Relationship Inventories: In Conversation With Fabienne

Join Fabienne in this conversation about Relationship Inventories. Fabienne explains what a relationship inventory is, why we need this exercise, how this helps build awareness of our relationships, and how it helps us become more secure when we have the knowledge of our relationships past and present.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to In Conversation with me,

Fabienne Sandoval,

Life coach,

Author and speaker.

I talk way too much so I thought I'd put that skill to use by sharing with you this series of conversations designed to expound your awareness and knowledge of becoming secure and empowered in your self-worth.

Meet Sam,

My OBM,

Wingwoman and literal can't live without.

We tried to break up once and it didn't work.

I'll be here to ask the juicy questions and help extract some of these powerful insights from Fabienne.

So let's begin.

So today we're going to be talking about relationship inventories.

Okay so I guess my first question is going to be what is a relationship inventory?

Such a good question,

Of course.

Well it's a really interesting thing because we keep inventory for so many other things like especially like if you were at work or if you had stock like books or you know different objects things like that you'd keep a you'd keep a check of like what you have right essentially your space and relationship inventories are that but basically working on a basis that we're looking at what kind of traits and behaviors the nature of the relationship dynamics things like that and so the idea of a relationship inventory is that you go through your relationships in your life usually the top 10 or 20 most significant relationships so these would include people like your mother,

Father,

Any siblings,

Any close family relationships that you have,

Best friends,

Relationships,

Romantic relationships and of course maybe some work colleagues as well or any other relationships that have been really important to you throughout your life.

So you will sit and write out these top 10 so what's the kind of first step that you would do what's the first I'm trying to think of the word yeah the first step that you would do to create this relationship inventory after you've made your list?

Yeah so obviously I have a very awesome relationship inventory template.

I didn't actually know that so that's quite handy.

So the idea is that you yeah you start with the name so you're like okay who am I top most let's say 20 a lot of people are really shocked at 20 because they're like oh my god I don't know 20 people but if you think this is over the course of your life we're not just talking about at this very moment but it's like who has been in your life so that's very sorry is that a really specific thing to do can you do it for over a short period or is it best to do over your life?

Definitely over your life and the reason why is because we're looking for when you're doing a relationship inventory it's about data it's about information and it's about learning so when you do this inventory of all of your relationships what you're looking at is patterns that are coming through for example right what kind of what's the nature of the relationship right so it might be like a parental relationship or maybe it's you know parent-child relationship or maybe it's a friend and one of the reasons that you guys are friends is because you both have a shared hobby together so you'll be friends by default of that hobby that's how you became friends that's usually where you spend your time together so understanding like what's the nature of the relationship is really important and then also looking at like okay what are the positive attributes in the relationship what are the not so positive relation attributes in this relationship and when we do this we start to actually see how sometimes a lot about patterns so when I very first did this I was like oh my goodness all of my one of the other things we look at is like if the relationships ended how did it end or why yeah and when I did this practice for myself the first time it was so surprising for me because you know where I had dealt with abandonment with my father walking away actually so many of my really important relationships had ended through like abandonment either that person or me in some way shape or form and so once you have this and it's all written down and the like information is right in front of you you start to see like oh my goodness these are my patterns like this is what I'm doing I'm creating the same experiences over and over again but with different sets of people yeah and it's not just the negative kind of connotations is it it's also the positives that you can pick out then well the reason I gravitate to these people is because of some of the wonderful things that they do it's not just a kind of negative connotation absolutely yeah and then we get to see like for example like you know if you're really if you're a person that loves to give for example maybe you're more attuned to like over giving in relationships and you give too much and maybe you're usually paired up with people that take and so you know recognizing that obviously that's a great thing about yourself but hold on a second why am I pairing myself up with people that are takers as well maybe it would be work out differently if I paired myself up with someone that's a giver yeah both of us are giving to each other with all this in in front of you is it something that you can do kind of every few months could you then kind of map out if you have been making these changes is it something that well you've done it once well that's it or would you suggest that the people do this relationship inventory kind of like every six months or every year so one of the things that we use the relationship inventory for is to become more secure so like understanding so as we've talked about before in one of our talks is attachment styles and like attachment styles so if we're on a path of becoming more secure then this relationship inventory is really helpful because it kind of understand helps us to also understand like our more anxious patterns or our more avoidant patterns so the most important thing is doing it the first time because that's going to cover off your most significant relationships and you're going to get a vision of like where am I at today right now but yeah I definitely would say it's a really great tool to kind of have in your back pocket to whenever you're in you know relationships like when something new comes into your life being able to evaluate that relationship as well so maybe something comes in maybe start dating someone new on a romantic level and then that ends okay well let's actually evaluate that you know let's take a bit of an inventory like how did that go how does that like measure up in terms of what I've been doing in my other relationships other romantic relationship is it the same traits still happening or the same dynamics there or I'm actually starting to shift and change so it is good for recognizing like behavioral changes yeah would you also be able to use the relationship inventory with someone else so kind of like a almost this is what I think and then giving them the the relationship inventory and getting them to fill it out as if they were you maybe they could I'm trying to word this a bit better for you Fabienne sorry um just a little better but kind of almost like how you see yourself is not necessarily how other people see you and it's almost like a compare and contrast is it something that's worth giving somebody else and say what do you think or do you feel that it should just be a personal exercise yeah this is that's a really really great question I so with this I would say you're doing it personally for yourself because you're attempting to build self-awareness so as you say like if someone else filled it out for you if someone else answered the questions for you you'd be having their perspective on the situation but really what we want to do is start to build our own sense of awareness in terms of like wait a minute you know it would be great for each and every one of us to be like oh I'm perfect I'm such a great person in relationships you know but we all know that that's not unfortunately true and like we all have a part to play in our relationships so I think it's really important to do it for yourself because then it's you with you recognizing that it's not just about the relationship you've had with your mother or your best friend or your sister or like a female boss for example it's actually all of my relationships with females look very similar huh yeah why that is so it starts to get you thinking really about like okay wait a minute what is happening here with these kinds of relationships you know and then being able to evaluate what I would say though and I'm glad you asked this question is that it's actually really cool like if you was to be in a partnership maybe you know one of the ways that you could kind of deepen your understanding of each other is you could do your relationship inventory they could do theirs and you could talk about the kinds of things that you know come up for you so you know if you've been more attracted or more like connected to feel more anxious in relationships you've been more attracted to avoidant people and you know your partner has been maybe the opposite like sharing these information and you know letting each other kind of know like okay these are the kinds of things that have come up for me or you know yeah like actually I have a big fear of abandonment because that's kind of what's been the theme in a lot of my relationships so it can actually be really great like deepen intimacy and yeah knowledge and understanding of one another when you're in a partnership to share yeah so it seems like a really good tool not just like you say for internal but that kind of deepen your romantic relationship as well I think that's pretty much everything that I was going to ask about this and you say that you've got a template that you can use for this so you're not doing this blind it is kind of here you are here's a structure is that right absolutely yeah so it's a pretty like pretty like straightforward template obviously if anybody wants that they can get in touch and we can share that with them but it will just give you some really great insights into what has been going on in all of your relationships what are the themes what are the patterns how have you been showing up who have you been attracting into your life and it's going to give you the power to really make those changes and focus on becoming more secure that's perfect thank you so much Fabian for talking to me again and talking to us about the relationship inventory thanks so much

Reviews

Greetings from Australia. I really enjoyed listening to this . I think a lot of understanding about my relationships with come to fruition once I begin your guidelines of obversation
Thanks so much
I’ve attempted to contact to ask for that template mentioned in your talk but can’t find a way to request one !