Love comes in all shapes and sizes and each of us will hold a personal view of what love means to us. There is parental love, love between siblings, love through friendship, sexual love, spiritual love, dutiful love, love that comes through shared religious, cultural or political values, love that endures through a lifetime of catastrophe or love that burns brightly and dies within months, love that insinuates itself in the hearts of the most unlikely of pairs, love born of the need for financial or emotional security. And then there is that most dangerous and pernicious kind of love: romantic, idealised love.

****

Romantic love is intoxicating but it tends to be ungrounded in reality. Think of how we are all bombarded on a daily basis with plays, songs, rom-com films, the ever-popular Mills and Boon books and reality TV programmes, all primarily concerned with romantic, unrealistic love. The average wedding in the UK now costs around £25,000 and gone are the days when the bride’s mother made the dresses and the reception for close family and friends was held in the local pub. The ‘marriage industrial complex’ has taken us over and with it the fantasy of what love and long-term relationships mean has become more and more detached from reality. It is even rumoured that prospective grooms are now hiring event companies to manage the proposal. How can the rest of day-to-day life compete with a choir appearing out of nowhere in Covent Garden to serenade us with our favourite song as our beloved sinks to one knee with a diamond ring in an outstretched hand?

A few years ago in a quiet London wine bar we overheard the following conversation between two thirty-something women.

‘How is Kirsty?’

‘Depressed, I think.’

And then without a trace of irony:

‘Well, if you’d spent three years planning the wedding of your dreams I suppose six months after the day it’s all a bit of an anti-climax really.’

‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’

Poor Kirsty. But in truth we felt sorrier for Kirsty’s new husband. The anticipation of the big day for Kirsty had obviously overshadowed the reality of day-to-day life but the truth is that most day-to-day life is pretty ordinary and a healthy and loving relationship should be able to accept that ordinariness and value it without anyone wanting to hold the other partner responsible for the lack of day-to-day glamour.

Guidance

Be realistic.

Are you in love with the idea of love, or a proposal or the idea of a big wedding?

Remember that the greater the romanticism and unrealism that surrounds a relationship the greater the anger and bitterness that will develop when, as is inevitable, reality comes a-calling.

There is also the danger that although we fall in love with someone, at some point we seek to change them.

‘When you love someone, you love the person as they are not as you’d like them to be’ —Leo Tolstoy.

Pretty words, Leo, but sometimes very difficult to follow.

Case Study

Gemma was three months into a six-month sabbatical from her job in the City of London when she met Brett on Bondi Beach. He was tall, bronzed, good-natured and a natural athlete – the stereotype of the ‘surfer dude’. Brett worked at a water sports company. It was love at first sight for them both and he readily agreed to come back to London with her at the end of the holiday. Six months on Brett is getting ready to go back to Australia. After his tan faded and he found that he could only get jobs as a barman Brett became increasingly miserable, which was not helped by Gemma’s insistence that he could retrain as an accountant’s clerk. Gemma fell in love with an Adonis but really wanted to change him into a City worker and live a London commuter lifestyle.

****

How many of us have heard the words ‘I’d love you more if…’ If you were slimmer, prettier, more handsome, more ambitious, made more money, liked rock climbing…if, in other words, you were not you. If you are with a partner who regularly says this to you then run for the hills! No matter how much you diet, have cosmetic surgery to correct your physical imperfections or redouble your efforts to earn more money, we suspect that the spoken (or implied) ‘if’ will always be there, which ultimately will not make you feel safe in that partnership.

***

In the course of our time together, no matter how deep our feelings are for each other we will deliberately or thoughtlessly hurt our partners. During our practice we would marvel at how forgiving people could be and it was rare that one act of infidelity or cruelty would trigger a divorce. It seemed to us that most people in love tended to overlook or forgive bad behaviour much more than we would tolerate in other relationships. However, most people did not forget and when the relationship had come to end it was amazing how many clients could recall so much detail of the hurt they had endured over many, many years.

In the 1970 film Love Story one line from the film launched a cliché – ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry’- which must be the most ridiculous statement in movie history. In our experience those three little words, ‘I am sorry’, can clear away a lifetime of resentment and hurt and certainly should be practised on a day-to-day basis.

Guidance

Be a grown-up.

Do you hope that your partner will change in any way? Is this hope realistic?

Are you able honestly to admit your own mistakes and say sorry?

If you are on the receiving end of thoughtlessness or hurtful behaviour, are you able to voice your upset or do you silently seethe and feel resentful?

Remember seething resentment will slowly poison a relationship.

***

Communicating our love

We might feel love but we all have very different ways of communicating that love. It is important to understand how we show love for each other as a mismatch in styles can lead to deep distress.

