All My Relations

Ho.

A friend of mine once told me that you can learn a great deal about the way a man will treat you in a realtionship by how he treats the waitress in a restaurant. I have heard, too, that you can tell how a man will treat a woman in a relationship by how he treats his mother or sister. It is also said that you can tell the kind of man that a woman is looking for in a partner by observing her father. I believe all these to be true....sometimes.

Sometimes isn't always.

What I know about relationships is that they are dynamic, flowing, ever-changing. What I know through my experiences and through stories of friends is that we do, in fact, often play out the behaviors of our parents, their parents, and their parents' parents. In relationships to people and the world. In other words, we continue to play the same parts over and over through generations.

And I also know that within each of us is the power to stop the cycle right now.

This gives me great hope.