Write Your Own Story: Thirty Keys to Becoming Emotionally Fit and Building Successful Relationships

By John P. Roche PHD and Kathleen J. Roche MS

Are you unhappy with yourself? Is your relationship not as satisfying as youd like? Do you repeat the same negative patterns over and over againonly to feel discouraged, stuck, anxious, or depressed?

Write Your Own Story can help you take charge of your life and interrupt these negative patterns. Drawing on research and over forty combined years of experience as therapists specializing in relationship issues, licensed marriage and family therapists John P. Roche, PhD, and Kathleen J. Roche, MS, provide information and insight that will give you the tools youll need to be a happier individual and improve your relationships. To write your own story, you need to be a healthy, independent adult in charge of yourself, making the choices you want to make. Write Your Own Story shows you how you can turn your life around.

In section one, the Roches discuss the thirty characteristics they have found to be associated with individuals who are psychologically and emotionally healthy. Section two explores the dynamics of selecting a partner who is emotionally and psychologically fit. This section also discusses a number of danger signals or red flags that indicate a difficult partner and trouble ahead. Finally, section three presents what needs to be done to keep each self healthy and the relationship functioning at a high level over time.

Today is the day you can begin to write your own story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462049493

John P. Roche PHD

John P. Roche has a PhD in sociology from the University of Connecticut and is a professor of sociology at a college in Southern New England. Kathleen J. Roche has an MS degree in human development counseling and family studies from the University of Rhode Island. The Roches are both clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and licensed marriage and family therapists who have been in private practice for over twenty years.

Book preview

Contents

General Introduction: Write Your Own Story

Section I

Write Your Own Story

Introduction to the Thirty Keys

The Thirty Keys of Emotional Fitness

A Summary of the Thirty Keys

Attaining Emotional Fitness

Section II

Co-write Your Love Story

Characteristics of an Emotionally Fit Partner

Avoiding the Emotionally Unfit Partner

Additional Red Flags of a Potentially Unhealthy Relationship

Selecting a Partner Who Is a Social and Cultural Fit

Section III

Continue to Write Your Story and Co-write Your Love Story

Creating and Maintaining a Healthy Relationship

Familial, Social, and Cultural Influences

Relationship Model Comparisons

The Need for a Sense of We

Dos and Don’ts of Relationship Well-Being

Continue the Journey, Take Charge of Your Life.

Bibliography

About the Authors

To our parents:

Mary and Tim: Elizabeth and Patrick.

And to our children: Karen: Lisa:

Melissa: Michelle: and Walter.

Special thanks and appreciation to Michelle Casey, D Ed

For her assistance and support during this process.

The Thirty Keys to Becoming Emotionally Fit and Building Successful Relationships

1   The individual has differentiated from his or her family of origin.

2   The individual has resolved issues from childhood.

3   The individual is balanced regarding control, pleasing, comfort, and moral superiority.

4   The individual maintains stability and is open to change.

5   The individual is appropriate regarding self-disclosure.

6   The individual integrates past, present, and future.

7   The individual considers self and others.

8   The individual has love and work in harmony.

9   The individual thinks positively.

10   The individual expresses thoughts and emotions appropriately.

11   The individual is generous to self and others.

12   The individual deals positively with stress and crisis.

13   The individual does not take life too seriously (has humor and forgives).

14   The individual takes the long view.

15   The individual lives life consciously.

16   The individual appreciates differences.

17   The individual is not a perfectionist.

18   The individual appreciates and enjoys nature.

19   The individual acts from principles.

20   The individual attends to what is important.

21   The individual focuses on process as well as outcome.

22   The individual respects self and others.

23   The individual is honest.

24   The individual is spontaneous.

25   The individual has high self-esteem.

26   The individual is responsible.

27   The individual is interested in life and its meaning.

28   The individual is able to endure short-term discomfort.

29   The individual is assertive.

30   The individual makes his relationship a priority.

General Introduction: Write Your Own Story

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. (Epictetus)

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. (Aldous Huxley)

So, what do you want: to be happy, to have a great relationship, to be rich? Well, Write Your Own Story can help you achieve two of these goals. This book provides keys that will help you improve your intimate relationships and increase your personal happiness. We do this by focusing on ways in which you can become psychologically healthier, because being an emotionally fit person is the foundation for both personal happiness and relationship success. For a guide to becoming rich, you will have to look elsewhere.

To write your own story means to be in charge of your life. You write your own story as you make choices in your life. You create yourself as you live and interact with others. To write your own story, you need to be a healthy, independent adult in charge of yourself, making the choices you want to make. It is a process, and it takes some time. The early chapters of our lives are written for us primarily by our parents and others. As we mature, we begin to edit, rewrite, and re-create ourselves. As we become increasingly autonomous adults, we add new experiences and chapters to our stories. We construct ourselves.

