Your family of origin and its influence on you having a good relationship

We talked briefly about what makes for a good relationship in my earlier post – here I want to expand on that a little and cover some other areas you can be aware of when deciding if your new relationship could turn into a good relationship for you.

Another factor in the choosing of a partner is the influence of one’s experience of family life as a child. There is often a subtle similarity between the partner one chooses and the parent of the opposite sex. This may take the form of a physical likeness, or it may be in terms of personality or ways of interacting. The psychoanalytic view of ‘marital fit’ is that there is a kind of unconscious blueprint in everybody of the sort of partner they think would form a good relationship, based often on their experiences with parents. They then choose a partner on the basis of factors they are unaware of and cannot understand. Certainly there is in many people a mystery over what it was that attracted them to their partner, and yet the attraction is clear and lasting.

The early stages of a good relationship

Whatever the way in which a couple get together, there is almost always a period of experimentation before the relationship becomes permanent or is thought of as a good relationship. This is very variable in its duration, and may involve many false starts. The couple may meet in various ways, from being work colleagues to meeting at parties or on vacation, or increasingly nowadays meeting through dating agencies or via the Internet.

However they meet, they have to negotiate various issues: if and when to turn their "good relationship" into a sexual relationship, whether to declare their relationship to friends and/or family, and whether to live together. These transitions will always be difficult, and will raise dilemmas about whether they are really now a couple or two individuals who happen to be close friends.

Transition stages

At different stages in the process of forming a good relationship, there are rituals which tend to be followed. For example, the decision to move in together, the engagement (and exchange of promises and/or rings), the arrangements for the wedding ceremony and so forth all have to be negotiated. This can be a crisis for the couple, and I have seen some couples who have so much difficulty with this transition period that they split up as a result. Sometimes it has something to do with the negotiations as to who is in charge: One partner may have very different expectations from the other about their life patterns in the phase following the engagement.

Case example: Roger (28) and Caroline (29)

This couple, who had had a good relationship before their engagement, began to live together at that stage, and began to experience differences over their desire to socialize.

Roger was a quiet person who preferred to stay home in the evenings and sit by the television. Caroline had had a lively social life with friends, and became rather bored staying in. In therapy they worked out a compromise in which they would spend every Friday evening at home together, and Sundays were to be their socializing day, when they would either go out with friends or entertain at home. This enabled Caroline to get the social life she wanted while Roger was able to have the intimate ‘couple’ sessions that he valued. So ultimately they retained their good relationship, but as with everything worth having, it needed some work to get there (and good relationships certainly need to be worked on rather than just allowed to happen).