How often have you gotten to a place in your life with someone you think you know, as well as anyone can, just to find that they continue to surprise you? The surprise might be a pleasant one such as learning about something really amazing they have done in their lives that you had no idea about. Or the surprise might lead to a disappointment in a behavior that you didn’t know they were capable of.

What does this mean? The truth is that you can spend a whole lifetime with a person and not really know who they are. As is the whole planet we live on, we are constantly changing and adapting to our environment.

You are, today, simply a product of all your life’s experiences and your responses to them. How you think, feel and behave is a consequence of all that has happened to you before this time. And how you will be tomorrow will be a product of all that has happened in the past in addition to what you experience today and the decisions you make about you and others as a consequence of that experience.

I spoke with a client today, let’s call her Susan, (not her real name) who met a serviceman a few months ago. Both of them have been busy with their lives and so have not spent a lot of time together before he was ordered back into service. He was not told of his mission before leaving and therefore was not able to let Susan know where he was going to be or when he would be back.

Five weeks have now passed without any communication and Susan is wondering where he is. Has he gone into a war-zone where he is unable to communicate with her, or worse still has he come to some foul play, or is he deliberately avoiding her.

Her confusion about this stems simply from her not really knowing him well enough to know what might be the truth. As I said to her; every couple needs exclusive time to get to know each other at the beginning of a relationship otherwise insecurities will naturally creep in.

In my book, “Relationships – A Couples Journey”, which you will find in my bookshop situated at www.myonlineproductshop.com  I speak further about the stages of relationships and what defines each of these stages in the normal progression of a relationship.

Now, while I have said that we are constantly changing and this should require us to be constantly open to rediscovering who our partners are, there is also value in finding out where our partners have come from; their early life experiences as well as the experiences of their siblings and parents for all these will help you determine what might be the core values of this person particularly in reference to you as a couple.

So what might be some of the things that might be valuable for you to learn about your partner? The questions are actually endless and could be about how they acquired their name, their family history, their favorite things, how their parents resolve conflicts, how they resolve conflicts, what their relationship was like with their siblings growing up and what their hopes are for their future.

Don’t ever stop being curious about who your partner is today and learning about who he or she might become tomorrow. That is what makes relationships really fascinating.

 So until next time – Relate with Love