I deserve to have a partner who adores me,
Janine Lattimore
sees me as, and makes me, a priority,
and who treats me with loving kindness.
Someone I feel emotionally safe with.
I wrote the statement above in my journal a couple of months ago and re-read it this morning. I separated from my second husband almost four years ago. Since then, I have been in two longer term relationships, but have mostly just been dating/exploring. Sometimes I start to feel frustrated that most of my ‘explorations’ have not resulted in the relationship I desire, and sometimes I have felt heartbreak. However, I trust that this is a journey, a process, of creation. A process of me evolving into who I need to be to attract, and feel worthy of, and comfortable in, the fulfilling relationship I want. It is also a process of my gaining greater clarity about what I want. I believe that when all is ready the Universe will deliver to me the most amazing, and satisfying relationship experience that I desire, and I am also appreciating all aspects of the journey to that, understanding that there can be as much satisfaction in the journey as there is in any final outcome.
There are a couple of questions that come up repeatedly about relationships:
1. How do I choose the right partner, and this encompasses how do I decide if my current partner is right for me now?
2. Can you make any relationship work if you work at it hard enough?
How Do I Know I’m With the Right Person?
As I have reflected on the first question over the past few years I have evolved a list of 10 key questions to ask yourself to assess if you are with the right person for you, but for me there are two main questions:
– Do I feel light and at ease with this person?
– Is this person a match for what I want to create in my life? – are they supportive of the path I want to walk?
Do I Feel Light and at Ease with This Person?
For me this question is about me learning to trust my intuition and body’s wisdom. In the past, often my body/spirit has felt unsettled, I have felt intuitively that something was ‘off’ or not right, but I have argued against it in my head, or tried to reason it through logically and rationally. I now understand that for me as a highly sensitive person, I need the energy in a relationship to feel light to me, and I am practicing listening to my intuition, trusting it will lead me to something better, and following it.
Can You Make Any Relationship Work?
When you ask the question: “Can you make any relationship work?” also implicit in the question is “should you make any relationship work?”
Theoretically, unless it is a destructively abusive relationship then I would say yes, you can make any relationship work on some level. However, this does not mean that you can necessarily make it into the truly fulfilling relationship you desire. Therefore, it depends on what you want, and how much you want.
The environment in which we live has changed dramatically in the last 100 years, and especially in the last 40 years, and continues to change rapidly. In the past, people generally lived in one place/community their whole lives, did the same job their whole lives and gained little more education beyond their initial schooling and work training. Now, most people will change jobs and careers many times over their life, will live in numerous locations throughout the world and ongoing learning is pretty much mandatory. We also live in the information age where personal development knowledge is readily accessed. In light of this many people have begun to question whether the expectation of being married to one partner for life is still relevant for us, for example, the concept of conscious uncoupling. We desire unending relationships due to our ego mind’s strong need for love and security, and our unconscious mind’s directive to protect us from any sort of pain. However, this is all dependent on the beliefs we hold about relationships, and what it looks and feels like for a relationship to end. Conscious uncoupling is largely about learning to see relationships, and the transition of relationships to another form, in a new way. Creator of Mindvalley, Vishen Lakhiani, talks about his experience of consciously uncoupling with his wife in this video.
You may have religious beliefs about marriage being for a lifetime and I respect that. I used to as well until I found myself stuck in a marriage with a partner who was unfaithful to me in various ways, and I felt psychologically, and at times, verbally, abused. I had to make a choice between what my faith was telling me – that marriage was a bond made before God for life – and my understanding as a trained youth worker/counsellor that I was in an abusive relationship that was not healthy for me. I had tried for years in every way I knew to ‘fix it’, and eventually I made the decision to honour myself and leave. When I did, I felt such crushing guilt, and failure, and fear that I started having debilitating panic attacks, but in time I learned how to deactivate these and moved on with my life.
I now know that what I really needed to do was learn to love myself, however I think I would have struggled to do that while within that relationship. Leaving my first marriage set me on path to a far greater understanding and acceptance of life, of other people and of myself than I ever would have known had I stayed.
“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I think I could have and would have stayed in my second marriage if my husband had been willing to work with me to resolve the issues we were experiencing, but he chose to leave. I am now grateful that relationship transformed as it gave me the opportunity to become who I really want to be, and to express my true self freely. I felt like I had been released from a box that I had been trying to force myself to fit, and I don’t think that I could have stepped into this much fuller expression of myself if I had remained in my marriage to him. He once said to me, “I feel like I set you free”, and I think he did.
