I have just realised that I have all these pictures, ideals and beliefs in my head about women in relationships and on how a woman should be in a relationship.
For so long I was unaware of these pictures as I have been single for ages and there has been no potential on the horizon, but recently that has changed… and so has my behaviour.
You see, when there was no potential relationship with a man, I was just being me… no one to impress, no neediness or anything, but as soon as I had a potential, these pictures started popping up all over the place. The hard thing was to realise that the pictures are not me; that I have taken them on so that I would fit in and belong.
These pictures look a bit like this, and for each woman they will be different, but here are some of mine:
- As a woman I should look a certain way, either sexy or feminine, for a man to like me and want to be in a relationship with me
- The house should be clean and tidy or else I am not a good woman
- The dinner should be perfect and everyone should enjoy it otherwise I am a failure as a woman
- I should be happy, fun and playful otherwise I am not a good woman
- I should be a good parent
- I should be smart
And the list will go on until bit by bit I get more and more honest about these pictures and beliefs that I have somehow had in my mind and thought were me, but aren’t really. At some point in my life, probably when I was very young, I must have felt that the real me would be rejected and I tried to fit a picture of what I thought I should be instead. When the picture gets rejected I think it‘s me and do not realise that it is just the picture or a false ideal.
I am starting to realise that from my role models, and from what I have seen on TV, in movies and in society, I have taken on these pictures of what it is to be, not only a woman, but also a women in relationship, as being me – but in fact it is not me at all.
The tricky part is that when I get caught in the trying to be the ‘picture’, in trying to look sexy, to have the house picture perfect clean and to make the perfect dinner, to have the perfect relationship, I have to leave who I am naturally and put myself under a lot of pressure to be who I am not. This pressure causes anxiety and stress and worse than that, it causes me to not be me.
In that moment, I contract or feel less and cannot for the life of me just relax and be me…
The other choice that I consider in that moment is to give up completely because it’s like I will never be able to reach the impossible standards I have set for myself as a woman – and I have only set the standards because of the pictures in my head.
I am not sure how it must feel for the man at the other end of this scenario – I am yet to discover that – but it must feel kind of strange meeting a woman and seeing her as herself but then the next time that you see her she is anxious and putting on a show. It’s no wonder guys can sometimes get cold feet in a relationship with a woman and run. Maybe it’s just that they feel the falseness of the picture and say no to that. Maybe they are not interested in the “made up version” and in fact the part they liked was the real one.
It has taken me years to acquire all these pictures of woman in relationship and how a woman ‘should’ be, act and behave in a relationship, so as much as I would like to discard them overnight, I realise that this is a work in progress and requires my honesty and awareness to slowly, one by one, become aware of each picture and decipher whether it’s me or a picture.
I may be attached to some pictures more than others and identified in them in some way, depending on how ingrained they are in me and that is okay, as it is all part of my process. Now my process is to unravel the what is not me, so that I can be me as a woman in relationship.
by Rosie Bason, Age 35, Massage therapist, Parent, Business owner, Goonellabah
Inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine
890 Comments
I find when I create pictures around relationships and how I think we should be, it feels like I am setting things up to fail and it is like an excuse to not go deeper in my relationships. For example, I create a picture in my head for someone I am in relationship with, expecting them to fit into it, and the crazy thing is this person has no idea what the picture in my head looks like, which means it is almost impossible to meet. And, when my picture is not met, I then feel deeply hurt and I immediately go into protection, shutdown and blame. As a result the other person feels rejected and hurt. So, do you get the picture of how damaging it is to create or hold onto pictures in a relationship? It sounds like I am writing a script for a soap opera but I have been living with many, many different types of pictures in my head and have allowed them to affect my relationships for a long time. So, learning to be in a relationship without pictures is something new for me and I am definitely open to it, as it supports me to be in true relationship based on love, instead of one that is governed by pictures that harms us all.
Awesome blog Rosie. I have been in a relationship for 16 years and I recently realised how much pictures and expectations are affecting my relationship and how they also impact all my other relationships. It is great to nominate them and get to the root of why I have held onto them for so long. Sometimes I think I have let go of one but find it reoccurs again. I now see this as an opportunity to ask myself why I am holding onto it. What is the reason behind this and what is it really showing me?