Knowing ourselves is the task of adulthood. We get to know ourselves as we experience life, develop relationships, and get feedback from others about ourselves. We also get to know ourselves as we deal with things that are, to a large extent, out of our control—death, illness, and loss. As we grow and learn, we become more aware of what we can and what we cannot control. We develop wisdom. However, we never fully get to know ourselves in every way. Our self-knowledge is always incomplete. It is a matter of degree, and we are never finished. We are works in progress until we die.

If you don’t become psychologically healthy, your story continues to be written for you by your parents, by various unmet needs from your childhood, and by others. Your life choices may be primarily directed by anxiety, depression, addictions, negativity, or personality imbalances. Individuals with these conditions are not free to live their lives. They are not the authors of their lives. They are driven by forces beyond their control. If you experienced dysfunction in your family of origin or damage in your formative years, you may have to do significant rewriting and editing as an adult. Your task may be more challenging than the average person’s, but ultimately your story may be quite interesting and your sense of accomplishment rewarding and sweet.

To write your own story, you need to become emotionally and psychologically healthy. A healthy person is most free from the baggage or chains from the past and most able to make independent choices and be in charge of his life. To write your own story means being a competent, healthy adult who has the freedom to be himself and the confidence to be in a fully adult relationship with another similarly healthy partner.

If you are unhappy with yourself and your relationship, and if you find yourself repeating the same negative patterns over and over again only to feel discouraged, stuck, anxious, or depressed, Write Your Own Story can help you to take charge of your life and interrupt these negative patterns. We provide information and insights that will give you the tools you’ll need to be happier and have healthier relationships while you live your life and write your own story.

Section One of Write Your Own Story discusses the thirty keys or characteristics that, through our studies and more than twenty years of clinical work, we have found to be associated with individuals who are psychologically¹ and emotionally² healthy. Acquiring or enhancing these characteristics or qualities has enabled our clients to heal and become emotionally healthier and happier individuals. Adults with these qualities are largely in charge of their lives—writing their own stories. They are not perfect human beings, but overall, they are mature adults, mostly free from unhealthy influences that would limit their autonomy. These thirty keys contribute to your success as a person and as a partner.

Section Two focuses on the dynamics of selecting a partner who is emotionally and psychologically fit. Relationship success is based on the joining of two mature adults who fit each other in terms of their values, lifestyles, and social/cultural characteristics. This section also discusses a number of danger signals or red flags that indicate a difficult partner and trouble ahead.

Finally, Section Three discusses the hard part—the long-term maintenance of such a psychologically healthy relationship. The focus is on what needs to be done to keep each self healthy and the relationship alive, genuine, and functioning at a high level over the course of the couple’s lifetime.

Section I

Write Your Own Story

Becoming Emotionally Fit

Introduction to the Thirty Keys

The first section of Write Your Own Story presents thirty keys typically found in individuals who are psychologically healthy. This section focuses on the basic underlying qualities that are related to healthy, stable, and happy individuals. Individuals with these characteristics are mature adults who are in charge of their lives. The more an individual possesses these qualities, the more he or she may be defined as emotionally fit and the greater his or her ability to have a good relationship. The first step, and the best thing you can do to have healthy relationships, is to be a psychologically healthy person.

A Matter of Degree

As you read, keep in mind that no one possesses each and every one of these thirty psychologically healthy characteristics in the ultimate ideal sense. All of us come up short on some things. However, the greater the degree to which you possess these qualities, the easier you will find it to be happy, be in charge of your life, and have a great relationship. Those of us who do not possess some of these characteristics may want to acquire them or increase the extent to which we possess them. Remember that these characteristics are best thought of as points along a continuum. They are not simply things we either possess or do not possess. These thirty keys are all matters of degree.

A Matter of Work

Acquiring these keys or increasing their level of development requires attention, dedication, and concentration for all of us. However, for some people, more intense work may be necessary. While all of us are damaged goods to some degree, some of us have been damaged more by our life experiences than others. In order for us to live healthier lives and have better relationships, each of us has to do the work needed to repair the psychological damage we have experienced. The more damage that’s been done, the more repairs that will be necessary. A person grows psychologically healthier by examining, accepting, loving, and acting to change the less healthy parts of the self.

Our emotional health is related to the choices we make as we live each day. Until we do this individual work, the chances of having a healthy relationship are not good. In short, before you can successfully join someone’s hand in a mature adult relationship, you need to be moving down the road to emotional health yourself. You need to become a right person before you can find the right person. You need to become the primary author of your biography before you can successfully co-write your love story, although both stories are intertwined and mutually influence one another.