Case Study

Olivia has been with her boyfriend, Tom, for two years. Tom is kind, attentive and very generous with his time and money. He often buys Olivia jewellery and takes her on wonderful holidays. However, Tom will not or cannot say to Olivia, ‘I love you.’ Olivia desperately needs to hear the words to feel secure in the relationship but when she asks Tom whether he loves her he simply smiles and shrugs. Tom feels that it should be obvious he loves Olivia from the amount of money and time he spends with her. Olivia is becoming more frantic in her attempts to get Tom to verbalise his feelings for her.

Dr Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages, writes that all of us perceive and express love differently. He feels that there are five main ways that we can communicate and feel loved and that problems arise when there is a mismatch in a couple’s idea of how love is communicated. He says the five love languages are as follows:

1.   Words of affirmation or love language

To feel that they are truly loved people like Olivia, above, need to actually hear the words ‘I love you’. It does not matter that Tom is showing his love for her in presents and time spent with her. In fact, Tom would be better off saving his money and once in a while simply hugging Olivia and saying, ‘I love you.’

2.   Spending quality time together

Jefferson and Patrick have successful careers that demand lots of foreign travel. Neither feels the need for large romantic gestures or a verbalisation of their love and regard for each other but they both need the sanctuary and peace of their weekend home in the Kent countryside where they are able to spend hours together bird watching, walking and talking together. It is important to the couple to spend good quality time together whenever they can and this sustains their idea of a close, loving partnership.

3.   Giving and receiving presents

Tom, above, showed his love and affection for Olivia through gifts and taking her on expensive holidays but gifts do not need to be expensive or lavish for someone to feel loved. In fact, we saw many clients with enviable lifestyles, who stayed in five-star hotels, enjoyed extensive foreign travel, and owned several homes in various continents and who said, to our surprise, that they would willingly relinquish a lot of the material goodies for kind words or genuinely small loving gestures from their partner.

Sonia has been married to Bob for twenty-five years. Bob is a lorry driver for a company that delivers materials around Europe. Bob always brings Sonia a small gift back from his travels whether it be a bar of chocolate from Belgium or a knitting pattern from Normandy. Sonia feels that Bob is thinking about her when he is away from home, which makes her feel cherished and loved by him even though they spend little time together.

4.   Physical touch

The need to communicate love through physical touch does not necessarily mean by sex and, indeed, someone who can only value a relationship through sex may not be communicating genuine love at all, just satisfying their own sexual itch. It sounds trite but an arm around a shoulder, a kiss, a daily hug or a fond and loving pat on the back can mean more to a person who needs physical touch to feel loved than any other form of communication.

Samantha likes her boyfriend, Ben, to hug her, hold her hand and generally be affectionate towards her as it makes her feel closer to him. Ben feels that any physical affection must lead to sex. Both feel frustrated with each other.

5.   Acts of service to show support

Susan’s mother is a no-nonsense Yorkshire woman who was left with three small children to bring up alone when her husband abandoned them. She is not given to words of love or sentiment and is most certainly not ‘touchy-feely’ with anyone. But Susan knows that if her mother visits she will clean her house for her and babysit the children without the need for any thanks. When Susan was ill her mother drove her to numerous hospital appointments.

Susan has the emotional maturity to recognise that her mother communicates her love and regard for her through these acts and Susan is grateful for that love despite her mother’s lack of verbal or physical affection.

Guidance

Think about whether there is there a mismatch in how you and your partner show your love and regard for each other.

Are you able to value the way your partner shows their love for you even if it is different from how you show your love and regard?

***

Expectations of life and love

From an early age we all have expectations of how our life will proceed. ‘When I grow up I am going to be…’ Fill in the blank. And when we get older we usually have firm expectations of how our emotional lives will run too. ‘I want to be married by the time I am twenty-eight, have two children and run my own multimillion-pound business.’ ‘I want to be with someone who is rich and we will live in a penthouse in New York.’ ‘I’m going to be with a model, never have children and live in Marbella.’ Funny, isn’t it, that not many of us ever sits down and says, ‘I want to marry someone I love and they love me, hopefully have children but definitely have a mortgage, and work hard to support my family,’ because how boring is that?

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When we fall in love, don’t all of us, if we are honest, not just fall in love with our partner for what they are but also to what extent they are fulfilling our expectations of how our life will play out in the future? And don’t we have fixed expectations about how our loved one will treat us and demonstrate their love for us?

Susan, above, is very wise not to expect her mother to verbalise her love to her. Susan loves her mother for who she is and not what she expects her to be. So often a relationship flounders because the expectations of one or both partners can be unrealistic or just not flexible enough to accommodate any change that takes us away from our preconceived expectations. We have every right to hope that a relationship will fulfil our needs, whatever that means to us personally, but to expect anything else sets the bar way too high for many of us coping with our own emotions and the events that life throws at us.

