How difficult life experiences may have shaped your relationships
Expecting Everyone to Leave
When your home and family kept reshuffling—new step-parents, new siblings, new rules, new everything—you learned that love comes with an expiration date ⏰. You became incredibly adaptable and resilient, mastering the art of fitting into new family dynamics and building connections quickly 🤝. Your flexibility and ability to navigate changing relationships is genuinely impressive and serves you well in many areas of life.✨
But somewhere deep down, you absorbed the message that nothing is permanent, that even the people who promise to stay might eventually move on 🔀. Now you find yourself holding back in relationships, not fully investing because part of you is always preparing for the inevitable abandonment and goodbye 👋. You love with one foot out the door, you protect yourself from the pain of another relationship that might eventually dissolve.
- Blended family adjustment issues
- Blended family adjustment issues
- Child custody battles
- Child custody battles
- Difficult relationship with a stepparent
- Discrimination in new country
- Divorced parents
- Divorced parents
- Family separation during migration
- Frequent evictions
- Frequent relocation, moving
- Homelessness
- Involvement with child protective services or foster care system
- Living in refugee camps or temporary shelters
- Living in temporary or institutional housing (shelters, refugee camps)
- Loss of homeland/cultural identity
- Parents separating/divorcing
- Statelessness or undocumented status
- Stressful housing conditions
- Sudden displacement/immigration due to war/persecution