Love Within Relationship

Many mystics have described 2022 as a year of love or divorce. That being said, I have definitely noticed lots of relationship issues coming to me for Spirit wisdom.

Too often we tend to think of divorce happening because one side or the other stops loving the other. From my experience and what I’ve seen, more often than not it is not because someone stops loving, it’s because someone starts truly loving themselves.

You see, we as humans are designed to evolve – to grow, to blossom, to continue to shift and change and expand.  Oftentimes, relationships are not designed to take this one willingly. In relationships we often want safety.  That safety our habit-minds often look for in people staying the same and not changing.  To Spirit, this is like death. The idea that we can not or will not continue to grow is shattering. After all, we are truly designed to grow!

Several years ago I read an article that talked about long-term relationships being the primary cause of stifling people in their personal and professional growth. It referenced that the expectations of our partners are most often the things that keep us stuck, because well, we expect each other to stay the same. Oftentimes we expect our partners to keep the same jobs, the same thoughts, feelings, behaviors, career paths, friends, and hobbies, and when people do change, often as partners we want them to change the way we want them to change, not the way their Spirit may want them to change.

Here’s the deal. At the end of it all, it’s about safety and security. So, let’s sink into that realm and begin to look at how we can encourage growth in ourselves and our partners without overturning the apple cart. It’s vitally important that we encourage our partners to love and explore themselves. Yes, in ways that are integritous to our relationships, but people need room to evolve and shift and change. We need some energetic freedom.

All too often I hear from people about how they are changing but feel like they’re leaving their partner behind. The number one reason? They don’t talk to their partners! Way too often people have already decided that their partner won’t like the “new them” and so they resist involving their partners in their evolution.  Obviously, this freaks out the other person as their experience is that their partner is moving away from them; being less open, less communicative, more time away from the relationship, etc. Stop. We must bring our partners along on the journey. If we want safety and security in our relationships we have to create an environment that shares it.

When people don’t feel they have the ability to grow within a relationship, they find themselves in a “you OR me” space. They have to choose who they are going to make happy and fulfilled because there is a message that it can not be both, so someone has to lose.

People will play that game for a while but eventually, someone has to give in.

Divorce is not about anyone stopping loving anyone else, it is an increase in them learning to love themselves. In our relationships, we see an external reflection of our internal relationship with ourselves. We can only accept love from another to an extent that we are able to love ourselves. As we grow in our relationship with ourselves, we grow in self-love. When the separation between how we love ourselves and the love we are receiving from others is substantial enough, something has to change. Often that change comes in the form of someone leaving the relationship, most often the person who has been doing the growing and changing.

Here’s the deal, there is no secret sauce or guaranteed fix for this. Sometimes it’s for the best, sometimes people grow apart, leave and then figure out how to grow together separately or as one.  What I want us to consider is that we as couples do best when we are consistently paying attention to the relationship itself.  There is a YOU, a ME and an US, and that US is its own entity and that needs to be loved and nurtured outside of our personal selves. When we focus on the relationship then things are not taken so personally, or viewed from such a fear-based perception. Within that space, there is room to grow, evolve, to change in ways that can cultivate love and respect between partners, whether together or not, that is healthy. Being mindful of the relationship and not just the individual self can allow us to grow as individuals, to self actualize but not have to disconnect ourselves from the notion that he/she won’t understand.  In doing so, we can stave off the fear that can come with changing, and focus on what we love about being together.

Try it. Make space for relationship; for love, for respect, for honoring the natural human design to grow and evolve. From there, anything and everything is possible.

Forever the journey, Anne

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