How do our beliefs impact our love life?

What are beliefs?

Our beliefs are all of those ideas that we tell ourselves about what is going on around us and who we should be. They help us understand everything that happens and give it a meaning or reason. This includes how people “should” behave, or respond to our actions. Usually, our “shoulds” indicate our beliefs because it is something that we expect to happen normally. As in what our brain has dictated that should happen. Beliefs include the stories about who we are that we tell ourselves. 

For example

You might have a belief that you are not capable enough to open up a business. Another type of belief comes from who we interact with those around us. For example, we are out with a friend and we compliment them on their outfit. You might expect a compliment back. You might think to yourself, they “should” compliment something about me as well. Even though that is not true, this is a belief that you have about how friendships work. Then we also have societal beliefs that are not only ours but are cultural and sometimes even global. 

For example, years ago women couldn’t vote because there was this belief that they aren’t smart enough to make decisions for themselves. That has proven to be less than true but unfortunately, this belief still holds in a lot of countries in the world. 

How are we affected in our everyday life by our beliefs?

Now that we have settled what are beliefs in general we can get to explaining how our beliefs impact our day-to-day life. Beliefs impact relationships whether is your relationship with yourself, a partner, a group of people, or the world around you. The two almost everyone struggles with are the beliefs about themselves or about a relationship. One with a single person, especially a romantic partner. I believe these two are connected more than the rest of them because it goes down to a really personal level.

Example:

Let’s say that you have the belief that your partner needs to text you every hour of the day if not they don’t love you. Now let’s imagine that they don’t do what in your head they are supposed to do. You now face a lot of emotions like anger or fear. You might think, “oh they are not texting me because there I’m not as interesting to talk with throughout the day.”

This now reflects the beliefs that you have about yourself. In this example, the belief is that you are not interesting enough. 

Now that you can see how they are deeply connected we can understand how it affects our day-to-day life. Because this can happen with any expectations that you have of other people. These beliefs can lead to conflicts with people around you as they are probably incorrect and harmful. Not only to the integrity of the relationship but to your integrity. These beliefs can also go on to be very hurtful. We can’t forget that other people may have such beliefs about our relationship with them as well.

If we look at the other side of the example that I just put it is harmful as well:

You communicate to your partner that they should be texting you every hour throughout the day. If they don’t do that they are not being inconsiderate of your emotions and you assume they don’t truly love you. Not only does that reinforce your belief that you don’t deserve love but they might also have a belief. Their belief can go along the lines of I am not enough to please my partner or I don’t satisfy those around me. 

*Always remember that in toxic relationships this is taken to another level. It gets to a much harmful way which includes gaslighting and heavy manipulation and it is not acceptable whatsoever. It becomes emotional abuse.

How are our beliefs created?

The beliefs that we have are, like almost everything else, created during our childhood. These beliefs are created not only by the relationship you had with your parents but the relationship your parents have with each other. If you didn’t have two parent figures this goes to the closest “romantic” relationship you interacted with as a child (i.e grandparents, tutors, family friends). How your parents interacted with each other is how you view romantic relationships as an adult.

For example,

Let’s say your mother gave up all of her social life and career to take care of the family and the house. And all your dad did was reprimand her about what she doesn’t do. Adding that the only way that he showed appreciation was with a few hours of a movie together. Then you will probably seek that kind of separated affection subconsciously. 

Our beliefs are also created by past experiences and people who have marked us in our lives. Like a specific comment, someone said or any traumatic events. These all shape our beliefs, especially past relationships.

Lastly, society creates most of our beliefs. Not only did it affect our parents’ beliefs and then in turn our own but it also impacts us directly. We are told daily by society not only who we should be but also how we should behave. Some of our beliefs about how relationships should be, come from movies. As well, from dreamy ideas of the perfect relationship when in reality every relationship is far from this “perfect” standard. It becomes harmful to compare our relationships to this which in turn harms ourselves.

Activity

When you find a belief about yourself like this try to write it down. This is what I do with my therapist and then I work on finding out how this belief came to be. I then journal about them so I can understand myself better. Next post I will be discussing how we can go about changing these beliefs. Not only to become less preoccupied with what happens around us but also to heal our relationship with ourselves.