Not the Same as Infantile Love

Many of us long to have the type of love relationship that we had in our very first love relationships. As infants, we did not have to do much. The loved one (mother/parent) did all the work. It was so easy that we were spoiled by that relationship. Mature love does not work that way. As adults, we must attend to our relationships. As adults, we must learn to be aware of our individual feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and, at the same time, be aware of our partners’ needs. We must consciously focus on doing what is psychologically healthy for ourselves and our loved ones. We are no longer infants who get to be loved for just being. We have to become conscious and work at being caring, loving adults.

Those of us who did receive healthy love as infants and children have the best foundation for mature love. Our need for security, attachment, and love was largely fulfilled. We just have to learn to give love as well as receive it and practice love as a two-way relationship. Along with that comes the need to balance our needs and wants with those of our partners, friends, and acquaintances. The easiest way to be loved is to act in a loving manner.

Some of us, however, were not so lovingly cared for as infants and young children. Some of us experienced the trauma of abuse, neglect, or an unloving parent early in life. For these children, a loving childhood was not experienced, and they often remain needy as adults.

For other children, their love relationships with their parent or parents was one-way but in the wrong direction. These children learned that unconditional love was what the parent or caretaker expected for him—or herself. The focus of their parent-child relationship was on getting the needs of the parent fulfilled instead of the needs of the child. The self-focused parent wanted the child to fill the parent’s own emptiness. These children experienced a lack of love, which may have left some emptiness in them. The emptiness and neediness of the parent was passed along to the child. These individuals have a more complicated journey toward emotional well-being and taking charge of their lives. To some degree, they may have to re-parent themselves in order to repair childhood damage. To reach the goal of a healthy self and a successful relationship, they may have more than the average amount of work to do, but they too can write their own stories.

Maintenance Required

We must be mindful that all relationships require a significant amount of attention and nurturance. Remember the early stages of dating. For most, it’s a great stage. What many of us forget is the amount of maintenance that the relationship required in the beginning: the gifts, the time, the money, the time, the flowers, the time, the cards, the time, and the energy. What we tend to forget is that we took the time to do the maintenance. We made those relationships a priority. Relationships require a high level of maintenance all the way through, not just at the beginning. Satisfying, healthy relationships require time, energy, and resources. If you want such a relationship, you must attend to and nurture the relationship.

Each partner must work to keep the relationship alive and growing. Each has to do his or her work, like tennis players on each side of the net. Maintenance should not be so high that it is all consuming or so one-sided that one person is doing almost all the work. The latter would be similar to a player serving the tennis ball and then running around to the other side of the court to hit the ball back. Such a player would soon be exhausted. High maintenance means we have to think about and spend some time on our relationships. High maintenance must be balanced, and each partner needs to do his or her part.

The Self—the Foundation and the Fit

The self is the foundation of the relationship. A healthy self leads to a healthy relationship. If the self is relatively healthy, it is likely that the intimate other selected will be at a similar level of good emotional health. Many mental-health professionals believe that we tend to select partners who function at a comparable emotional health level. The healthy person selects a healthy partner, and the less healthy person typically selects a less healthy significant other. When this seems not to be the case for a particular couple, a closer examination and/or the passing of time tend to prove otherwise. For example, the healthy-appearing partner who becomes involved with an acting out, damaged partner, we later discover, that she had significant insecurity or abandonment issues. The healthy partner really wasn’t as emotionally solid as it first appeared. The healthy-appearing partner was a caretaker or an enabler. In coupling, we tend to select others of similar attractiveness levels and social class position.³ This also seems to be the case with emotional health levels. Exceptions may exist, but this pattern of similar levels of emotional health functioning among partners appears to be the rule.

Change Over Time

Of course, two individuals may be at similar levels of emotional fitness at age twenty-five, but five or ten years later, they may be considerably out of sync. This is especially likely to happen if one of the partners has the potential for significantly greater emotional growth than the other or if one partner causes damage to himself by a series of poor choices. People change with time and experience, and they may mature very differently. Partners who get together at a similar level of emotional health may not fit well later if they have very different potentials, have experienced very different life events, or have made different life choices.

Change in Society

Living in a rapidly changing society like the United States alters people over time, because individuals become exposed to massive amounts of social change. As the economic and social institutions of society develop, they impact individuals and families. For example, the women’s movement and the developing national/global economy have required considerable changes for many of today’s couples, including employment outside the home for each partner, shared parenting and household chores, gender equality, a faster-paced life, less supervision of children, and greater influence of peer groups and media. Husbands and wives may respond very differently to these social and economic changes, and the couple may no longer be as compatible as they once were. For example, one partner may become interested in a new religious movement, become a member, and develop a new outlook on life and a whole new set of relationships apart from her spouse. Another individual may experience rapid career advancement—for example, moving from sales clerk to assistant manager and then to manager—and leave his partner behind. Such changes related to developing social and economic conditions may require considerable adjustment by the couple.

Finally, one change that many Americans have experienced in the past fifty years or so is increased expectations. We expect a higher level of performance from our partners