RELATIONSHIPS

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Create The Relationship You’re Longing For With This Tool: Cultivating Your Relational Palate.

PERSONAL GROWTH & SELF-DISCOVERY • February 19, 2017

With Valentine’s Day just behind us and drugstores across America still filled with now-discounted neon-pink hearts and candy boxes, the topic of relationship has likely been up for many of us.

Each year around Valentine’s Day, I like to put out a relationship-oriented post (see the appendix at the bottom of this article for a list of past posts!) and this year is no exception.

This year’s post is meant for you if you struggled a bit this Valentine’s Day.

This post is for you if you’re interested in being in a fulfilling romantic relationship but aren’t in one yet.

Or maybe you’re feeling frustrated that you don’t even know what you’re looking for in a partner anymore (or even if someone like that person exists!).

Or perhaps you don’t even know *how* to begin attracting healthier, more functional romantic relationships into your life.

If this is the case for you, I want you to know that I get it. This is such a frustrating place to be in!

It can often feel like a catch-22 when you’re longing for a wonderful relationship and yet you think you have to have already *been* in one to attract the next one.

But I don’t think this is true at all.

Just because you’re not in the love relationship you want yet doesn’t mean you can’t get there.

And so in this post, I want to share with you a tool I use in my therapy practice. It can help you lay the groundwork for a healthy romantic partnership. Even if you believe you’ve never been in one before. Or if you don’t have a clue as to how to get started.

So keep reading to learn more about this tool and how it can help you create the healthy relationship you’re longing for.

The Tool: Cultivating Your Relational Palate.

Let me ask you something: do you think that if you ate every meal each day at McDonald’s you’d be able to deeply enjoy and intimately recognize the incredible quality of local, farm-to-table food of the famed Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse?

Probably not.

Your tastebuds would be conditioned to expect certain qualities like hydrogenated oils, an excess of sodium, simple sugars, etc..

You likely wouldn’t have the developed taste bud palate to discern and pick up on subtleties of flavors like they serve at Chez Panisse (and holy moly, is it amazing there!).

Look, I’m not trying to knock McDonald’s – if that’s your thing, go for it! – but you can’t argue with me that there’s not a significant jump in quality from there to fine dining.

In a way, our experience in a relationship can often be the same.

If we’re used to lower quality, it can often be harder to recognize higher quality when it comes along.

So what does this have to do with love and relationships?

Frustratingly, many of us may find ourselves longing to be in a healthy, functional relationship with the romantic partner of our dreams, but believe that we wouldn’t know what this is because of our prior (or altogether lack of!) dating history.

We maybe believe we just don’t know how to attract healthier relationships, or even what a healthier relationship looks like so we’re stuck with McDonald’s quality when we’re longing for a Chez Panisse of a love.

(And yes, I know this is a bit of conflated comparison, but you get my point.)

And yet in the same way that cultivating your taste bud palate is possible, I also think that cultivating your relational palate is possible.

What do I mean by this?

Whether you’re a foodie, a sommelier, or a cupper in a third wave coffee company, consciously cultivating your taste bud palate involves studying, recognizing, discerning, paying attention to, heightening your awareness of, and increasing your understanding and appreciation of the flavors you’re working with.

When we cultivate our relational palate, we can do the same thing.

We can study the qualities that make up good relationships, we can recognize, discern and be mindful if those qualities are present in our lives already in any way, we can appreciate and better understand these qualities, heightening our awareness of them when we’re dating and seeking out that longed-for prospective partner.

Just because we don’t have the relationship we want yet, doesn’t mean we can’t study and repeatedly expose ourselves to it so that it becomes easier to attract and recognize when it comes along.

Here are four steps to help you cultivate your relational palate:

1) Ask yourself what it is you’re longing for in a partner.

Get really clear on what qualities of character you might be wanting in the person you date.

Ask yourself how you’d like to feel in their presence. Really imagine into the sort of person this someone may be.

Is this person deeply kind? Loyal? Full of integrity? Hardworking? Empathetic? Funny? Is this person a mensch?

If you need some inspiration of how and what to look for, I’d invite you to review some of my old blog posts on relationships like this one and this one.

2) Now get curious and aware of who embodies those qualities in your life already.

Using the qualities and characteristics you imagined into above, can you think of anyone in your life who currently embodies these qualities?

A good girlfriend? A family member? A mentor? A professional support like a therapist or yoga teacher?

Notice where and how the qualities you’re longing for from a mate are already in the relationships around you.

Look, though you may be quick to write this off saying, “I know I get love and support from my cousin but that’s different! That’s not a romantic relationship!”, please understand that while the source may differ, what I’m pointing out here is that you do know what feeling loved and supported feels like.

You may not know what it feels like in a romantic relationship (yet) but again, we’re cultivating your relational palate by spending time discerning and appreciating where this quality does already show up in your life so you can better understand how you feel when you receive this.

In doing so, we can “prime” you (in a sense) for what it may feel like to receive this from a romantic partner.

3) Or, if you’re lacking in real-life, first-hand examples of the qualities you’re longing for, notice examples of these kinds of qualities and relationships from afar.