I absolutely know what you are talking about, thinking I was totally fine with relationships for as long as I was single and then noticing a whole lot coming up when I started looking outside again. The thing I learned is that it does not mean we are wrong when we have it coming up or that we are making the wrong steps, it just means it is an area in life where we still can learn a lot and grow from so we can be steady and our self there too.
Pictures have been my worst nightmare. I’ve been chasing the dream since I can remember. It has been my biggest distraction to daydream about love and how that would look compared to being intimate, caring and super tender loving with myself. Pictures do not bring a whole body experience as it so foolishly suggests.
There is nothing quite as lovely as being able to be yourself with someone, and that includes being amazing (without a single picture in sight).
At the moment I am just discovering how I change and all the pictures I have about being in a relationship. There are certain things that I just hadn’t seen before, its not that they weren’t there but it was an area that I had shut down my expression in and now as I re-open myself to relationships there is much that is coming out for me to see and be aware of.
There are things that are always there but we are just not aware at the time… but awareness or not… they are there all the same..
I can relate to what you have shared here Rosie. When I was single I was more at ease in myself and didn’t think about relationships, there was more contentment and settlement. Then when I went into a relationship I didn’t hold this and could feel all the pictures that came in, particularly when the relationship ended. That was then when I went into wanting something from outside of me more and feeling unsettled. It was here that I had become affected by and taken on pictures of how I needed to be as a woman.
It feels like when we idealise relationships with pictures we load ourselves with expectations and bring in control in how relationships should be, bringing huge pressure to try to attain a certain image that we are simply not ourselves and then forever seek outside ourselves to try to attain or achieve a certain image that actually isn’t true.
Then it all becomes one big fat lie that we try to maintain. Crazy.
It is indeed a clever setup which can take years to unravel but once the attachment and the hold of the pictures have gone there is a level of acceptance about ourselves that was not there before, and there is an ease to being ourselves without worrying what others might think of us. This alone shows how retarding the ideals and beliefs are.
I discovered just yesterday that in my picture of being a woman and being an adult, I have to be serious… and in actual fact I am naturally quite playful and I often supress that part of me and even a part of my sexiness. got to let that out more often!
Those pictures are such a useful set-up, a protection in fact, we either give up as we can’t measure up or we work hard to ‘become’ them and we’re so busy doing so we push others away … it seems clever but it’s a trap of our own making and as we discard each picture we come back more to ourselves, to simply being us with no trying.
It sure is a trap of our own making and I have found that as I discard one, I often will come up with a replacement but with more and more awareness and willingness to really look at it all.. its getting better and I am allowing myself to just be be me and love and appreciate me.
Yes, creating pictures in our relationships does feel like a trap and the crazy thing is one we set for ourselves and others to fall into. So, by discarding the pictures in our relationships and of how things need to be frees us up to be who we are and this allows others to be who they are too.
It took me a long time to realise that in accepting and living to pictures we impose and conform our body to live a certain way that is imposing on and suppresses our natural expression and also effects everyone around us. It makes sense then why we take it so personally when this picture is rejected by others because we have invested a part of ourselves in it and instead of understanding that people do not like the picture as it does not feel true we choose to react and make it a personal rejection of ourselves.
Great honesty Rosie and great to share because most probably have the same pictures that get in the way of their relationships but are completely unaware of the fact. The key as I see it is that if we take a version of ourselves which is not our true self and build a relationship with someone, one day they are going to see the real me and when they do they will feel that they have been misled or lied to. Building any relationship on something that is not true is not a foundation that will enable the relationship to grow and flourish.
Yes its not a pleasant surprise when you realise that you haven’t been dating who you think you have because you have been dating a bunch of pictures and a false front.
When we get preoccupied and caught up in the polarities of the I am good or I am bad game we all too often forget to simply be ourselves.
It is that forever search of trying to be more because we don’t appreciate that we are already enough just by being who we are. It is exhausting. The striving outside rather that the accepting and appreciating within.
Women are so influenced by images and we are totally bombarded with them via the media, magazines the internet and even our relationships. The more women value their inner-self, how they feel, what they like and how they do life – they will be less inclined to look outside for satisfaction or confirmation from outer images.
I am sure men have a whole collection of pictures too!
Rosie, thank you for sharing so clearly about how we women often are in relationship, and how we allow pictures that we have acquired during our life to keep us on a merry-go-round of trying to live up to ideals, rather than surrendering to and allowing our innate qualities to be the foundation of all our relationships. This is well worth pondering on….
