The year is 2009. My sister has just gotten engaged. She's at a party and a woman with long gray braids is asking her about the engagement and shares an unsolicited piece of advice. She says "you're gonna have to work through all your shit with him. If you don't, you'll just wind up working it through in the next relationship, anyway." Might as well stick it out. I'd already suffered enough in my relationship, with "my shit" - to use the braided woman's terms - that I'd considered leaving, but that recognition had kept me in it. I knew I could kick him to the curb, but it wouldn't free me of my stuff. 15 years later, that wisdom still shines brightly for her and for me. As a relationship coach who has helped women and men through all manner of emotional and erotic challenges and with a variety of outcomes, I can say with confidence that your same issues will arise with another person. I'm not saying there aren't relationships that ought to end. Or that you'll regret it if yours does. Most likely, if you leave the relationship you're in now because of the pain in that relationship, you will be glad you did. Your mind will retain all the reasons you left and those will remain good reasons. Still, there may be a day when you realize “Oh gosh, I changed relationships. My new relationship looked completely different. Yet here I am. Back face to face with myself in this relationship as well.” There's no escape. Wherever I go, there I am. We do have to work through our issues with ourselves, now in our current relationship, or in the next one or the one after that. That's not to say that every relationship should last. Instead, it means if you are going to leave, the best investment you can make for yourself is to understand what you contributed to the dynamic that wound up not working for you. Then, when you're looking for your next partner, and when you're in your next relationship, you don't have to repeat the same lessons. You get to play with new ones. Relationship is a path of spiritual evolution Or ongoing learning, or growth, if you prefer that language. It is a personal transformation machine. Every one of us is working out our unfinished business from earlier in life in the relationship we're in today. And we will continue to seek opportunities to step into those same rivers in hopes of doing things differently this time for as long as we're here until we actually do enact a new pattern in an emotionally similar situation. What I want you to know is possible: your patterns can be the jewels of your life. You don't have to just suffer through those patterns. You can actually love yourself through them. They can become vehicles for deeper intimacy with parts of yourself that adapted to the environments of your childhood and prior relationships but that you don't have to keep repeating. You can transform the relationship you have with those parts. By so doing, you will give yourself new options, new dynamics, new freedom, new ease, new joy. I know this because I've done it myself. And because hundreds of clients have done the same. Rather than feeling burdened by the complexities and pains of your relationship dynamics, you can come to experience them as awe-inspiring blessings. You can know, as I do, that the tenacity of these issues is not something that happens to you... Not something you're beleaguered by. These issues are so tenacious, so relentless precisely because they are devoted to your resolution, your healing, your awakening through them. If this isn't too nosy a question, I'm wondering... Thanks for letting me share my story. If you missed my last few stories, here's where you can read them:
And I'll be back soon... The next few stories are related to the e.rotic, so if you want some inspiration in that arena, keep your eyes peeled for my name in your inbox. Talk to you soon! xoxo Love love, PS: On Monday, July 22, I'm honored to be a panelist at a free event hosted by the Relational Life Foundation: Embodied Liberation: Exploring Pleasure as a Guide to Relational Health & Social Justice. I mean, embodied pleasure, liberation, relationality and social justice, all in one conversation? Yes, please! More details |
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Hi Reader, I know this sounds counterintuitive but the patterns that make your relationship “pretty good" actually prevent your GREAT relationship. If you don't believe me, here's one example: Let's look at how you handle your fear of discomfort and authenticity. In bad relationships, people are often incapable of handling their own discomfort. They avoid difficult conversations or react without thinking about how their words and actions will land with their partner. They try to protect...
I said, “If you don't want to come toward me sexually, if you don't want to go deeper, I understand, and it's okay... "But I'm ready for more, and I know you haven't been willing to opening up our marriage in the past, but I'm not asking this time. I'm telling you. "I feel like I'm suffocating, and I'm going to unilaterally pursue other sexual connections. "I don't not want to be married, I just don't want to be celibate.” It wasn't just the words I was saying that Kurt heard. It was the...
I doubled down on my own sexual awakening and put away my vibrator. When I learned more about how to spend time with my whole body and awaken my G spot and my cervix, my body's communication with me got a whole lot more... articulate. I was listening better so I could hear more from her. What did she tell me? There had been many times that I had settled for sex she didn't really want. I didn't even know that. My husband has always been an engaged, sensitive, skillful lover. He hadn't violated...