Case Study

Peggy expected her partner, John, to earn enough money to run a large house, pay for private schooling for their three children and maintain an expensive lifestyle with foreign holidays and flashy cars. In her eyes her expectations of the partnership were simple: John was lucky to have bagged a smart and attractive woman and Peggy should expect a comfortable lifestyle in return. When John lost his job in the downturn of 2008 it took him two years to find other employment at a vastly reduced salary. Peggy was furious and took every opportunity to berate, snipe or downright humiliate John. She had expected him to maintain a lifestyle for her even though she could not have provided it herself. Unsurprisingly, they have divorced and Peggy feels that she has somehow been cheated by John and life in general. Her bitterness has become all-consuming and the children have one by one gone to live with their father.

Peggy’s unrealistic (and, frankly, heartless) expectation of the financial basis of her relationship with John outweighed any other factors in that relationship. No matter how good a father he is, how kind and supportive he has been to Peggy in the past or how well John provided for his family before being made unemployed, it all meant nothing to Peggy when faced with the disappearance of her inflexible expectation of somehow being ‘owed’ by John.

Case Study

Helen fell in love with Max because he was ‘tall, dark and handsome’. ‘Ugly men just don’t do it for me,’ she says. Max had been in the army and Helen also loved the feeling of physical security when she was with him. When Max was in a terrible car accident Helen was faced with a partner who had suffered permanent facial scarring and could not walk easily. Suddenly, Helen found that she could hardly bear to be with Max. She had not expected him to be so vulnerable and dependent on her or so permanently scarred, and when Max told Helen that he had fallen in love with one of the nurses who had helped him through his recovery all she felt was pure relief.

It would be easy to judge Helen harshly and to feel that if she had truly loved Max she would have stayed with him whatever had happened, but until we are tested by life how do we know how we would react? We would all like to think that ‘love conquers all’ and if we are very lucky we will not be tested by extreme life events.

***

So if love is the answer what are the questions you need to ask yourself? Remember when thinking about the following questions there are no right or wrong answers and you must try to be as honest as possible.

What does the word ‘love’ mean to you?What do you think the word ‘love’ means to your partner?What does ‘happiness’ mean to you?Do you expect your partner to make you ‘happy’?Do you feel that your partner makes you ‘happy’?Do you feel that you make your partner ‘happy’?What hopes (or expectations) do you have about your relationship?Are these hopes realistic?How do you express your love to your partner?How does your partner express their love to you?Do you regularly argue or feel disappointed about how your partner expresses love to you or how you show love to your partner?Do you regularly argue about or feel disappointed that your partner is not different in some way?Do you have longstanding ‘life goals’ about lifestyle or the type of partner you should be with? How realistic are these goals?

If you have answered the above questions honestly, you will have taken the first steps to being able to take a more realistic view of your relationship. Realism may not have the same tantalising allure of gut-churning romanticism but, in our experience, it can save a lot of gut-wrenching agony later on.

‘“I sometimes say – but not entirely seriously – that infatuation is the exciting bit at the beginning; real love is the boring bit that comes later,” the poet Wendy Cope once told me.”’

— Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life.

Chapter Two

Self-awareness or know yourself: Part One

‘This above all: to thine own self be true

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

—William Shakespeare

If we don’t have some idea of who we are then how can anyone else know who we are and have a meaningful relationship with us? What has made us who we are?

We cannot expect our partner to know instinctively what we need to be a happy, fully functioning person and no one in a relationship should be expected to ‘fix’ another. If you have deep-seated emotional issues because of trauma, abuse or difficult life experiences, it is unfair and unrealistic to expect a partner to be able to deal with issues that are far beyond their knowledge or capabilities. If you were affected in your childhood by any of the following and are finding difficulty in sustaining close relationships in any area of your life, please seek out professional help (see the Resources section):

The death (particularly by suicide) of a parent or siblingAny physical or sexual abuse suffered by youThe long-term sickness or disability of a parent or siblingAbandonment by parent(s)Severe mental health problems of a parent, sibling or yourselfSevere addiction problems – alcohol, drug, gambling, porn – of a parent, sibling or yourself

We are all a product of many things: genetic make-up; family history; the period of history we are born into; the social expectations of our society; our own indefinable personality quirks and traits; and our experiences (good or bad). A useful starting point into gaining insight into who we think we are is to consider the family we were raised in because our experiences of how we were raised will provide us with the lens through which we view the world and form a template for our future relationships.

Early experiences

‘All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, and a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces beyond repair.’ Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

How can that be? we ask ourselves. I am me and I am certain my family has had or has little influence over me. But think about it. If we had a happy, trouble-free childhood where all our emotional needs were met we will expect that to be replicated in our future adult relationships. We will have a low tolerance of bad behaviour within a relationship and are less likely to put up with such things as violence, addictions or infidelity by our partner.