Let's Talk about Love!

Since it’s February, I’ve got relationships on my mind. This month I’m going to share two newsletters with relationship lessons I’ve learned – because it’s love month, and I want you to get some tools to help you. These are the biggest shortcuts I know for creating the love you want. The first step is to change your perspective about the struggles in your relationship. I believe our relationships serve a purpose: to help us heal. I believe we pick our partners because they are the perfect people to push our buttons and bring up for us what we most need to work on in this lifetime. So when we have struggles, they’re supposed to be there! Our struggles are invitations for us to grow. The next time you’re in an argument or a rut with your partner, try asking yourself a few questions: When have I felt this way before? What is this bringing up for me that I need to heal? How have I contributed to this problem? If you’re honest with yourself, you will probably remember other times in your life you’ve felt the same way. Often, we carry our hurt feelings from childhood around with us our whole lives. We think that our partner is to blame for making us feel a certain way, but in reality we brought the feeling pattern with us – our partner just brought it to the surface again. Here’s an example from a client. She had a pattern in her marriage that she didn’t know how to resolve. The problem was that she didn’t feel heard in her relationship. She really wanted to share her innermost thoughts with her husband, but she didn’t feel like he listened or cared to hear what she had to say. She decided to “test” him and to only share things when he specifically asked, which he never seemed to do. This made things even worse, and she felt isolated and scared that they would never be closely connected in the way she needed. I asked if there were other times in her life that she felt the same way, and she admitted that she actually felt the same in her childhood. Although she knew her parents loved her, she didn’t feel like they ever asked her how she really was, and as a result, she didn’t share her problems and feelings with them. I suggested that maybe this was where her feelings of not being heard originated. I then asked her to examine if she was contributing to the problem in her marriage. She became aware that her “testing” him was not serving her. She decided to experiment with just talking to her husband when she had something to share – and not waiting for him to ask. After doing this for a few weeks, something miraculous happened. Her husband began checking in with her more often and asking how she was. It turned out, he did want to hear her. She realized that it was her childhood feeling of being unheard that created her belief that her husband didn’t care. Once she made that connection, she was able to release it, and things have been going more smoothly for them ever since. Even if you’re not currently in a romantic relationship, you can still apply this shift in perspective to your life. You can understand past relationships better and you will know what to expect from your next relationship. (Yes – you’re going to be triggered – but that doesn’t mean you’re not with the perfect person for you!) Also, any of our close relationships serve the same purpose. Have you ever been triggered by your children? Or your parents? Or a close friend? Yep – those are there to serve you too. Will you accept the invitation to look within and grow? Once you start learning the lessons you’re meant to learn, your love and your life will get so much easier. I hope that this shift in perspective serves you and your relationships. If it does, please let me know! Stay tuned for more on love…. Here’s to love! Mendy