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Tags: relationships psychology
Competing narratives
Narratives are important. It can quite well be the stories we tell ourselves about our lives that make them. It is the funnel for what we live through, see We experience the life we focus on
When we enter a relationship there are any number of narratives we can get ourselves engaged in.
She’s telling herself she’s “not special enough to not be cheated on” and battling her self worth. I’d been battling uncertainty and worrying about the self esteem, but had first needed to poke holes in the relationship, now my (negative) narrative focuses on resentment.
She told me how lonely it feels. Fighting with the thoughts that come up in her head on the bad days. It’s a similar kind of isolation that I feel. It reminded me of how I’ll re-act with my wounds and get super resentful in my head. It’s like a switch got flipped.
Fixing this requires us to be able to step out of our narratives and challenge the reality they are funneling to us. Use The third entity in a relationship to give ourselves a new frame:
What is The Relationship’s narrative? What might the narrator of the relationship be saying? What facts are present between the both of you and what you are both struggling with, yet in your own isolated ways. Include the good and the bad but give yourselves a fighting chance.
The narrator might look at us and easily point and laugh at the knives we keep hidden behind our back, or the games we play trying to get them out from behind us when they’re not even there.
The real important thing here is to recognize these narratives: • What does your narrative want you to do? • How does it want to achieve that? • What is the outcome? • What part of you does that protect?
Absolutely dig more into recognizing narratives within the relationship and seek to understand its motives I’m certain there would be some kind of psychotherapy literature on this