The Importance of Relational Self-Awareness in Building Healthy Relationships

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Episode 18 Psychologist and author Dr. Alexandra Solomon explains how our current low accountability dating culture fosters a collective attachment disorder which individuals sometimes mistake as a personal disorder. She provides practical actions individuals can take to foster a healthy relationship with others and themselves. Solomon also discusses how longing (or limerence) can be a defense mechanism in a culture with a low tolerance for frustration and high expectations for perfection. 

 Dr. Solomon is a licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University, and she is on faculty in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University where she teaches the internationally renowned course, Building Loving and Lasting Relationships: Marriage 101. Relational Self-Awareness is the through line in all of her work, particularly her hit podcast, Reimagining Love. In addition to writing articles and chapters for leading academic journals and books in the field of marriage and family, she is the award-winning author of three books, Loving Bravely, Taking Sexy Back, and her latest Love Every Day. 

Connect with Alexandra through her website 

In this episode, (in order) we talked about…

*How our current high ambiguity & low accountability dating culture is a collective attachment disorder 

*Self-abandonment that occurs during hookup

*Gut checks: questions you could ask yourself before hooking up

*The tendency to cut and run at the first sign of trouble: A theme she often sees in clients talking  about relationships

*Limerence as a defense mechanism 

*How social media impacts our expectations in relationships

*How our partner is a reflection of us and vice versa

*Relational self-awareness

*Three things that were present in your family growing up that you want to carry on & three things you don’t want to carry on

*How to calm the fear of settling 

Quotes

“I worry about people personalizing that which is systemic. Is it fair to say I’m anxiously attached when what I’m wanting is clarity and consistency in a connection with someone. Is that a disorder on my part, or is that a normative striving?"

“Low accountability dating culture is a collective attachment disorder. It’s a lot of people acting as if they could take you or leave you. There’s quite a bit of emotional gymnastics that one has to do to act like I don’t care when I really do, or I don’t need clarity when I really do. Because all of us need some measure of clarity of who am I to you? What are the boundaries and expectations?"

Re: hookups: “Acting as if it was meaningless or acting as if I can do this and not think twice about it is a kind of self-abandonment that I worry about.”

“If you pull someone near enough to you, they will disappoint you. But if you keep them at arm’s length, then they can stay perfect, and you can stay safe.”

“Someone isn’t a better lover because they have six-pack abs. Someone is a better lover because they are present and attentive.”

“The heart of a healthy relationship is an ongoing curious and compassionate relationship we have with ourselves so that we are noticing our own reactions.”

“I think often times somebody who is longing for a perfect relationship or perfect love, it is a defense against a fear of getting hurt….And by moving away from the longing and actually being willing to engage in a messy human-to-human relationship, I am telling myself that I’m pretty brave and strong and able to handle things that come my way.”

“Some of us fall in love and some of us step really freaking carefully into love…there are a lot of us who will never be swept off