“A good relationship should not have problems.”

“Couples who are in love, who have a good relationship, do not fight.”

“If my partner has questions about our relationship, that means we have serious problems.”

“Going to therapy is a sign of weakness; if you love each other, you can work it out on your own.”

“True love means never having to work on the relationship.”

“When people are deeply in love, they understand each other without words.”

As we go through life, watch movies or TV, read books or magazines or look at others’ “polished exteriors”, we pick up “programing”, snippets of beliefs, vignettes about how things should be. Many of these “sub routines” run in the background of our minds, usually without conscious thought. Many times, if we haul them out into the full light of day and examine them, we do not fully agree with them but still they remain, habitually looping over and over, tripping us up with their dysfunctional conclusions.

Indeed, many of us would deny having any of these toxic relationship beliefs. Yet if we take the time to stand aside from ourselves, quiet time at the end of the day or early in the morn or during the weekend; if we observe deeply and thoughtfully analyze our own behavior and make the effort to keep a journal, most of us will find buried deep within beliefs that do not serve us, coping mechanisms that exacerbate the very issues we wish to resolve, bits of programing that lock us in place instead of moving us forward.

Closing Quotes:

“You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it.” – Ken Keyes Jr.

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.” – Theodore I. Rubin

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 1, scene 1, 132–140

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier