Heavenly or hellish relationships. Is your relationship/marriage made in heaven or a living hell? As a Relationship Coach, I absolutely love counseling couples! Why? Because I enjoy listening to both of their versions of what’s really going on.
Each one, comes to their sessions believing they know what’s wrong with their relationship/marriage. I always sit there with a grin as they each proceed to enlighten me on what their partner is or isn’t doing and saying or not saying, causing a breakdown and ultimate failure of the relationship.
My grins are a response to witnessing ‘the butting of two heads.’ Author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls this interaction: the meeting of two pain bodies. Your pain body, as well as my pain body, is that part of us that believes you and I are separate from everyone else. This pain body also requires other people to fulfill its’ insatiable needs – especially those of the emotional kind.
When we do not have these emotional needs met we are typically faced with large amounts of internal strife. We can label these struggles with a variety of names and conditions. None of them feel good. Some of the names and conditions we give to the other person who is not fulfilling our needs are: ‘selfish,’ ‘self-centered,’ ‘unloving,’ ‘untrustworthy,’ ‘immature,’ ‘manipulative,’ ‘deceitful,’ ‘controlling,’ ‘argumentative’ and ‘critical.’ These are some of the descriptive words my clients, and perhaps you, too, have used to describe your partners both past and present.
As a result of attaching labels and conditions to our partners, we also simultaneously attach descriptive conditions to ourselves. If we do not feel good about ourselves, our self-talk can easily convince us either consciously or unconsciously that somehow we may deserve this current relationship. Your relationship/marriage which you once thought was ‘made in heaven,’ now appears to be ‘a living hell.’
This ‘living hell’ is a direct result of our feelings of unworthiness. This unworthy feeling stems from the belief that we are not deserving to be truly loved for who we are.
We may also believe, on some deeper level, that love is not really meant to feel good, so consequently, we push away goodness from our lives. This is particularly true if we were taught not to trust people in general and/or we have experienced people who we thought loved us suddenly depart from our lives either physically or emotionally.
Right now, in this very moment, if you can honestly recognize and assess the status of your most significant relationship, I applaud you! So where do you rate it? Is it a heavenly co-existence, a hellish on-going battle like the ‘hundred years war,’ or somewhere in-between? Does it seem to switch without warning from blissful and loving to rage-filled and chaotic?
Begin now to take notice of the conditions, patterns and behaviors of both you and your partner/spouse that dominate and trend in your relationship. Observe if conflict is more prevalent than peace. Is intimate conversation and communication absent or a painful process that seems to be avoided at all cost?
Be honest about all of this! If you can’t, then honesty is absent from your relationship. I have found that most relationships lack a certain degree of authenticity in that each person wears a variety of ‘personality masks’ to keep themselves from getting hurt by other people.
The masks we wear are associated with the beliefs we have about ourselves, love, and whether or not you and I are deserving of receiving and giving love.
If your relationship/marriage is hellish, don’t get down on yourself or the current situation!
I have found with my own life journey and as a guide to hundreds of others over the years, that our relationships, like every other circumstance we experience, are reflections of how we see ourselves.
Now, this idea has some staggering, perhaps life-altering implications if you even contemplate and consider that this may be true. If all our relationships are simply like a mirror reflecting back to us what we are ‘putting out’ to the world, and we are dissatisfied with what we are experiencing, then perhaps it is time to be pro-active to positively changing the status of our relationships.
I’d like to share with you some basic, yet mandatory requirements that will assist you to begin the process of moving out of hellish relationships toward ones that are more likely made in heaven. These applications can be applied to all of your relationship, however, I am particularly focused here on your most intimate and significant ones at this time.
These requirements cannot be overlooked or omitted, for if they are, you will surely experience a continuation of displeasure, disharmony and discord in your relationship or marriage. These requirements are listed below and must be followed in sequential order to create success in your relationship:
1. BEING READY, WILLING AND OPEN. Be ready, willing and open to improve the quality of your relationship. If you are not, then do not proceed! Instead, ask yourself ‘why am I resistant to moving forward?’
2. LOOK WITHIN. Once you agree to the first requirement, be open to looking within. This serves 2 purposes: first, it allows you to get in-touch with your true feelings toward the other person and yourself. It also provides you with greater insight to how you are in some way attracting unloving and unwanted relationships in to your life.
3. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE QUALITY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIPS. When you begin to accept that who you attract in to your life is a reflection of who you believe you are, you can begin to take responsibility for all aspects of your life, including your relationships.
4. COMMIT TO CREATING POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS. Knowing that you are responsible for the status of all your relationships, you can now begin to positively affect their status. To do this requires commitment- and this is huge! This is about becoming the type of person you want in your life. This is acknowledging once and for all that the only person you can effectively change is you!
5. ACCEPT THAT ONLY YOU CAN MAKE YOU HAPPY. By accepting that only you can change your relationships, you are on the road to becoming and doing whatever it takes to make your relationships work. This means that you cease to hold others responsible for your happiness. You also give up trying to change people to meet your emotional needs.
If you are willing to utilize my suggestions, you will gain clarity about yourself and your relationships. You will also see many of your relationships strengthen through love. On the other hand, some relationships may change course or even dissolve, yet they will do so in a more loving way.
This all can be a scary process! However, consider the alternative represented by a lifetime of unhealthy, unpredictable, dysfunctional relationships.
In the end, I guarantee you that the emotional payoff far outweighs the risk you take to create heaven on earth through your relationships!
To learn more, I invite you to download our free gift: Special Report: Breaking The Chain of Emotional Pain:
http://www.possibilitycoaches.net/pain
Are you ready to improve all of your relationships including the one you have with yourself? Contact us or a complimentary, no obligation coaching session.
Written by Jon Satin
Jon Satin and Chris Pattay – The Possibility Coaches™
©Possibility Coaches, LLC
My relationships have been hellish..I know a lot has to do with my parent’s hellish relationship I witnessed growing up. I always saw them fighting drinking drugging and abusing each other it was like this throughout their whole relationship which ended 30 yrs later with no change the abuse not only took place with them but us children as well we were physically and verbally abused. Anyhow most of my relationships with men have been crappy they have abused me used me cheated on me and are damaged in some ways themselves I would love to create an relationship made in heaven.
Hi Lisa,
One of the first steps you can take toward creating relationships made in heaven is to take full responsibility for the state of all of your relationships past and future. Because of your parents “hellish” marriage you witnessed as a child behaviors that you believed were “normal.” As insane as this sounds, you are simply duplicating situations that you learned. When we are exposed to miserable relationships and situations as impressionable children we unconsciously believe this is how it is suppose to be. We are unable at age 6 or 7 for example, to logically see the madness in what you and I now see as adults as unhealthy relationships. By taking responsibility you can finally empower yourself to make better choices where your relationships are concerned. In the long term, however, the most critical and significant process you can experience to create relationships made in heaven is to develop an appreciation and love for yourself. This can be a long and sometimes frustrating process (I know, because I have gone through it) but in the end it is well worth it. I trust this helped you. Feel free to contact me if you ever want to talk about this at greater length. ~Jon Satin
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