There are times when maybe no one in our life currently embodies the qualities of character we’re most looking for in a prospective partner.

So if that’s the case for you, that’s totally okay.

I would just then invite you to reflect on the qualities of character you see embodied on screen or in books, or even in real life relationships that you don’t know quite so well.

Look around you for examples of people or fictional characters and notice how you feel when you imagine being in relationship with someone like that.

Again, you may protest in saying, “It doesn’t count if it’s fiction or if I’m a big fan of the Obamas! How’s this going to help me create that kind of relationship?”

And again, I would say that this is a leap of imagination and an exercise in repeated awareness and exposure so that you can develop more muscle memory, more relational palate-savviness about the essence of the qualities you’re after in a partner.

So go ahead and brainstorm what fictional or real-life relationships from afar inspire you.

4) Now, consciously “feast” on these qualities.

If you have people in your life who give you some of the qualities you’re ultimately longing for from a romantic partner – like play and solid support – spend more time with them!

Notice how you feel after you leave spending time with them. Spend time imagining how it would feel if you received that in a romantic partnership, too.

Another task of “feasting” on these qualities will involve practicing embodying these qualities for yourself, too.

For instance, do you want to feel deeply understood and accepted by your partner? How then can you be more understanding and accepting of yourself?

The more we spend time with those who treat us in the way we want to be treated by a romantic partner and the more we embody these qualities of character ourselves, the more we will consciously cultivate our relational palate, the more accustomed to these qualities — these proverbial “flavors” etc. — you will be.

It will make it easier to discern when you’re spending time with someone who embodies these higher quality characteristics.

You will develop and refine your palate for good, decent treatment, for love and appreciation, for being respected and cherished.

Putting it all together: Cultivating Your Relational Palate.

So bottom line: Just because you’re not in the healthy, functional, committed relationship you’d like to be in (yet), doesn’t mean it’s not possible regardless of your dating history.

It also doesn’t mean you can’t lay some good groundwork for this healthier kind of relationship NOW by cultivating your proverbial relational palate so that you can better seek out and recognize a higher quality relationship when it arrives.

Now, a caveat to all of this: While I think this tool can be a helpful support, it’s no substitute for therapy to assist you in identifying, rewriting, and healing deep relational wounds and patterns you may have. If this is the case for you, by all means, play around with the tool of the relational palate but also understand that if you have a history of trauma, neglect, abuse, mental health challenges, etc., there may be deeper relational work that needs to happen in order to support you in being in a healthier kind of relationship, both with yourself and with others.

And finally, I want to leave you with a message of hope: I firmly believe that, no matter where we start from, no matter what damaging or painful relationship models we had as children, it is possible to heal, to transform our beliefs about ourselves and others and to cultivate healthier, more satisfying relationships in our life. I believe this on a bone-deep level both personally and professionally (honestly, it’s why I became a therapist!) and I imagine it’s possible for you, too.

So now I’d love to hear from you below:

Leave a message in the comments below and I’ll be sure to respond.

Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.

Warmly,

Annie

Other helpful relationship blog posts:

• 99 Questions to Strengthen the Emotional Intimacy of Your Relationship.
• 7 Key Relationship Insights I’ve Learned As A Couples Counselor.
• The Myth of the Perfect Partner & The Myth That Love Should Be Easy.
• “What if I never meet the one?”

Frequently Asked Questions

This is part of our comprehensive guide on this topic. For the full picture, read: The Complete Guide to Relational Trauma.

You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.

Attachment Theory and Your Relational Palate: The Science Behind Your Longings

What draws you toward certain people in friendship and partnership, while others leave you cold even when they seem perfectly suitable on paper? The answer lives in your attachment system — the neurological and psychological architecture laid down in your earliest relationships that shapes, often without your conscious knowledge, what intimacy feels like, what closeness you can tolerate, and what triggers your protective responses.

Nadia is a 39-year-old product designer who came to therapy with what she described as “terrible taste in partners.” She was brilliant at identifying, in retrospect, exactly what had gone wrong in each relationship. But she couldn’t figure out why she kept choosing unavailable men, even as she consciously knew she wanted something different. “I meet someone warm and steady,” she told me, “and I feel almost bored. I meet someone complicated and a little distant, and suddenly I’m completely alive.”

What Nadia was experiencing is the gravitational pull of her early attachment template. The aliveness she felt with unavailable partners wasn’t a sign they were right for her — it was a sign her nervous system recognized them as familiar. The limbic system, which governs emotional learning, doesn’t distinguish between “familiar” and “good.” It registers familiar as safe, even when familiar has historically been painful.

Developing a new relational palate is, at its core, an attachment project. It requires building tolerance for a different quality of connection — and that tolerance develops through experience, not just understanding. Understanding your attachment style is a powerful first step in this work, and one that can fundamentally reframe why your relational patterns have been what they’ve been.

References

• Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. Basic Books.
• Schore, A. N. (2001). The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health. Infant Mental Health Journal.
• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press.
• Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Arriaga, X. B., & Agnew, C. R. (2001). Being Committed: Affective, Cognitive, and Conative Components of Relationship Commitment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
• Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Penguin Random House.
• Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.