Setting standards from pictures and ideals we hold in our mind forces our body to harden and bring in complication because we have disconnected from our own natural rhythm and flow and from holding ourselves as lesser than everything around us.
Yes as women we might blame men to have to high expectations of us but I think it is indeed mostly us that put these massive expectations on ourselves. Getting honest about this is really courageous and I love how you are tenderly exposing them one by one, really honouring who you are and not blaming yourself for taking them on in the first place.
The pictures and or beliefs that we have laced through our lives are purely there to halt us from the true beauty and intimacy of who we are. I love relationships because they allow us to see reflections and or patterns that we may not see ourselves but are seen and felt by our partners, which enables us to learn and grow together and uncover the true person within and release the well used images of protection. When we are honest we start to uncover our most intimate parts of ourselves to others and it is from here we allow ourselves to be transparent and that is truly amazing.
We grow up learning to respond to the world of images, pictures, ideals and beliefs that we are surrounded by, to attain a sense of worth or belonging, to fit in, or even to seek to define who we are as woman, a mother, a child, or successful, strong, sexy or whatever it may be. But as you have shared Rosie, none of this offers us a true reflection of who we are, or truly allows us to know and explore how to live in connection to a quality that is innate in us all, our essence, which is what truly defines everything that we already are.
All of these ideals and believes of what it means to be a women will just serve to set us up for failure, especially as they are often unrealistic and based on getting everything perfect.
True, but reality is so many women are caught up in them.
All those ‘shoulds’ that keep us from being who we are should be let go of.
Ha.. great point Mary – we are so caught up in everything we think we need to be that we totally loose sight of the fact that we are everything already, just by being who we are.
Should should just not be part of our vocabulary!
There are a lot of ‘should’s’ as you have shared Rosie that complicate our life when we hold onto ideals and use pictures to measure ourselves against.
Say good bye to shoulds and avoid complication at all costs. This really changes things!
The underlying anxiety I feel is trying to get things right and when I make a mistake it feels like the end of the world especially when there are many people involved. Yet recently when an incident happened where I had forgotten an important item of clothing for an event it didn’t affect me like it would normally. Yes I felt distraught at the time but I couldn’t hold onto it for very long because put simply it wasn’t worth it. Living in perfection is impossible yet this has been a big picture I have taken on. It is indeed a work in progress to let it go and the more I learn to accept myself in full mistakes and all the more content I feel to be the ‘real’ me.
A lot of the things we go into or get caught up in are really not worth it, and in that, with awareness, we can see how much energy we waste.
Thank you Rosie for sharing about the pictures ideals and beliefs that make up the sum total of life as it is mostly lived and who we think we are. These false ideals are fed to us from an early age and are carried through out our life until we learn the truth that they are not who we truly are. One huge picture I had was “good ” being good, doing good, with no sense of the true me anywhere. The pictures attached to the “good” are slowly disappearing as I connect more to and claim the true me, I know more will yet appear, as I am open to see them for what they truly are, false , with not one ounce of truth in them.
I know you are not alone in wanting to be good, getting caught in the never ending trying to get it right… it is like this for many and what I am realising is that for me it comes from not having enough self worth and or appreciating that I am enough just as I am. There is no need to be anything more or get recognition from outside of me.
When we go from outside of ourselves, the pictures will always change depending on what others are up to, what is in fashion etc and that thought alone feels exhausting. Its the same as you know when someone tells a white lie and they have to keep the false story going on and on and by then its too late or awkward to reveal the real story..but it does come out eventually. When we feel from within, it really doesn’t matter what others are up to and when we are ourselves right from the beginging there is no story to keep up with. We can just be.
Once you are aware that we create pictures that then dictate how we should be in a relationship, it really brings it home how false we are being, and untrue to ourselves and our partners.
After seeing some of the pictures I had been running with during my first marriage, what stood out was how these ideals and beliefs had stepped out of a ‘How to be a perfect wife’ book I read as a teenager, which was written in the 50’s, and here I was in the 80’s trying to re-create the perfect image of what it means to be a ‘good wife’. During the duration of that marriage that lasted seven years, I now wonder how much of the real me my ex-husband got to see, and what is also clear, is how quickly the cracks began to appear. Along with that he also brought his bag of tricks to the party of what it meant to be a good husband – did we actually know each other (no need to answer that).
