I’m not going to talk about finding, or keeping, the love of your life. That’s not why you’re here. You’re reading this because sometimes, not always, your relationships don’t feel like partnerships.

Perhaps you’re always available for your partner. You keep your evenings free for them, even if they don’t always do the same for you. You cancel your plans if your partner is home alone. Your partner never gets to experience your ‘sorry I’m busy’.

Or, maybe you’re always a shoulder to cry on. If they are upset, you are always looking at what you might have done; what you need to do differently next time. You always listen. But when you are upset, perhaps you are not always given the same courtesy.

The scripts we act in our relationships can take on gendered lines too. Perhaps you are expected to nurture and care even though that might not always be you, all the time. Perhaps you cannot express anger, or even an opinion, before you are labelled dominant or aggressive.

And sometimes, this dynamic — the tendency towards smallness and walking on eggshells — can get taken further. Sometimes, you feel hollowed out. You feel like any instinct to assert yourself, to show up, is met with increasing hostility, sometimes violence.

If you have experienced that, the shadow it casts can be long. It can darken otherwise bright relationships.

I do not yet know you. But I know that you did not deserve that.

I cannot change your partner’s behaviour. But I can listen.

Together, we’ll understand what is happening in your relationship right now, and perhaps your relationships in the past. Human beings are social creatures. We are hurt and healed in relationships, so together we will explore what this looks like for you. You might begin to notice patterns and themes. You might spot how your partners share some characteristics, and what those are. We might begin to spot why you might be attracted to them too.

And of course, there is our relationship. You and me. This will differ from your other relationships. But the gift is that I won’t walk away. You can say what you need to say to me. We can really unpick what might be going on between us, safely in the knowledge that whatever we say will not be the end. And in understanding what is happening between us, we might also see what is happening elsewhere.

Perhaps then, it feels safer to make some changes.