You’re Always in the Wrong Relationship
Unless You Know This
In the past few years, we have been confronted with circumstances that caused us to disconnect from friends, colleagues, and family. We learned how to Facetime and Zoom to maintain some connection to one another, even if it was only via a computer screen.
For those who were single, the ways we met one another disappeared. No gathering with friends. No dating. No synchronistic encounters that may have led to a deeper relationship. None of that has been available.
We have been impoverished by this lack of contact with one another. The physical contact and the lack of gathering spaces to share our stories have kept us from recognizing ourselves in each other. As a result, divisiveness and misunderstanding have risen from this illusion of separation.
Who am I really in a relationship with?
We believe we have relationships between people, but what we experience is a relationship with ourselves through others.
Relationships are how we can see what lies hidden reflected in the other. We see those things that we love about ourselves when we love those same things in others. When we see something that we dislike in another, it is because the same exists within us buried in denial and rejection.
Relationships are a way of harmonizing the shadow and light as we experience ourselves through the other person. When we feel resonance with another person, it is because something in them resonates within us. When we feel dissonance, we notice in them something unresolved within ourselves.
When we are not present to one another, as it has been in the past few years, we feel an absence from others without understanding that the origin of our longing resides in our disconnection from ourselves.
When you are in an unhealthy relationship, ask yourself what elements of that negativity reside unresolved within yourself. Perhaps you are in this relationship to resolve that within yourself, not with the other but through the other.
Imagine that relationships are not between people but between the aspects of yourself that you love or deny. How would you experience your relationships with others differently if you had this awareness?
All relationships are founded on the relationship you have with yourself. The other person is the one who reflects that back to you. Relationships are fraught with conflict because there are hidden aspects of ourselves competing with one another. They only become visible through our interaction with the other person.
Even the things that attract us can cause conflict. For example, if I am attracted to someone who is a joyful, free spirit, what questions do I need to ask myself about my sense of playfulness and ability to feel free?
If I am attracted to someone quiet and introverted, what aspects within myself call for quiet and solitude?
If I’m attracted to someone who is an explorer, an adventurer, what aspects of myself are afraid to risk, fear uncertainty, or judge adventure, such that I seek it in someone else?
The Edge of Growth
Relationships (this includes any kind of relationship), when understood in this way, are how we can grow as human beings into a maturity that embraces our shared experiences. As we develop, we expand our capacity for love and set boundaries around our self-care and appreciation. Conflict becomes a path for personal development without guilt and judgment.
I encourage you to bring this awareness into all your relationships. To be intentional and reflective about what you embrace or deny in yourself will enliven your connection to others as it heals the wounds that cannot be seen.
