One of the things I listen for when I'm getting to know someone

Consider the metaphor that 'relating' is like 'dancing.' You're having 'dances' every time you interact with anyone. At the store, on the road, in your relationship, with your family. All dances, all the time. You might dance with someone who really knows how (hell yeah) and you might dance with someone who has almost zero skill except being on the dance floor - they are all flinging limbs and erratic movement. Either way...you have to take responsibility for the dance YOU are dancing, and with whom. I was having a conversation recently and a man told me: "I was with a woman who would try to break up with me at the slightest sign of conflict, over and over, so now it's hard to be myself around people." And as I listened, I found myself silently translating for the deeper truth underneath. Accountability sounds more like: "I chose to remain with a woman who repeatedly tried to end the relationship during conflict. I chose it again, and again, and again, convinced her to stay, and in doing so lost my sense of self." Feel the difference. One version makes him a passenger, one version returns him to the driver's seat. It's not about blame or beating yourself up or pretending people don't mistreat us. People do, relationships can be painful. People can lie, manipulate, withdraw, betray, abandon, and wound. And still...there is immense power in asking: "Why did I stay?" "Why did I accept that?" "What part of me decided this was tolerable?" "What was I getting from remaining?" "What do I continue to get from repeating this pattern with others?" Freedom doesn't live in understanding the story, it lives in recognizing and *discontinuing* your participation in un-wanted patterns. I hear this constantly in dating. "He never chose me." And sometimes the deeper truth is: "I spent years trying to convince someone who wasn't choosing me because it would have meant more if I could finally convince them." "She was emotionally unavailable." Sometimes the deeper truth is: "I continued pursuing someone who repeatedly showed me they were unavailable because the love I learned was dysfunctional." "They never chose me." clarifies into "I chose to engage in an unreciprocated relationship for months." "They betrayed my trust." becomes "I didn't wait long enough to see how trustworthy this person is, and I tried to create false intimacy by sharing much more than they had shown me they could hold." "They kept crossing my boundaries." Becomes..."I kept allowing my boundaries to be crossed and returning to the connection without changed behavior." "They will never work on the relationship with me, they won't talk about our issues so they can improve." Transforms into..."I remained in a connection with someone that was content to ignore me and my needs, and I never sought outside help to assist us to learn how to talk to each other." Again. And again. And again. Relentlessly, until taking full responsibility for your relational experience becomes second nature. That doesn't mean you tolerate garbage relationships, it's actually the only way you can recognize that a connection is not for you and have the conviction to flow away. It might be difficult, it might be confronting. It SHOULD be. I personally spent 2 years in this place, retraining my brain to recognize how I was cosigning relational dynamics I didn't want. The moment we tell the whole truth, our power returns. We don't have to become responsible for other people's behavior because we become responsible for our own. Our participation in the dance of relating can look like just about anything we'd like it to, but that only happens AFTER we surrender to the fact that we are dancing every moment - and how to create the dances that we want.