Both/And: You Can Be Committed and Still Feel Doubt

One of the more nuanced truths about relational healing is that good relationships still require work — and driven women sometimes struggle with this because they’ve been conditioned to interpret difficulty as failure. If it’s hard, something must be wrong. If I’m struggling in my relationship, I must have chosen the wrong person. In my clinical experience, this all-or-nothing framing is almost always imported from an early environment where things were either perfect or catastrophic, with nothing in between. (PMID: 36340842)

Elena is a biotech executive who came to couples therapy convinced her marriage was broken. She and her partner argued about logistics — who handles school drop-off, how weekends are structured, why she always feels like the household project manager. These aren’t exotic problems. They’re the ordinary friction of two driven people building a life. But Elena’s nervous system didn’t register them as ordinary. Each disagreement activated an old alarm: this isn’t working, leave before it gets worse.

Both/And means Elena can have a good marriage and still feel frustrated within it. She can love her partner and be angry at him. She can need repair and that need can be normal, not a sign that everything is falling apart. For women who grew up in environments where conflict meant danger, learning that a relationship can survive disagreement — that rupture and repair are the mechanism of intimacy, not a threat to it — is genuinely revolutionary.

The Systemic Lens: The Cultural Forces Shaping Your Relationship Patterns

Driven women are socialized into a double bind that directly affects their relationships: be independent enough to succeed in a competitive world, but relational enough to maintain partnerships and care for others. Be ambitious, but not so ambitious that you intimidate. Be strong, but not so strong that you don’t need anyone. Navigate these contradictions perfectly, and never acknowledge the impossibility of the task.

This double bind is not an accident of personal circumstance. It’s a systemic condition. Women entering professional fields over the past several decades did so without a corresponding restructuring of domestic and relational expectations. The result is that many driven women are effectively working two full-time jobs — their career and their relationship’s emotional infrastructure — while their partners, regardless of good intentions, benefit from a system that never asked them to do both.

In my practice, I help couples see these patterns not as personal failures but as cultural inheritances. When a driven woman feels like she’s “doing everything” in her relationship, she’s often not exaggerating — she’s accurately describing a structural imbalance that neither partner created but both perpetuate. Making it visible is the first step toward changing it.

If what you’ve read here resonates, I want you to know that individual therapy and executive coaching are available for driven women ready to do this work. You can also explore my self-paced recovery courses or schedule a complimentary consultation to find the right fit.

How to Begin: Developing Your Relational Palate in Real Time

In my work with clients, I’ve found that one of the most transformative things a woman can do is develop genuine discernment about what she actually wants in her relationships — not what she’s been conditioned to accept, not what she thinks she should want, but what genuinely nourishes her. That’s what cultivating a relational palate is really about. And like developing a palate for food or wine, it takes time, repeated exposure, and a willingness to notice your own reactions honestly rather than override them.

The path forward starts with curiosity. Before you can change your relationships, you need to understand what you’re currently experiencing in them. I often invite clients to begin keeping a simple relational log: after meaningful interactions, just notice — how do you feel? Energized? Drained? Safe? Unsettled? You don’t need to analyze it deeply at first. You just need to start gathering data about your own experience, because most of us have been trained to look outward — at what the other person needs — rather than inward at what we’re actually feeling.

Attachment-focused therapy is one of the most direct routes into this work. Our relational patterns — what we find familiar, what we unconsciously seek out, what we tolerate or normalize — are largely shaped by our earliest experiences of being in relationship. Attachment-focused work helps you see those templates clearly, understand how they’re running your present-day relational choices, and gradually update them through the experience of a new kind of relationship: the therapeutic one. That relational experience in the room is itself part of the healing.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is another modality I weave into this work, particularly when clients have parts that are fiercely attached to particular relational patterns for protective reasons. You might have a part that believes she has to earn love through helpfulness, or a part that shuts down at the first sign of conflict because closeness has historically meant pain. Getting to know those parts — with curiosity rather than judgment — is what allows you to expand your relational range rather than just repeat it.

One of the most practical things you can do right now is start articulating what you want. Not what you’ll settle for — what you actually long for. Emotional attunement. Real reciprocity. Conversations that go somewhere. Conflict that gets repaired. Many women I work with have never been asked that question directly, or they’ve been told their needs are too much. Part of developing your relational palate is deciding, perhaps for the first time, that your needs are not too much — they’re just yours. Reaching out to connect is a first step in putting that decision into action.

I’d also encourage you to pay attention to how you feel in your body in different relational contexts. Your nervous system is keeping score even when your mind is rationalizing. The tightness in your chest when you walk into a particular room, the ease you feel with certain people and the subtle vigilance with others — these are data points. Learning to read them is a skill, and it’s one that therapy directly supports.

You get to want more from your relationships. You get to choose, over time and with support, relationships that actually nourish you. Therapy with Annie is a place to do exactly that — to develop your relational palate in a safe, honest, boundaried relationship that models what you deserve to experience. You don’t have to keep consuming relational fast food when what you’re actually hungry for is so much more sustaining than that.

Medical Disclaimer