Romantic relationships require daily nurturing, playfulness and a living commitment to the relationship’s vision. Where is your relationship going? In what direction are your daily choices taking your relationship? How available are you for intimacy? What values direct the way you choose to be when: disagreeing, asking for help, receiving feedback, giving feedback, negotiating options, realizing that what you need from your partner is not available, realizing that you are not being heard and understood? How do you behave when you feel hurt, ignored or rejected by your partner?
The answers to these questions describe the kind of relationship you are in. The more attention you give to your values the more conscious and loving your relationship becomes. Likewise, the less attention you give to how you are in the relationship the more likely the relationship is to become loveless.
Just like fertile soil allows flowers and weeds to grow together, passion and emotional needs co-exist in romantic relationships. To maintain a beautiful garden the weeds must be removed regularly. Likewise to maintain the aliveness, freshness, excitement, playfulness, creativity and enjoyment of passionate intimacy, core emotional needs must be fulfilled consistently.
Unfulfilled needs are toxic to loving intimacy. An emotional need that is ignored competes with Love for attention. Therefore, ignorance of what each partner’s emotional needs are is a source of conflict and competition that leads to fighting.
Relationships are like people, they go through stages of maturation. At the beginning it is fun and exiting and there is a tendency to go into the trance of infatuation and become irresponsible. As couples grow out of infatuation there is a sobering reality waiting.
Both partners begin to project their shadow and value onto the new partner in an attempt to recreate the familiar and therefore safe ways of “being together”. This is basically recreating the functional and dysfunctional patterns of behavior learned from how each of the partner’s parents were intimate, many were not! On another level there are all of the “practical” responsibilities that demand time and attention away from romance. It is in this stage that couples create their healthy and unhealthy habits. Most partners don’t know how to fulfill their own needs and support their beloved in fulfilling theirs.
There are ego emotional requirements such as safety, comfort, territoriality, competition and self-importance and there are being values such as cooperation, caring, giving, helping, honor, excellence, responsibility, truthfulness etc. Ego needs are self-centered while Being values are selfless. Ego needs exclude being values while being values provide for ego needs. A maturing person is dedicated to discover and cultivate being values.
In a relationship there is always a dynamic exchange between each partner’s value systems. Every individual has a unique set of values that works for them. In a loving relationship the couple develops a set of values that work for both partners. These are their relationship values, what is important to both of them. Without a clear set of relationship values the interaction between partners degrades into an ego power struggle.
When an individual learns to become what they need emotionally and be it towards their partner the relationship has reached maturity.
For a relationship to mature each partner must desire to become responsible for his or her own emotional needs. Also, each must desire and be willing to grow out of judging and blaming which are dysfunctional habits. Ego uses control and manipulation on itself and others in a failing attempt to feel safe. In the garden of love safety means a commitment to wellbeing maintained by both partners.
A) For a partner to deny their own needs while making their partners needs more valuable and denying their partner’s needs and making their own needs the more valuable.
B) Creating unrealistic positive and negative expectations for themselves and their partner.
C) Creating and investing in a relationship’s resentment account that accrues high interest with every argument, fight and disappointment.
D) Not knowing how to communicate clearly. Most people have not learned how to listen and how to be clear in expressing information without an emotional charge.
E) Not understanding the importance of forgiveness, not knowing how to forgive and not knowing how to access the willingness to forgive.
F) Lacking an adequate set of personal and relationship values. These protect the space for love to hold any challenges in the relationship.
G) Ignorance that the relationship is an energetic entity that requires daily nurturing attention and that the nature of the ego is to compete for attention.
H) Lacking a commitment to excellence required for maintaining an atmosphere of loving kindness in the relationship, no matter what their ego’s perception of reality is.
I) Allowing fear and aggression to displace love in all its forms.
J) Lacking a clear relationship vision that engages the core individual and relationship values every day. This includes the attention requirement for intimacy, passion, playfulness, responsibilities and personal growth.
K) Failing to cultivate and cherish being present as lovingness.
Love, love and more love! It is the nature of human beings to seek happiness and there is no greater happiness than to be together in harmony.
The gift of romantic relationships is the mirror they provide. Your partner is your mirror to see all of your limitations and all of your greatness. Through the mirror of intimate relationships you can heal the pain from your past. When this attitude is embraced with confidence you come to realize that your pain is your responsibility to heal.
Commitment to love begins with loving you. When you honor this you consistently choose to arrive each moment with the innocence and wisdom of your Soul.
The soul is the vehicle for your Spirit, that which right now is responsible for your heart beating and you being alive. Your soul is what experiences the presence and the apparent absence of love. It is what attracts and is attracted to the people that make up your life.
In its wisdom your Soul seeks relationships that complete all the lessons of love you are here to learn. Sense the truth of this, why else would you be attracted to a person if it weren’t for the opportunity to love them and be loved by them?
When your body dies all that remains of you, in others, is what you have become. What legacies are you leaving to the people you interact with? What if every day could be as valuable as your last day alive? What if regardless of how you feel emotionally, every day you choose to love those that matter to you? What if you could extent this love to everyone you interact with every day? I tell you: you will be tending the garden of love!
Written by Osiris Montenegro
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