Was This Supposed To Be Fun?
The romantic dream is that, once we fall in love, everything
happens magically between beloveds. We are never in conflict, we never
experience pain, and because our partner is there to take care of all our
needs, everything is always happy and harmonious. Even though we know this is
not possible, we still act in our relationships as if we believe it was. The
reality is that the love we seek is not outside, but deep within ourselves, and
no one but ourselves can make us happy. Since we can only behave from our
current base of knowledge and wisdom, the challenges of relationship give rise
to the need for further self-awareness and personal growth. For this reason,
the truth is that relationships are really not here to make us happy, but only
to make us more conscious. In fact, when we enter into a relationship, we will
eventually have to heal ourselves of all our remaining weaknesses, limitations
and self-defeating behaviors.
Relationships are hard work. They continually require serious and
demanding awareness, effort and care as well as fun, pleasure and expansion.
They are one of the most intensive and difficult spiritual paths on the planet.
When we really connect with someone in love, we learn that he or she is not just
in our lives to fulfill our fantasies, but to teach us to be more loving human
beings.
As men and women, together, we are tilling the ancient battlefield
of the sexes into the fertile ground that feeds and nurtures us. To begin that
work, we have to let go of as many of our preconceived ideas, patterns and
habits as possible to see what needs to happen. Sometimes it is coming closer,
sometimes moving apart, sometimes sharing thoughts, emotions, and sexual
energy, and at other times opening to spacious awareness and distance with each
other. We must also cultivate acceptance of our partner, relinquishing blame
and judgment, and learning to express our needs in open and non-defensive ways.
Yet living relationships in this way is challenging, and tilling
this war-torn soil has its dangers. In the first seven years of our lives, we
receive from our parents most of the programs that determine the quality of our
intimate relationships for the rest of our lives. By believing our parents'
disapproval of us, by inheriting their negative beliefs and thought structures,
and by absorbing their poor behavioral modeling, we plant land mines in the
fields of our adult love relationships. Whichever of our parents' patterns
within ourselves remain unconscious, unresolved, or un-forgiven, we draw out of
our future mates, causing them to detonate in the relationship. If our mates
don't already possess these patterns and qualities, we pretend that they do by
"projecting" them on our beloveds as targets of our internal
conflicts.
We expect our partners, through all of this, to give us what our
parents never did; to rectify their transgressions or to resolve our fear, pain
and lack so we can love ourselves again. When these expectations surface, the
land mines explode in our faces. We begin to attack, criticize, blame,
manipulate and withdraw, hoping to change our partners and resolve our own
issues. Finally, by adding our contempt to these strategies, we set the stage
for a break up or divorce. The lesson is that love and sex go out the window
when we fail to become conscious of what we are doing, clear out the minefields,
and change our behavior.
From my book entitled: A Woman's Guide to Opening a Man's Heart
