Hi all, I just wanted to drop a few thoughts and ideas and put them out there.
Relationships: we are all in them to some degree or another. They could be with your significant other, your children, your friends or your boss at work.
I want to talk about personal relationships (your significant other or potential partner). Our relationships are full of passion, love, anger, hate, the whole gamut of emotions. The ups and downs, twists and turns are much like a roller coaster ride sometimes, aren’t they?
When it comes to long-term committed relationships, the problem is that every one of us has an ideal partner whom we would love to fall in love with, marry and travel off with into the happy ever after.
You know the feeling when you first meet someone, for the first six months or so you are both full of this “in love ” they are my perfect ideal partner, everything they do is perfect, and we see them with rose tinted glasses. Before long the glasses fall off and we see the person for who they really are and do everything to change them into our ideal image (projection) of how we want our partner to be.
Why-why-why ?
Divorce rates are going higher and higher, and people just aren’t committed to long term love and growth anymore. More and more people have relationships that fulfill particular needs or only have someone in their life when it suits them.
The reason, as stated earlier, is because of their ideal image of a partner in their minds. Where did it come from and how do we create long lasting love in the relationship of growth?
Part of the root of this relationships fantasy lies in the Disney fairy tales we all loved as children: Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Bambi etc.
Theses movies planted the suggestions of the perfect partner. For a woman, this could be the knight in shining armour and for the man, the beautiful princess. Now, look at most modern movies. They are all about love, being saved or rescued by someone and living happily ever after. Then we have what society and family and friends dictate to us about who we should be with, what is beautiful, what job they should have! With all of these influences, we can place certain expectations like a shopping list on the FANTASY PARTNER ideal that we have in our heads. We think they have to be this, that, etc.
Now I wonder, could this be the cause of relationship breakdowns? Probably not, but I believe that most people’s relationship problems can be traced back to some belief, expectation or opinion of how “my partner” should be, do or act for me to make me happy.
In relationships, people change, they grow, their values can change and sometimes people don’t grow together or don’t allow each other enough space. And this is without mentioning infidelity, or gender roles – masculine and feminine energies – and how they can work in a relationship.
This topic isn’t light by any means, but if people could see and love each other for who they are and not what we want each other to be, there is the opportunity for a deeper more fulfilling love.
This topic of relationships then moves in the direction of a conscious relationship; easier said than done I know and it is tough because each of us has to do our own inner work and stop projecting all of our ideas, beliefs, and insecurities on to others. In this process, one learns more about oneself and is more accepting of others because we see ourselves in them rather than saying that they are the problem.
A famous psychologist Carl Jung said, “When you take your own shadow (all the dynamic and supposedly negative aspects of yourself that have been suppressed and even repressed into the unconscious) you have no reason to blame anyone for anything. At this point in your spiritual development, you will be fulfilling your needs.
You won’t “need” someone outside of yourself to do anything for you, but you will have the opportunity to receive love and all that a relationship can bring from a place of inner strength, which can create a genuinely loving conscious relationship.
We all have many lessons to learn and people to meet, so just keep going with the flow and the universe will teach you what you need but won’t give you what you want.
I don’t have all the answers, and I’m still learning and discovering, but from my experience, I’ve learned and outgrown the fantasy. Please let me have your comments.
To Loving Conscious Relationships, Namaste