You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships

and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships.

I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg,

and I'm really glad you're here.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment.

In today's episode, I am sharing five things to normalize in long-term relationship.

So I think that thanks to social media, thanks to Hollywood and all of those other influences,

we can often have really warped expectations around what a long-term relationship should look

and feel like, what's normal and what isn't and I think that the very

one-sided imbalance unrealistic view that we can get from all of those media sources means that

oftentimes we are a harsh judge of our own relationship and that we perceive something as being really

wrong and being really abnormal or a real

cause for concern when really it's just part of what you sign up for when you decide to build

a life with someone and enter into long-term partnership. So I'm hoping that in today's episode,

I can speak to some of those things that we really do need to

normalize. And of course, it's not about normalizing being unhappy, normalizing, you know,

resigning yourself to a lifetime of dissatisfaction or anything like that, but rather managing

our expectations because I think in this and so many other areas of life, when we have really

rigid and unrealistically high or perfect expectations, then inevitably we're going to feel

disappointed when real life misses the mark. And I think that when we're in that mindset of

seeking perfection and expecting perfection,

then we're only ever noticing the shortcomings, the ways in which we don't meet that standard.

...