The Growth Relationship Vs. the Destiny Relationship
A framework to help you better understand your relationships
I’ve had a lot of successes in love — and a lot of failures.
I’m going through an agonizing breakup right now. It’s civil, albeit painful. The disorderly whirlwind of conflicting emotions circulating through me now has pulverized the illusory optimism I had just last week. It reminds me how fast life can change and that relationships are tricky, no matter how well-matched you are with your partner.
I’ve learned a lot of things over the years thanks to those successes and failures.
In my teenage years, I felt the sting of the seemingly uncontrollable emergency of unrequited love. In my adult years, I basked in the slow joy and security of healthy love and attachment. I went from perceiving love as an external force that happened to me to understand that love is a verb, a construct to be built between people, not acquired from without.
In my mind, relationships take work and a willingness to change and adapt to changing circumstances. More on this in a minute.
Thanks to the work of social psychologist and researcher Wind Goodfriend, I also learned how our mindset influences our relationships, expectations, and, subsequently, our behaviors. One framework that’s been particularly helpful has been the spectrum connecting the growth mindset and the destiny mindset.
These twin mindsets are something we take for granted, and we assume everyone else thinks and believes just like us.
The Growth Mindset and the Destiny Mindset describe some of the values we bring with us into new relationships. You can choose to look at it as your personal baggage, but I prefer to think of it as my treasure. These are our deeply held convictions about how life and love ought to be.
The Destiny Mindset
We all know the idea of “finding the one” and living happily ever after. It’s a tale as old as time that humanity has romanticized in literature since history began. It’s the idea that there’s a perfect person out there waiting for everyone, and our task is to find that perfect person in the midst of this messy world.