Don’t Let Your Belief-System Harm Your Relationships: The Role of Self-Awareness in Your Life

Your attitudes, emotions, reactions and behaviors towards your partners are often controlled by a belief-system which you are NOT AWARE OF. You adopted this belief-system from your childhood home, your social environment, television, radio, books and films.

EXAMPLES OF BELIEF-SYSTEMS WHICH MIGHT CONTROL YOU:

* “Men don’t cry.”
* “Women aren’t as smart as men.”
* “A woman should do everything in the house.”
* “A man needs more sex than a woman.”
* “Cheating is OK for men but not for women.”
* “You should always keep a few secrets from your partner.”
* “Never show your true self to your partner.”
* “Men only want one thing.”
* “Women are annoying; they just want to talk about feelings all the time.”

As long as you are NOT AWARE of how your belief-system controls your attitudes, emotions, reactions and behaviors with your partners, you might harm your relationships without even knowing that you do.

EXAMPLE: TREATING YOUR PARTNERS WITH CONTEMPT

* Are you someone who always treat your partners as though they are worth less than you and don’t know much?
* Are you running into endless arguments and conflicts with your partners, leading to remoteness and separation, without never seeing, acknowledging and accepting YOUR part in the failure of the relationship?

Whether you are a male or a female, your behavior might be based on the belief that “the other sex is not valuable enough”.

You might have internalized such a belief from someone in your family or the neighborhood you grew up in; perhaps from TV programs that you watched.

This belief now manages you AUTOMATICALLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY. For that reason, you can’t change your behavior with your partners, in spite of the fights, frustration, remoteness and separations. You are liable to move from one relationship to another, behaving superiorly, maybe even in a degrading manner towards your partners.

HOW TO NOT LET YOUR BELIEF-SYSTEM SABOTAGE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

The best way to not let your belief-system sabotage your relationships is to become aware of it. OBSERVE, ACKNOWLEDGE AND ACCEPT the belief-system which shapes and controls your emotions, attitudes, reactions and behaviors.

The more you observe and realize what drives you to think and behave the way you do, and the more courage you have to acknowledge and accept what you see, the more empowered you become to re-think, re-evaluate and modify your belief-system, so it will not interfere anymore with your attempts at cultivating a successful intimate relationship.