For many people, relationships with others are one of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect of life.
They are often associated with our greatest feelings of happiness and when they go wrong they can cause us great distress, heartache and pain.
We can spend an enormous amount of time thinking about our relationships, mulling them over, comparing them to past and other current relationships. The importance of relationships means that often they are the reason why people come to psychotherapy.
People see therapists to discuss issues such as:
- Repeating the same mistakes in relationships
- Choosing the wrong partner again and again
- Feeling unable to leave a partner
- Fear of being single
- Attachment issues
- Desire for greater independence
- Dissimilarity/not enough in common with partner
- Lack of intimacy
- Absence of passion/the magic has gone
- Lack of support from friends or partner
- A partner undermining their self esteem
- Lack of trust
- Lost feelings of love for partner
- Infidelity
- Dependency and Co-dependency
- Abuse (verbal, physical or emotional)
- Feeling controlled
- Poor communication
Therapy can help you to understand why you chose the partners that you do, give you the encouragement and support you need to make changes to your relationships and provide you with the self-awareness you require to stop repeating unhelpful relationship patterns.