Trying and controlling are so exhausting and we miss out on the magic that can occur when we surrender and allow.
Before saying yes to my current relationship I was completely unaware to many pictures I was/am holding as to how life, myself and others should be. Having pictures feels like it leads to a lot of controlling of life. Which I’ve only really put 2+2 together now. Control comes from trying to confirm our pictures. Thank you Rosie.
Rosie there are lots of myths around how a woman (but also a man) should be whether in relationship or whether not. I grew up in a strong Indian culture and to be a woman, there were expectations imposed upon us. To name a few: study hard you’ll be an attractive prospect for a husband, be a good cook – another brownie point for your husband and in laws, produce children – be a good mother, carer and more and the list goes on.
To remove these pictures is a working progress but the fact that you made the choice to no longer accept this is a great starting point. We all have our belief systems, images and pictures that contract us from who we truely are but underneath we all the same……..
Yes women and men have enough ideals and pictures to live up to without the extra ones put on us by different religions and cultures. It is great when we realise that we don’t have to be part of that cultural belief or way and that we can actually choose what feels right for us, even if we have been doing the same old same old for a long long time. Its never to late to choose what is right for us.
Being honest with ourselves and not being swayed by pictures and images we hold in our mind completely changes the way we live, the choices we make and the true feeling of joy we have inside.
Beautifully and clearly expressed Sally. I completely agree being true to ourselves and not giving ideals and beliefs a look in is the best medicine we can offer both to ourselves and this around us.
Acquiring pictures starts from such a young age – observing children in primary school and years ago when in playgroups. What models do we, as women, portray to these young ones? Clocking my own pictures is a start – and is quite shocking to realise how many I have! As you mention in a comment Rosie, the more aware we become about them the less power they have over us.
Its true that there are so many pictures we have of how we need to be as a woman and then when these come in we lose ourselves and our expression changes. I have just started dating someone and can feel constantly these silent thoughts and messages that I am judging myself against. However, in the moments where I just connect with me- it is very beautiful and everything just flows.
The great thing is, the more we become aware of these pictures of how we need to be as a woman, and the more we see them for what they are, just a picture and not true at all, the less power they have over us. I have found as I realise one picture, I get more aware of another and another. I could even judge myself for having so many pictures but I am really appreciating how I am becoming more and more aware of this. This is the key!
I am fortunate to know many women who have given up tying to live up to the images in their heads of how a woman should be and instead have chosen to just be themselves – and wow, that is truly sexy and very beautiful to be around. In my experience there is no substitute for just being who we are, for in it there is true depth of being that calls us all back to our innate connection with each other – and hence to a harmonious way of living.
I had my own list of “relationship pictures”, most of which are on your list, and trying to live those pictures was so very challenging, usually ending up with me feeling very resentful and frustrated as they didn’t seem to make being in a relationship any easier; often harder. How liberating it is to have now let go of these pictures – well most of them – and to allow myself to just be the wonderful me, in whatever relationship I am in.
A great realisation Rosie to understand that it is through disconnecting from our body and our inner wisdom and living from our head that feeds the false pictures, thoughts, ideals and beliefs that take us further away from knowing and accepting our true selves and our natural way to be.
Great to feel your commitment to living without pictures Rosie without putting pressure on yourself to get there immediately. What is coming up for me this morning is my picture that being in a relationship is hard work and I have to be constantly working at making it better rather than just relaxing and being myself. It is never about the relationship it is about my connection with myself and building that so that there is no room for pictures to come in and sabotage.
When we start to become aware of the pictures we hold it can be quite shocking to feel how much those images have controlled our lives and our choices. It is very freeing when we live not by pictures but from how we truly feel from within.
Pictures we hold can be so insidious, because when we have pictures/expectations and impose those onto others, we always end up feeling disappointed. Why? Because the pictures aren’t real, they are made up and so other people have no idea what it is we’ve conjured up in our heads, so of course they are set up to fail, the whole thing is set up to make sure we stay in usually in emotions, drama and lots of complication. So when we drop the pictures, it does make things more clear and simplistic.
Oh yeah and we all know how ridiculous and unobtainable some of those pictures are!
A great blog Rosie; such a beautiful confirmation to renounce the pictures, ideals and beliefs, without perfection or giving ourselves a ‘hard’ time. Thank you for sharing your experiences and wisdom.