I don’t regret the ending of either of my marriages. I have had feelings of guilt and failure and shame about it in the past stemming from ingrained beliefs that marriage should be for life, but from my perspective now, I think it was all good.
Of course, if there are children involved in the relationship this adds another dimension, and many people choose to stay together because they think it is the best way to support their children. This is a personal decision, and I don’t think that there is a definitive right answer about whether it best for the children for the parents to stay together or to separate. Having parents separate can be traumatic for children, but it is not inherently so. It is the way that a separation process is handled that is the strongest factor in determining how stressful it is for the children. Yes, my own children found the adjustment to having two homes and time away from each parent stressful at first. However, my second husband and I agreed to always put the children first, and to continue to parent together as much as possible, and soon our children adjusted. Some kids like having two homes. I know that for me I became a much better mother with stronger relationships with my children once I was away from the stress of living in marriage with their father, and able to express myself and live as I wanted.
What if You are Allowed to be Happy?
My second husband left because he was unhappy, and I felt hurt by that at the time, but the truth was I was unhappy to. I was trying to make the relationship work, but really I was happy to be released from the obligation. What if your ending of a relationship also set the other person free? What if they are also unhappy? If you are both unhappy and can see no way forward to change that, then surely separation is a positive thing for you both, and any children involved?
Sometimes I think we feel like we have to come up with a negative reason to justify the separation, or we feel like we have to hate on the other person to make sense of things. After separating from my second husband I felt uncomfortable if we got on well together because I kept thinking that if we got on well then why were we separated, and I felt the need to remind myself of the things I really didn’t like about him so that I felt settled in the decision to separate. But what if it’s okay that two people in a relationship just accept that they are keeping each other from being happy, and that it is okay to seek happiness apart. What if that could be done with calm, loving acceptance?
I think that a belief that comes into play here is, “I am not allowed to be happy”, and/or “I am not allowed to have what I want”, and/or “It is selfish to seek my own happiness”. Sometimes. people also have the belief that suffering demonstrates moral character, and that it is godly to sacrifice yourself.
Something that came up for me with the end of both my marriages was the thought that I had given it my all and it hadn’t been enough. This melded into the belief that I am not enough, and that I am not not good enough to be able to make a relationship last; that I am inadequate and dysfunctional in some way and can’t make relationships work.
These are just beliefs, and mostly beliefs that we have adopted from others. It is your choice whether you want to continue to practice these beliefs, or to choose to adopt new beliefs that are more empowering and more in line with love. Is it loving to say that someone is not allowed to be happy? Is it loving to deny someone happiness?
What would you do if you truly loved yourself?
My 10 Steps to Happiness book is essentially the process I went through to learn to love and accept myself, and deactivate dis-empowering beliefs such as those above after I separated from my second husband.
What If I Made the Wrong Choice?
If we choose a partner from one level of understanding, but then later realise from an expanded level of understanding that our partner cannot now be who we need them to be, then it may be best to consciously uncouple. This allows both people within the relationship to move on to create a relationship that is fulfilling to that version of themselves. If we make a mistake, I don’t think we should be forced to live it for a lifetime.
The aim is to be able to do this from a place of love, not blaming or hating the other person for not being who you need them to be, but being in a place of acceptance of who they are and who you are, and the ways in which that means that you cannot connect with each other. Please note, that what I am talking about here is not just disliking someone because you now notice they have annoying aspects. When you notice things about another person that you don’t like, be aware that is usually highlighting something about you not them. This is usually an opportunity for you to grow in love and acceptance of yourself, as well as the other person. If you find that someone else’s behaviour ‘pushes your buttons’ and stimulates a strong emotional response in you, then it is likely that their behavior is somehow a projection of attributes you possess which you wish you didn’t, or they represent something you fear, or they represent something you will not allow yourself to be or have. What I am referring to above is coming to an understanding that you and your partner have a fundamental difference of values or ways of being that mean that one or both of you cannot fully be themselves in the relationship, or live life in the way you really want to.
