Loving Yourself While Loving Someone Else
I've become enthralled in recent days, with the concept of loving ourselves in relationships.
My relationships have been a tremendous gift, in that they've shown me how much I've grown and the places I still can and for that reason I've been wondering why we want the things we do in a partner and in relationships.
The past few weeks have seen me coming to a place of greater peace inside, no doubt. It's as if my heart just said, 'ENOUGH!' and released all this resistance and tension that had been sitting inside. Wayne Dyer's book, 'Real Magic' talks about satori which is in essence, the concept of instant awakening where the mind/body/soul trinity just lets go and in one or many areas finds this peace without really doing much. I'm not claiming myself to be some sort of Buddha by saying that, but I certainly feel a greater sense of true inner joy. The happiness I feel comes from a totally different place now; I would constantly look outside myself for that feeling of 'hell yes!' about life and search for the next great thing that would satisfy me for the moment. I did a great job of blaming everything under the sun too, which is amusing now, but nonetheless, I was seeking without enjoying the findings. Now I'm doing literally nothing and loving it. I was on the bus coming back from Toronto a few afternoons ago and with the sun shining down on me through the huge windows I felt so content. I didn't need a book in my hand, to know that my goals were on their way to completion, a cell phone to my ear or to know that my bank account said I had x number of dollars. All I did was enjoy the moment and stay present to everything going on around me and in that awareness, everything came together. It was pure bliss!
It's translated into the area of relationships as well, because the one I find myself a part of now has seen me doing a great deal of seeking. Reading mountains of books, having handfuls of discussions, trying to figure things out in greater detail and analyzing every part of the relationship. It wasn't just one of us either. We've both played that part and who hasn't? It feels as though there's a great myth afoot about what a relationship is supposed to do in your life and if you buy into it, those things I mentioned seem like the perfect remedy for the soul that doesn't know how to fill itself from a lasting source. When you're more concerned with filling your cup than what you're filling it with, absolutely anything will do.
Relationships, we're told from a very young age, are about compromise and giving up yourself to or for the other person. In my life experience that doesn't work anymore. For some people it might work beautifully and to that, I say- keep on, keeping on! For those like myself, who since beginning the relationship dance, found themselves giving up who they were in the hopes that it would give them a sense of completion, there's a different way of doing things.
I was recently making conscious, what I did want from relationships in all areas of my life, turning the moments of, 'that made me furious!' into something a little more positive. While doing so I thought a lot about why I wanted the things that I did and whether I wanted them because I was convinced having those things in another person would make me truly happy. Clever diguise for the continued seeking I mentioned before, no?
While journaling last night I found the questions coming out of me, "If I had all the qualities in myself today, that I wanted in a relationship, would those things still be attractive to me?"
In other words: Am I looking for these qualities because I want to experience the joy of the other human being being those things or am I looking for them because I believe myself to be in deficit of something I don't believe it's possible for me to posess?
It felt like my soul was reaching out a little bit, nudging me in the direction of greater self-love. It may not seem like it on the outset, but it's incredibly unloving to stay in a relationship with someone because you feel that you lack and so you therefore need to stay with someone. It's almost like an act of emotional violence towards yourself because you're placing your joy, your future happiness and part of your identity in their hands, robbing yourself of the potential for further evolution. You have to stop your journey to make sure that they're afloat on theirs, so for every step forward you take, you may find yourself looking backwards and moving backwards to make sure that they're right there with you when no one other than you, decided that they neededed to be there.
The scariest part for me, was the realization that in all my past relationships, the other person was doing the very same thing. The energy now, feels so gross to think about being an energetic parent to them and that they were doing the same for me! Yuck! They were demanding that I be x,y,z for them and when I didn't or wasn't, I was made to feel like I was wrong for it and had to change who I was to get their approval, to ensure that the relationship was going in a good direction again. This takes on many guises because relationships are beautifully crafted to ensure that as we're ready to grow, the messages are shown to us so they may not always be blatantly evident. I realize now that if you can't accept something about another person and it's something you do not wish to be a part of your life, it's best to let it go so that you're not compromising who you are or asking the other person to bend until they break to make you happy.
'But there is something to be said for staying in a relationship with someone and not giving up on them!' I don't deny that at all, but the very words, 'giving up on someone' is an indication that you've already made yourself responsible for their happiness and are actively robbing them of the ability to make their lives full of life, light and joy. Those words indicate that you've decided for the other person what they do or do not need when you have no insight into their journey and know nothing about what they need. The only things you can know are the things that pertain to yourself. The suggestion that you're 'giving up' on them says that you're sticking around not because you're in love with who they are at their core, but who you believe they could be and you doubt their ability to get there on their own. You don't believe they're capable of finding happiness, so you're going to sacrifice yours so they can feel better and they better do the same for you. When they don't, all hell breaks loose and you feel uspet, betrayed and mad that they 'don't care' when it was really that you stopped caring about yourself long ago. How can they even try to care when you haven't defined what that means clearly enough in the first place because you're busy trying to define it for others?
Why subject yourself to that? Doesn't it feel emotionally exhausting to read, let alone live? I was exhausted, many times over and I'm sure that the people I was in relationships with were exhausted right back.
We're fantastic at being in relationships but it's the concept of ending relationships of any kind that we shy away from because we allow guilt to build a cage for us. It doesn't matter that we hold the key to that cage, we just see it and start yelling about the fact that we're in it, instead of realizing that we always have the power to be free of it. My friend Vitaliy and I, in a number of conversations, unearthed the seeds of this post and one thing he said that will stick with me forever was this, "Guilt is the result of another person's expectations you're not meeting. Shame is the result of expectations you've imposed upon yourself." I couldn't have said it better if I tried with all my might! We often associate ending a relationship with tremendous guilt and shame when in reality it's one of the greatest gifts we could sometimes give another person. If it's not working for you, how can you be sure that it's working so well for the other person? Loving yourself enough to know when to let go, gives those around you gifts that you're unaware of because you didn't spend time wrapping them.
The most powerful lesson I'm learning is to stay true to myself in relationships of every kind (family, romance, friendships, acquaintances, coworkers) and being as present as possible so that I can be blatantly honest about why I'm in them and what about them works in my life.
When you're the only one you're responsible for, everything feels easier and flows with so much more ease and ironically enough, your relationships become more enriching because you free yourself and the other person.