In many situations in life, it doesn’t really matter how or where you start, but it’s how you finish or end up that is most important.  Over the course of my life and career, I’ve seen many individuals who were born into privileged families, but who later grew into ruinous adult lives, and I’ve seen many people who came from modest or impoverished backgrounds, but who achieved greatness as adults.  I’ve had many people say to me, of their lives or distressing situations, “How did I get here?” or, “How did it come to this?”  What they’re essentially asking is, “How did I start out one way but end up in an entirely different way?”

What is true of beginnings, whether good or bad, pleasant or toxic, is that they don’t have to dictate a person’s future.  They can certainly have an influence on the future, but they don’t have to define future outcome.  All of this should come as good news to anyone seeking a stable and healthy relationship.  Regardless of your history, whether you’ve never had a healthy relationship, have only had a few or if you’ve only had great relationships, it does not mean that the trend will continue.

Some people fear that their best times or their best relationships are behind them, as if we’re all allotted a certain amount of love, happiness or good relationships and that once that quantity is used up, there’s nothing else to look forward to, so why even try?  This is one of the reasons why some people focus so intently on a past romance or relationship and mourn its passing, why they perceive that one person in their past as the key to their happiness, a key that they no longer possess or to which they no longer have access.  In reality, none of this is true.  No one relationship is the key to anything.  It might have been “a” key but not “the” key.  Here’s proof: How many keys do you have on your key ring right now?  My guess is that you probably have more than just one.  You probably have a key to your home, your car, maybe your office.  You have different keys for different things.  You don’t have just one key for every important thing in your life, and you typically have a plan if one of those keys goes missing.  For instance, if you lost the key to your car, you’re probably not going to spend years mourning its loss.  Like most rational people, you’ll have another car key made because you still have to drive.  Your driving days aren’t over because you lost a key.  Likewise, your relationship life isn’t over just because one relationship ended.  There can be another relationship made; you just have to take action to make it.  As with having to replace a lost car key, with a new relationship you’re afforded a new opportunity to be more careful so that you don’t lose the new relationship as you did the previous one.

When people have a history of poor or weak relationships, they often feel that their future relationships will be more of the same.  This tendency is also true of people with histories of great relationships.  They believe that they’ll always have great ones.  As previously stated, the past does not guarantee the future.  Situations can take a turn.  People with unhappy past relationships can be encouraged about potential great relationships on the horizon, and people who typically had wonderful relationships can exercise caution in that, if they are not careful and attentive with new partners, they can find themselves in unhappy or unhealthy relationships.

When people believe that if they’ve never had something good they’ll never have it, or they believe that there’s only a certain amount of time to obtain something and that once they’re past their “deadline” they’ve failed, they can begin to feel hopeless.  These perceptions are as false as they are destructive.  As long as you’re breathing, you’re still in the running for achieving or obtaining whatever kind of relationship you want, and if you’re careful and deliberate about taking care of it once you get it, you’re likely not to have to be without that wonderful relationship again.