And what happens if it does?
When you choose to have your heart open, not what you might think.
We like to play it safe in relationship
It’s the fear of getting hurt in our intimate relationships.
We can get hurt in other areas of life and deal with it, but this one is the real biggie.
It leads us to consciously, and unconsciously, protect ourselves
To play it safe.
And we do stay safe.
But we don’t get what we truly want.
We miss out on what we want
Humanity has achieved incredible feats yet we still create great havoc and misery in intimacy.
We don’t get the love we signed up for.
We don’t get the love that pulls us out of ourselves, that gives us the sublime WOW factor we secretly long for.
What does happen?
So what DOES happen if you decide to really fully, exquisitely open your heart to your partner?
If you give it your all with no holding back.
Whether your partner does or not.
What happens is that you learn what it is like to have your heart open.
You get to live from your open heart
You want to be in service and devotion to your partner (two words that have become dirty in the age of ME).
They become more important than you.
At least part of the time.
You forgive them their mistakes.
And you give them opportunities to touch your heart again and again.
When you open your heart, YOU are actually opening YOUR heart.
At this level it is nothing to do with the other person.
It is you experiencing and learning what it is like to love.
It matters less what the other person does, it’s just you learning to live from your open heart.
Even if they leave, you still have your open heart.
To give to the next person. Or to invest in some other part of your life.
What we fear most is actually less painful than the pain we experience when we’re hurt with a closed heart.
Closed hearts create more suffering
When our hearts are closed it is so much easier to hold onto the story. To hold on to the suffering, the drama of what he did, she said, on and on back through time.
There is SO much pain in that closed hearted place fed by the ego. The pain is never ending as long as we choose it.
When our hearts are open and we are choosing love no matter what, it is scary but we choose to stay in the now.
We can feel the hurt, we can let it in and allow our magnificent hearts to heal it.
We can cry, scream, yell and rail at the universe but we get it. We heal.
We make love more important than the pain.
We can create healed relationships with the one who hurt/left us.
We can own our part in what was created between us.
Our partners can be inspired to meet us there.
Sometimes we can even see our existing partners in a whole new light and fall in love with them all over again.
Not in a dewy eyed fairytale, but in something real, raw and open.
This is the next stage of relationship the world is waiting for.
Where we stop loving from the ego. From simply getting all its needs met and only giving when it suits us. Where we remain in control, protected and hiding our heart.
Where we stop looking for the bad in our partners so we can justify protecting ourselves. Where we can point the finger and say “See…look at what they did/are doing! I need to protect myself”
Where we start to see the good in our partners and stop pushing them away because our pain seeking selves are too scared to let them in.
Where we start taking care of our own nervous systems and choose safety, love and belonging, rather than hurt. Where we learn to surrender our defences.
Where we can do the work, own our worth, stop avoiding, stop people pleasing. Or any of the hundred and one ways we have to avoid love.
Where we stand up to be counted and be someone who can be counted on in relationship.
Where we choose love over fear.
We can hear the cacophony of voices saying, but what if…?
What if this kind of love isn’t real?
What if our partners are not really worth loving this deep?
What if they don’t return our love?
What if love hurts?
We get it. It’s scary.
We challenge you to not make it about the other person.
We invite you to look at your own capacity for love.
There is so much you can learn and heal and grow in.
And funnily enough, more safety to be found.
For support in navigating yourself to your open heart contact Annette and Graeme here
Hi,
This post is absolutely wonderful. It is exactly what I desire. Just brilliant. I am very inspired. Thank you so much. There is so much Hope. I am 62 and I feel like a teenager. I choose Love over fear.
Thankyou for sharing your excitement John! If you can really get this it is so freeing, as you’re finding. It doesn’t solve all relationship problems but is is a very powerful ingredient.