24/08/2026
It may be hard for those who know me now to imagine, but I was quite the firecracker in my twenties, especially in relationships.
I was 24 when I got married and my husband was 23. We loved each other deeply, but we still had so much to learn about communication, emotional regulation and conflict resolution.
Many of our arguments followed a familiar script.
We would become triggered, voices would rise, one of us would storm off, and the other would withdraw or shut down.
Eventually we'd reconnect, only to find ourselves back in exactly the same cycle weeks later.
I remember thinking, "There has to be another way."
What ultimately became my vehicle for change was curiosity.
Curiosity about myself.
Curiosity about human behaviour.
Curiosity about why intelligent, well-meaning people could find themselves repeating the same painful patterns over and over again.
And slowly, I began to notice something about myself.
I wasn't always seeing my husband for who he actually was.
Often, I was seeing him through the lens of my past experiences.
Certain situations would activate old emotional wounds, and before I knew it, I was reacting from a much younger version of myself.
I was responding from childhood conditioning rather than present-day reality.
And my reactions could then activate my husband's own protective patterns.
Suddenly we weren't simply two adults having a disagreement.
We were each bringing years of unconscious programming into the conversation.
The fascinating thing about these patterns is that they often operate beneath our conscious awareness.
This is where I believe self-reflection can be so powerful.
When we start becoming curious about our own reactions, rather than only focusing on what the other person is doing, we create space to ask:
Why did that affect me so strongly?
Is this about what is happening right now, or is something older being activated?
What am I believing in this moment?
What protective response am I moving into?
And perhaps most importantly...
What would it look like to respond from who I am today, rather than who I had to be in the past?