I’m not advocating that every time you feel dissatisfied in a relationship that you simply move on. I think that it is always good to first ask the question: “how can I create satisfaction within this relationship?” and open to inspiration as to how that may be possible. This may involve seeing and doing things in a new way. It is also good to consistently ask yourself:
- How can I learn and grow from this experience?
- What is this showing me about myself?
- How is this giving me an opportunity to expand and become a higher version of myself?”
When you experience a problem, you are always the problem in some way, however, sometimes, when you ask the questions above with an open heart and expand in your own personal growth, you realise that it is time for your current relationship to transform, or you realise that the person you are with is unable to meet you in some way that feels necessary to you being who you truly are and want to be.
One of the healing affirmations in Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life that has always remained with me is “I forgive you for not being the way I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free.”
Do I Need to Find my Soul-mate?
“Be with someone who inspires you and makes you be the best version of yourself.”
― Roy T. Bennett
All of the above is not to say that creating a fulfilling relationship is just about being with the right person, and that when you find your ‘soul mate’ then your relationship will just naturally be fulfilling, or that if you are not finding your relationship fulfilling that you are with the wrong person. I do think that creating a satisfying relationship is a committed, daily, focused practice, even when you are partnered to someone who is a good match for you. I do think that it takes learning and training, and I think that the majority of that learning needs to be how to love and accept yourself, and take complete responsibility for how you are showing up and what you are creating.
Abraham Hicks teaches that if you are completely aligned with Source then you can live at ease with anyone because you are not attached to them in any way for your emotional satisfaction. However, we are here in this form to experience a full, physical, human experience. We are here to ‘sift and sort’ through negative and positive experiences, and develop greater clarity about what we want, and we are wired to desire and expand.
Can I Fix My Relationship on my Own?
It takes the positive intention and commitment of both partners to make a relationship work well for both partners. It is possible for you alone to learn skills that facilitate better communication and connection between you and you partner, but if your partner is not willing to invest in the relationship themselves, and you are making all the effort, then it will feel unfulfilling for you. The proviso here is that you have reasonable expectations of who your partner is and what they are capable of – appreciate and acknowledge their intention and effort, rather than the level of result. If there is a giver and a taker in a relationship then it is an imbalanced, unhealthy relationship.
If you’re the only one working on a relationship, it will (probably) *never improve.
Marriage therapist Whitney Goodman *I hate talking in absolutes, but I feel pretty confident about this one
How Do I Know What is Right For Me?
So what is the balance? How do you decide which relationship is right for you? How do you decide whether to stay in or leave a relationship? I don’t believe there is one right answer. The answer is what you believe is right for you. You are the creator of your life. Ask yourself:
What is most important to you?
What do you want to create?
Can you create that in partnership with this person as they are now (not with how you think you can change them into being)?
Creating a fulfilling life partnership with someone takes courage, vulnerability, and focus. When we are open and appreciative we receive something from every interaction we have with another person, and can see it as valuable even if it does not evolve into the realisation of our ultimate desire. When you perceive connections and relationships in this way then there is little or any sense of loss. We only suffer when we expect something (or someone) to be something that it is not, and become attached to a person satisfying an emotional need in us.
How Do You Know it’s the Right Time to Leave?
I would like to quote a post by Alpha Female Coach Anel Bester to answer this question:
How do you know it’s the right time to leave?
You trust the inner knowing. The inner knowing that goes beyond your logical mind as to all the ‘legitimate reasons’ why it’s NOT the right time. The inner knowing that understands the difference between codependency and love, the difference between a romantic partnership and a warped sense of responsibility for the other, the difference between a relationship built on love which promotes growth, and guilt which brings resentment.
Quite frankly Darling, if you’re asking the question you already know the answer is now.
A more powerful question I invite you to consider is HOW do you want to leave? And YES, this is YOUR personal choice to make regardless of the other person’s emotional state. You are not responsible for their reactions and behaviours. You are responsible for your own.
✔︎ I chose to leave in the energy of love.
✔︎ I chose to leave in the energy of forgiveness and release.
✔︎ I chose to leave in the energy of peace.
✔︎ I chose to leave in the energy of respect.
Which meant, the work I had to do prior to leaving, was to become the woman who left in this manner.
I did and I did.
I invite you to understand that love does not resonate with martyrdom or victimhood. It does not resonate with codependency or rescuing. It does not resonate with blame and shame. Alpha resonates with love, integrity, honour and romance Darling.
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