Each of us has our own relationship style, with each individual this starts from the day we are born with the surroundings, experiences as a child, and early adulthood that make us who we are today as a person.
Taking these experiences with us into adult relationships, when we first fall in love we call this the ecstasy period. It’s a joyful period that takes us back to the innocence in the infancy of pure thoughts and feelings, but as the relationship continues we also carry the fears from childhood that we have experienced and those fears can affect your relationship. Whether it be a sudden death of a loved one, which may affect a person severely and they may show signs such as a fear of abandonment and project these fears onto their partner. Their partner doesn’t know why he or she may be acting out in ways that affect the relationship negatively. If things such as these are addressed and communicated to each other, the couple can learn ways to cope with such fears
It’s not uncommon for two people with opposing personalities to be attracted to each other, after all don’t opposites attract? For example, you might find yourself an introvert paired up with an extrovert. I call this the Prairie Dog and the Hawk relationship. I’ll explain, while prairie dogs spend most of their time underground they do come out to play and check out the landscape. The hawk, on the other hand, spends his time gliding around, checking out its surroundings, and is always got his eye on everything. The prairie dog is content to retreat back into his underground once more if feels threatened.
If you find yourself in a prairie dog/hawk relationship, here are some tools you can use to bridge the gap to keep your communication going in order to have a successful long-term relationship.
If you can understand the prairie dog person and the things that they have gone through as a child, you may be able to understand why they may have traits such as anxiety, feel they’re not good enough because a parent or another authority figure in their childhood constantly put them down, etc. The hawk is just being a hawk and they’re not aware that their actions are frightening the prairie dog into his underground retreat. which makes the hawk angry because it feels the prairie dog is withdrawing from the relationship but that’s not the case.
If you happen to be in this relationship then you must realize that this is the time you must have patience and understanding that this prairie dog needs time and space to think about how to handle things. The more and more you attack, yell or scream at the prairie dog the more he will run and hide.
For example, the prairie dog is out playing and the hawk flies over because it wants to play too. But the prairie dog runs and hides in its hole. This makes the hawk upset and hurts the hawk’s feelings. The hawk doesn’t know why and doesn’t know what’s going on. The hawk goes down to the prairie dog’s hole and says, “Please come out here, we need to have a talk.” The prairie dog says, “I don’t want to talk to you. I’m happy in my hole.” the hawk says
The hawk says I’m not trying to scare you, intimidate you or make you feel bad, but I love you, and I want to understand why we’re having this trouble and can’t seem to have fun playing with each other.” Reluctantly, the prairie dog agrees to come out and talk.
The prairie dog and the hawk set side by side, The hawk reaches out and touches the prairie dog in a caring manner and says, “I care about you and I would never do anything to hurt you. I just want to understand why you run away when I try to come by and play?”
After talking, it is revealed that the prairie dog is frightened when he sees the shadow of the hawk fly over because many years ago the prairie dog was playing with his brother one day when a hawk’s shadow flew over them. The young prairie dog witnessed the brother being mauled and eaten by the hawk. That is why when he sees a hawk’s shadow fly overhead he runs and hides. Nothing against the hawk. Moved by the
Moved by the prairie dog’s story, the hawk says, “I would never do anything to hurt you or scare you. What can we do so that you don’t feel frightened when I fly overhead?”
After talking for a while, they agree that an acceptable solution would be for the hawk to whistle the prairie dog’s favorite tune as it flies overhead so that the prairie dog would know that is was his hawk who loved him and wanted to play and not a danger.
My point is, a relationship like this can work out with the right communication and understanding perhaps this may help you in a relationship where you find yourself either being the Hawk or the Prairie Dog.