Last updated on July 29th, 2020 at 01:32 pm
Learning to love, heal and save a relationship
This story is about love. It comes out of my realizing how I am changing. It comes out of my desire for a new world. It is about my belief that we are all beings of love and healing includes a journey into the darker parts of ourselves to exhume, tend and ultimately to heal and transform into love. It is through this process that we can learn how to save a relationship.
Learning how to save a relationship takes delving into the depths of how we love. It is not necessarily a step-by-step process.
How did your family of origin influence your ability to love?
In my family, love was hidden under other agendas. It just wasn’t the focus. My father was obsessed with his artistic vision. He struggled with depression and rage. My mother was emotionally cut off. Her focus was on the practical. Had we cleaned our rooms? Were our chores completed? Affirmation was rare. Although my father could be playful, both parents were often stressed and were critical of others. Between these two people, there were four children. I was one of those children, and my childhood impacted my ability to love.
Learning how to truly love (both self and others) has been a life path for me. I survived my childhood because I found love with the animals that surrounded me. They accepted me. They had time for me. I felt safe with them. They expressed love towards me and I towards them. I also knew there were realities other than the one I felt trapped in because I read. I read voraciously. I read to escape my life and be in another place. I read to find comfort. I read to find a place in which I could reside.
Over the years, living from the guidelines my parents indoctrinated in me, I learned that my focus on productivity often shortchanged my ability to love, to be loving, to honor my partner. Luckily, life created some relational disasters for me and caused me to begin to look at myself, to start the task of sorting through the aspects of myself that simply did not work for all of me.
Untangling as a growth choice
I have been on a growth path for many years, I am slowly correcting my deficits and growing my positive qualities. Real love is one of the true joys of this world. If we do not learn to create it, we shall have robbed ourselves and those we are blessed to share our lives with. Each moment is precious. In each moment there is always a choice. The choice is usually between what is life-affirming and what is not. Sometimes we choose the less life-affirming path. That is important because we get to experience what does not work, what does not fill us with joy. And in the next moment, we again have another choice. At any point, our choices may change. What and how we choose becomes our path. Sometimes we are caught. We don’t know which way to go, what to choose, or even how to choose. That is when working on ‘untangling’ becomes the most productive choice. This has been my destiny and my path, and doing so has become a massive force in my life.
I want a world of beauty, where people are not afraid of their emotions, or of connecting. Where we don’t have to put others down to feel okay about ourselves. Where we don’t have to deny others because we only feel okay if we have more or because we are scared that there isn’t enough. Because of the kind of world that I want, I must look at every part of myself that is not that. For those parts need support and love if they are to transform.
We innately resonate with that which is beautiful
I believe that we are more than the material realm, more than matter. We are more than the horrors we see on the news and in our lives. We are more than the greed that impacts us every day. We resonate with qualities that are beautiful. We resonate with the experience of truth and love. We resonate with peace and appreciation.
I once worked with a young teenager who came from a family of gang members and was part of that gang culture himself. As a child, he had seen his father murder a member of another gang. His brother was in jail. That was what he knew. But one day walking to the therapy office with me, he stopped in front of a poster of trees. He said that he liked how it made him feel. He said he wished he could be there, in those trees, in that sense of peace.
Looking more deeply
I believe that we are all part of the divine, on a journey to allow that which is divine to fully manifest, for ourselves and for all others with whom we relate — and if we are all free and honored, with whom we can dance. Our journey into the light is equally a journey down into the depths. If you position yourself as a being of love, meaning a part of the divine spark of life, then you have to look at the components of yourself that are not about love. This cannot be done by pushing away the dark parts of yourself.
I refuse to allow myself to not be a part of the flow of consciousness that is about increasing love and decreasing suffering on this planet. I refuse to accept that suffering that is created by ignorance or heartlessness is okay.
For me, the journey starts inside myself. It starts with learning how to honor myself and others. And it includes trusting that I can work with what I have been given and make it meaningful and purposeful.
As we open into painful feelings, we begin a process of remembering ourselves. It is as if we live out of one part of ourselves, and have put the others, the parts that hold complicated feelings, away. These aspects sometimes jump out unbidden, but we do not really know them. We live out of a fragment of ourselves instead of a cohesive whole. We are a segregated being. And as the microcosm, so is the macrocosm. We contribute to a world where certain things are not accepted or are pushed away, whether it is a feeling or somebody else’s rights.
I have an advantage here. I am naturally a digger and a burrower. I instinctively root out and explore the dark parts of myself. I cannot imagine doing otherwise. I am grateful for this ability. I am thankful for the gifts this talent has given me. For those of you who avoid stepping into and looking at your more tormented parts, you may find this idea uncomfortable. And yet, if you can stick with it, you will learn that these feelings are temporary and transformable.
How does one do this without overwhelm? Or being repulsed and pushing away? I think of a couple who I had worked with. As the male partner began to allow himself more vulnerability (which was necessary), the female partner began to feel disgusted. Although she wanted him more attuned to her, to feelings, to connection, she could not tolerate the very ingredient that would get him there. Her work would be to look at her fear of a ‘soft’ man. She would need to unpack many experiences she had around her father and around her ideas of being protected by the masculine element and let down by softness. Deep issues will not heal on their own. But beginning the journey of looking more deeply at ourselves can be overwhelming and confusing. We often don’t know where to start.
Help is available
The task of looking at and sorting through our profound and often overwhelming issues can be helped by looking at the myth of Psyche and Eros and Psyche’s interactions with Aphrodite. Psyche was a beautiful woman. The Goddess Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche and gave her many impossible tasks. The first was for Psyche to sort through a vast granary filled with many different kinds of seeds. Psyche was instructed to sort through them by sundown. Psyche was beside herself, crying and completely overwhelmed. As she cries, an army of ants arrives, and they began to sort the seeds. By nightfall, the task was complete. Psyche was not able to sort the seeds herself. She needed assistance, and because she had a clear intention with integrity, help arrived.
There is help for relationships and personal development. You can also learn how to save a relationship. One only need to pick a path to follow or several. Some include:
12-step programs
Therapy
A relational, educational process like WeConcile®
Workshops
Youtubes by various teachers, gurus, and healers
As we become more integrated and step more fully into the process of reclaiming our whole selves, we begin to be lighter. We begin to be more whole. What is dead comes to life and has an opportunity to engage consciously. A dialogue ensues. We become happier. We begin to love all of ourselves. The quality of our connections become filled with more love. Our life and life itself becomes fuller.
You can read our WeConcile FAQ here: https://www.weconcile.com/faq.html
To read about what it looks like to work out a relationship, read https://blog.weconcile.com/2019/07/18/the-real-relationship-working-it-out/
Originally published in Hopes and Dreams for Our Future on July 9th, 2019. .https://medium.com/hopes-and-dreams-for-our-future/untangling-love-f9ce9a959e80
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