glass slippers: a reflection on relationships

I’ve never wanted anyone ‘just for’ an intimate relationship. As in, I need an emotional connection – which means I need friendship. Everyone does things differently. As you sometimes hear people say: that’s just me.

I’m writing from two places: the person who’s lived, and is, at times, narrating their own experiences – and the practitioner, who sits with others who are living their own unique stories every day.

When you try the ‘if the shoe fits, date it’ method, I’m a person who has come to believe that the chances of a relationship surviving having approached it that way round are slim – even if it’s measured in as many as 9 or 10 years, though some last only months. But you can’t say failure is a given fact (it most certainly is not, I don’t want to be misunderstood here) nor make predictions.

All relationships teach us. They promote learning as much as they provide love, companionship, and someone to go to IKEA with (it’s worth saying you absolutely can go to IKEA on your own, just in case anyone doesn’t know that already).

Nobody needs relationship doom way down the line delivered as a message from well-intentioned friends, while therapists of all kinds genuinely will not judge anyone’s relationship choices or management of their intimate interactions. That’s something clients may do and explore with us.

I’ve no interest in advocating for this or that relationship model. Neither am I speaking out against anything: not ‘sex first, get to know later’ or casual encounters. After all, a marriage can end in divorce even if the partners knew each other for 20 years before they got together. Life carries risk. We can try to minimise the risk but we’ve no way of knowing when we start a thing how it will go or how it will end.

It’s a fact that you don’t need civil partnerships, marriage, or living together to have commitment to another or others. You shouldn’t ever ditch ‘I’ and replace it with ‘We’ – both can co-exist quite happily, with independence for the most part and some measure of co-dependency and reliance.

If you value people even in all their fuckedupness, if you’ve got to know a person and see them when they’re grumpy, unreasonable, and depressed, as well as joyful, outgoing, and top of the world, and still want to be around them, that’s certainly got love in the mix. If you feel their presence in your life is appreciated by you 24-7, whatever emotional state or situation you find them in at any time – if you can still support and be supported, still be with them – that’s definitely a candidate you’ve got there for the ‘we could be together’ kind of love. How that togetherness is managed, the shape it takes, is down to those involved communicating with each other.

One thing we should all be able to agree on: if the communication stops or involves manipulation, lies, and/or deceit, any kind of relationship is in trouble. This includes friendships, which should never be devalued next to relationships of other kinds.

What matters as the number one priority, throughout all the relationships you have with others, is your relationship to yourself: keeping yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy for your benefit – and, coming up a close second, that of your friends and partner(s). This is self-care. It isn’t selfish. It’s when we don’t look after ourselves or we’re only in a situation for ourselves, that relationships can’t succeed and can cause a great deal of damage while those involved flounder.

I’ve thought about relationship ‘stuff’ my whole life on and off – who doesn’t? Do I want one, do I not, what should it look and feel like, and so on. Since being made aware from lived experience that I need every day to keep centring my needs, my wants, my wellbeing, my self-care, because there was a time when I got out of good habits, I find to my frustration that I can sometimes drift like a wonky supermarket trolley off the pathway and back onto familiar territory that, after three bad years I went through, has the abuse survivor’s acquired and false sense of comfort and certainty all over it, neither of which are actually real.

Comfort and certainty can become illusions we cling to. From the outside, they make no sense – sometimes not even to us – but trauma teaches odd loyalties. They’re the outcome of conditioning from very bad experiences repeated over time, which can be overcome.

Good therapists will have plenty of experience of therapy for themselves and will always seek it out when they need support. For the client, this should affirm their choice of professional to work with as potentially a wise one, because it reinforces the therapist’s authenticity and reliability as a practitioner; it doesn’t weaken or invalidate the work they do in helping others.

Let’s none of us jump to conclusions that may have life-changing and potentially years-long consequences when a handsome man arrives at the door and the glass slipper he carries fits our foot perfectly. Sometimes, a slipper is just a slipper. It could be a love story or a tragedy we think of when we indulge in speculation as to what might have happened to Cinderella when the story we know ended. Was it happy ever after or happy for a decade or two?

Importantly, remember that all of our relationships change over time and teach us, whether they last to the end of our lives or they don’t, so: what might Cinderella have learned, if her relationship with the prince had continued for the rest of her life, and if it had ended after months or years? Her story is a work of fiction, so our responses can be insightful for us, reflecting both our hopes and our fears.

Get in touch with Xander for a free 30-minute initial assessment and to work out a fee that’s right for your circumstances should you decide to proceed further. Xander has spaces currently available to welcome new clients.

Xander, trading as xph therapy, offers integrative counselling, which means working with multiple therapy types, including CBT, psychotherapeutic and person-centred to develop a therapeutic pathway just for you, whatever outcome you’re hoping to achieve.