How relationship patterns influence your life, and how you can take back control
We each have a perspective on the world, an unconscious itch that we’re all trying to scratch. It might be the desire to seek success, the approval of others, or a feeling of safety. But because this perspective is something so deeply a part of each one of us, we don’t realize it’s there. It’s an invisible part of our reality.
Part of my role as a coach is to work with clients to help them understand their perspective of the world. After all, what we see determines in a large part how we react. Understanding how they see the world, and how it is different from how other people see it, is often one of the more powerful “a-ha” moments my clients experience. Not only is it powerful for self-awareness, but it’s also a great way to know how those you lead act.
Understanding how they see the world, and how it is different from how other people see it, is often one of the more powerful “a-ha” moments my clients experience.
In my coaching sessions, I build this understanding by watching out for patterns that repeat in my clients’ interactions with their world. I watch out for managers who are continuously frustrated by their team’s performance, or clients that regularly complain of not being understood.
One of the key perspectives that help me understand my clients better is looking at how they interact with others. This might be hard to believe, but we each have just one primary way in which we interact with other people. We get stuck in this primary pattern and keep repeating it day in and day out.
If you always attract the wrong kind of friend or partner, if you keep hiring the wrong kind of employee, or if you find yourself frustrated that you’re not achieving the outcome you want from others, this article is for you.
It will help you understand how you form relationships and give you the awareness you need to become more effective.
The three primary components of all relationship episodes
Relationship episodes are any interaction that you have with another person. It covers interactions in key relationships, like those you have with your partner, family member or boss. It also covers those in fleeting “relationships”, like the brief interaction that you might have with a cashier as you check out from the supermarket. All of these are governed by the same primary pattern.
In all these “relationships episodes”, your experience of the relationship goes through three key phases: your wish, the expected reaction, and the actual action. I’ll go into each of these below.
The Wish
In every interaction we have with others, we have a primary wish, or desire, about what we would like from this interaction. One of my clients, who I will call Sam to protect his privacy, described the following situation with his business partner:
“I met with my partner and spent a lot of time explaining to him why the business strategy I was proposing made sense given the current market conditions. He agreed. The next day, he sent me a message saying that he would like to postpone the announcement of the new strategy by two weeks. I was transparent with him and explained my point of view, but it’s clear that he’s being manipulative.”
Although Sam didn’t state his wish explicitly, you can develop some idea about what it might be. In fact, I went on to ask him some questions to clarify what his wish was, and he said that he wanted to be treated transparently and openly.
Wishes can be many things. For example, you might wish to be respected, listened to, liked, taken seriously, to feel important, to be included, and so on.
The Expected Reaction
The second part of the pattern is the reaction you would expect from the other if you were to act on your wish. In the example with Sam, I asked him what would have happened if he had inquired further as to why the partner wished to delay the announcement by two weeks and insisted on being treated transparently. This is what he said:
“It doesn’t make sense to ask him because he would just take advantage of my sincerity. I’m being open and honest with him, while he’s planning something else that I don’t know about.”
Of course, as you read this, you immediately realize that Sam might be jumping to conclusions. The reality, however, is that we’re all making these assumptions about other people’s intentions on a daily basis. The person cutting in front of us in line is rude and wants to pick a fight. The driver speeding on the highway is reckless. The child who answers back is disrespectful. Even though all of these situations have other plausible explanations.
The Action
As a result of the wish, and the reaction we expect from the other, we then take action. The action can be explicit, such as saying or doing something, or it can be hidden, such as feeling something or withdrawing. Let’s follow Sam’s story until the end. I asked him what he did, and this was his reply:
“I didn’t do anything. I felt frustrated for having my time wasted, and I blamed myself for being so trustworthy. I postponed the strategy launch indefinitely until I could figure out what’s going on behind my back.”
Actual actions, like every other part of this pattern, can be many things. Sam might have gotten angry, spoken up, complained to someone else, or quit his job. He did what very often happens to many otherwise successful people: he withdrew, felt frustrated and blamed himself. As a result of his pattern, he ended up manifesting his imagined fears and made them a reality.
Putting it together
If we look at the key themes in Sam’s interaction with his partner, and put them together, they might look something like this:
When Sam is treated in a way that he doesn’t understand, he feels that the other person is trying to manipulate him. As a result, he withdraws, feels angry, and blames himself for being too transparent.
One story does not a pattern make. The first time Sam recounted a relationship episode, I made a note of it. Every time another relationship episode came up in our sessions, I would identify the three core elements I described above and add them to my notes. After several sessions, it became clear that Sam had a certain pattern that he played out with the relationship episodes that left him feeling frustrated.
Armed with this knowledge, I shared with him my summary above as a hypothesis that he might consider. At first he wasn’t sure if it were so simple, but over time he began to notice the pattern playing out as it was happening. This allowed him to realize when he was falling back into the pattern, and give him the space to consider alternative actions.
Now it’s your turn
What are the patterns that are playing out in the interactions in your life? Try identifying them yourself. Every time you have an interaction that leaves you feeling frustrated or angry, break it down into its three primary components: your wish, the reaction you expected (or actually received) from the other, and the action you took as a result of your expectation. Use the template below to capture these relationship episodes. Once you have at least 7 episodes, set aside an hour to go through them one by one and identify any recurring patterns. You might be surprised to discover that there are elements that repeat.
Then, develop one sentence that describes the pattern that plays out in your relationship episodes, as I did for Sam above. This is just your first draft. Over time, and as you reflect on more relationship episodes, you will be able to refine this statement further.
Once you have this sentence try to catch yourself when you start playing out your pattern, and see if you can experiment with an alternative reaction. If you were Sam, for example, you might try confronting the other person one time, and changing the way you present your case the next time. Watch out for how the episode plays out with these new strategies, and see what you can learn from that experience.
Conclusion
Knowing your interaction patterns will help you understand how you shape the world around you through your wishes and expectations. This awareness is a powerful tool to help you become more effective in both your professional and personal lives.
If you are a leader, this tool will give you awareness on how those you lead interact with the world, and you’ll begin to understand behavior that might not have made sense to you previously. Armed with this understanding, you will be able to meet your team’s deeper wishes so they can do the work you want from them.
Share in the comments below if you’ve ever caught yourself repeating certain behaviors during your interactions with others, or if you think you might know what your relationship patterns are. Don’t forget to share this article and tool with others whom you think are stuck in a pattern of behavior that is holding them back.
