Picture this … you and just one other person. No fancy cars or house, no title or encumbrances. If all else were equal and there was just one person you’d want there with you, then that’s what love is. When I lie in bed in the early hours wanting to get up because I’m ‘writing in my head’ and I stay to be beside the man I love just a little longer, it tells me we got something right.
In all my years of marriage and with all the couples I have sat with, there is one thing that stands out above all else. And that is, that this thing called love is a mystery; that no-one really knows what keeps a couple together and that it often is not that they have all the right circumstances or ‘make each other happy’, but that they honour what brought them together in the first place and is the most powerful ‘force’ in the Universe. And that is their love for one another; the trust that allows them to give their heart, to be there through thick and thin, that sees the imperfections and does not run from them, that offers a soft place to fall and a sanctuary from the ‘madness’ of the world outside.
It is our partners who allow us to drop our bundle, lose our cool, show our vulnerability and reveal our deepest secrets; the ones with whom we can laugh and cry, be wise or silly. It is where we can learn that being right doesn’t always mean winning and that co-operation means working together as two equals toward a common purpose or goal; even when that means agreeing to disagree or have a different opinion. When we know that we don’t have to hide anything about ourselves – because our partner, like our parents, sees it all anyway – then we can just relax into that being-ness and let go of some of the doing.
I know when I die that none of the material things of this world will go with me. What will never leave me though is the love I have given and the love I have received in this lifetime – and there is no price that can be put on that. My partner does not ‘make me happy’. What he does is make way for me to be myself and be responsible for the experience of my own happiness or unhappiness as the case may be. And the longer I am with him the more I see that his acceptance of me, warts and all, has provided the backdrop from which I have been safe enough to look into my life and to do the healing that I have needed to do. In that is amazing strength and a powerful gift!
All too often we hear about the relationships that don’t work or the statistics around relationship breakdown. Listen today to what does work in your own relationship or that of others. Give yourself and your partner a break-through! And don’t compare your relationship with anyone else, for you were divinely chosen for one another to be the mirror through which you can choose to see yourself with love. Whatever you judge as not ok in your partner is but a reflection of what you have not yet accepted or owned within yourself. And while I have known that for a long time, even now as I write this, it opens up new ways of perceiving things for me. Sometimes that may be as simple as “We were both looking for the same thing – to be loved and accepted for who we really are!” How it showed up may have been in ways that caused you pain or discomfort. However, that makes it no less valid. And once you see that, you have touched on the experience of oneness; that there is only one of us here and then separation has no place to go.
Inner Sense No. 38 | May 2014
Working with individuals and couples to re-connect with the love for themselves and one another is one of the things I love to do. If that sounds like something you’d love to experience … give me a call!
Thanks for sharing!