How we do romantic partnership today, and how we love, is the most important work you can do in this lifetime.
It doesn’t matter how much money you make, how big a house you have or how much status you have in the world.
And it doesn’t even matter how many screaming orgasms or blissful experiences you have, if you can’t show up in love with your partner.
It’s at home where it most counts.
As this year starts to come to a close, is it time to review how you have actually been as a romantic partner this year?
There’s a saying that goes “Try thinking you’re an enlightened being in front of your family”. In other words, we can think the sun shines out of us whilst we’re sitting on our own little mountain top Ie. in our heads. It’s only when we get around our relationships that our skills, or the lack of them, really show up.
Where on your list of priorities has your relationship been?
Have you really made an effort to look at your relationship choices? Or have they been putnin a “low-down on the to-do list, one-day kind of fantasy”?
This year, where have you:
- Put up walls rather than been vulnerable?
- Made your partner wrong without looking at your own behaviour?
- Yelled and screamed abuse, rather than open your heart?
- Stayed hard and held onto being right, rather than really listened?
- Spent hundreds of hours at the gym, at work or at yoga rather than focus on your way of relating?
- Chosen love over fear when it was the hardest?
- Been so terrified of being abandoned you would pick a fight rather than get close?
- Been so terrified of being too loved you chose to sabotage the good things instead?
- Done your relationship work with the person in front of you? Instead of in your head, or with a friend or solo therapist?
Graeme and I have done all those things this year, even with all our skills and experience. But we did them a lotless. (actually, we never yelled or screamed abuse, we seemed to have nailed that one…). And we always make our relationship one of our top priorities.
It’s different in relationship
What most of us don’t understand is that we have different neural networks that become activated when we become relationally attached to someone.
That’s why you can feel SO good being single (or imagine you are) and then have all the nightmares come out when you get into a romantic relationship.
It’s also why some people can be so great at their careers, or in their lives. And then struggle so hard in their marriages or while dating.
Many more of us assume that doing solo growth will automatically translate to relationship growth…
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t change the way even our tone of voice can change when we talk to our partner. Because we are unconsciously talking to the childhood caretaker who caused us grief. And causing our partner pain and grief along the way.
Healthy Communication sounds boring but it can change your relationship!
Learning the art and science of healthy communication might sound really boring. But done in the context of your relationship it can truly change your life.
You can discover:
- how to share in a way that feels safe to your partner.
- Learning to understand the impact of your words.
- how to hold their experience with love and presence.
- how to be way less judgemental and way more open-hearted…
Most of us are living in our relationships as our inner children, rather than as the mature Sovereigns within us.
Our relationship work really starts when we stop blaming our relationship or the person in front of you…
And instead you own, with our whole heart, our own reactions and stories and experiences.
Then, true love can finally start to blossom.
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