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Do you ever find yourself stuck in relationship deja vu? Time and time again finding yourself dating the same kind of people or having the same arguments and problems cropping up in your love life? I think most of us can or have related to that before! Creating a strong and healthy relationship is not easy work, as we’ve been talking about a lot this month. However, what we don’t often realize is that sometimes the best place to start that work lies deep within ourselves and our past. Love and relationship coach Jimmy Allen sat down with me to share his incredibly valuable story and experience in healing the roadblocks to love in his life and how to use our past experience as a starting point towards real growth and happiness in our relationships.
Jimmy’s path to love and relationship coaching first began as he set off on a personal growth journey of his own. After a friend recommended he read Calling In The One by Katherine Woodard Thomas, Jimmy felt himself open up to a whole new perspective on himself.
“I was obsessed with the book and really looking at taking ownership of every single relationship because, for me, that was the magic. Reflecting on myself and all the relationships that I had because I saw it clearly where I needed to grow.”
After being encouraged by a friend, Jimmy eventually trained under Katherine Woodard Thomas and began his own coaching practice to share his gift and experience with addressing the challenges and roadblocks that one can face when showing up in life and relationships.
Now, Jimmy helps countless individuals change their love lives and one of the most important steps he has learned in his work, from Katherine Woodard Thomas and in his personal life, is to start investigating our past relationships.
“What is the pattern? What is the common thing that keeps happening in every single relationship?”
Specifically, Jimmy highlights the importance of looking at our role in our relationships and what patterns we notice within ourselves that keep showing up. After all, a healthy relationship can only come when we first heal the relationship we have with ourselves. By investigating our patterns, we can start to connect the dots in our lives and find new places to grow. In Jimmy’s own life, he realized that he kept dating men who felt shame around their identity as gay men. It was this realization that opened his eyes to the root of the problem.
“It was my mother. I had never told her about any relationship [I had]… And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s it.’ It was a direct connection to how I was unconsciously choosing men who didn’t hold me accountable to be my full self.”
Through this exploration into his dating life, Jimmy was able to gain the clarity he needed to begin healing the most important relationships he had - with himself and his mother. Often, it is this deep work on our foundational relationships that can create a ripple effect on all other areas in our interpersonal lives. It is with this awareness that we can begin to hold ourselves accountable to truly showing up in our relationships the way we want to, Jimmy highlights.
“If I want this relationship to be an emotionally available one, it has to come from me first.”
When we do not take the time to pause and reflect on our past patterns in relationships, we rob ourselves of a real chance for growth. We stay stuck in the same loop of one unfulfilling relationship after another. However, by having the courage to really get to the root of those patterns, we get one step closer to the love we truly desire.
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