Why do we attract and then choose to stay in poor relationships? Are you happy with yourself? Are you happy with your life? Are you happy with your relationship? Or are you simply going along with things and making do, even being grateful for the little that you actually get and have? If you are a true romantic and dream of true love but wonder if it actually exists then it’s time to look at true love and perfect love from another point of view…
A different point of view…
Here is a different point of view, perhaps something that you have never thought about before until now… You are perfect, you have never made a mistake in your whole life and you do know what you are doing all of the time… You do in fact create your own reality so if there’s even one single part of your partner or of the relationship that you don’t like or even hate, you simply haven’t created your best creation yet…
The answer to this of course is either to move on or to better what you have already created…
Relationships and what it takes…
I have always known that if you put any one man and any one woman or for that matter, if you are not heterosexual, any two men or any two women on a desert island with no possible means of escape, then those two people, over a period of time, could have the ultimate, perfect relationship…
Think about it… Besides taking care of basic survival needs there would be nothing else to do except work through differences, blocks and any obstacles between you and get things right…
In my opinion, great and perfect relationships are totally possible but only with awareness, communication, plenty of self love and a real willingness to be honest with one’s self and the other person involved… It takes a lot of work to have a great relationship. It can indeed turn out to be perfect but perhaps not always the perfect that you thought perfect meant or would be…
One of the biggest problems I see in relationships is two people coming together who don’t yet truly know themselves and haven’t yet dealt with their own “stuff”…. And yes, it seems that we all do have “stuff” to deal with… All those past hurts, disappointments, pains, wounds and fears… Interestingly, we do seem to choose partners who show us in one way or another what we most need to deal with in ourselves.
Unfulfilled needs and putting yourself first…
After for working for many years with many people, singles and couples and indeed, after working through my own relationships, I see that a classic mistake that most people make… We all go into a relationship hoping or believing on some level that this other person will make us happy and fulfill all our needs… It also seems that we human beings love to love and we love to make other people happy…
It’s very important to find and accept happiness within ourselves and to fulfill our own needs vs relying on someone else or hoping that someone else will take care of those things for us…
We may have heard those words many times and yet very few of us accept and take on the job of loving and caring for ourselves and fulfilling our own needs… In fact, the reality of doing so is quite alien to us, it seems that it’s human nature to take care of everybody else’s needs before our own.
Yet if we don’t find happiness within ourselves of fulfill our own needs either before or during a relationship, we will always be disappointed and simply continue to move from one relationship to another, never finding exactly what we are truly looking for…
Endings…
Relationships end because one or both partners reach a place within themselves or reach an issue that they refuse to deal with, change, resolve or move beyond… A partner will even sacrifice the happiness of the other, the one they think they truly love vs being honest with themselves and dealing with the situation or issue.
There ae many good books and articles to refer to out there about relating and relationships. It is a subject that is incredibly vast and covers so many aspects and facets of human nature. In this short article I am focusing on answering the question “Why do we attract and stay in poor, even abusive, relationships?”
The Answer…
The answer to that question is simply because we don’t love ourselves enough. We don’t care about ourselves often enough to give ourselves often enough what we want and need. In this way, accepting very little or not enough from others is also acceptable or becomes tolerable to us, even when we don’t like it, wonder about it, or know that we shouldn’t be going along with it. The answer is because we are not only used to abuse from others but we actually in many different ways abuse ourselves, so abuse has become normal to us…
We find countless arguments and justifications to accept and stay in a poor relationship. We even reason that a poor relationship is better than no relationship; at least we have someone there… We stay in a poor relationship because it may seem to be the best that we had so far, or much better than the last one. This still this does not make everything alright however, and it is still not the perfect relationship that we dream of… We totally forget that we can be there for ourselves and that there will always be endless people out there for us… We attracted and created what we have now so we can always attract and create better.
A funny way…
Here’s what is a funny way perhaps to see what I am talking about… Imagine that just like grading tomatoes and apples we can grade people and relationships. So you may have already met and been with different people from grade D. Now that you are in a relationship with a grade C, you may be feeling lucky and that this person is “the one” for you, despite all the things that are not alright or perfect about the relationship…
Hold on! There are still grade B and indeed grade A people and relationships out there! Waiting for you to meet and connect with… You simply need to make the choice to do so…
Tips for creating the perfect relationship…
An important realization to have and to accept is the understanding that no one else is you… No one will love you in all the ways that you love and want to be loved, although it may not seem like this at the beginning of a new relationship.
You can begin to fulfill your own needs by making a list of all that you want or need from another person. Keep it as simple and in as few words as possible. Next start finding ways to give yourself all of those wants and needs that you have listed on a regular basis. Yes, you can do this, in fact it will be easier than you think. Giving to yourself just needs to become a habit.
Look often at your partner as if you don’t know them at all. As if you are seeing them for the very first time… Observe: Who and what are they really? Who or what are you really relating to in and about them? What does all of this tell you? Practice and learn to be totally there in the moment, whatever the moment is, do this with yourself, with a partner and with others…
Simply put…
We can create and have “perfect” in our lives. The perfect relationship does exist. We simply have to be prepared to create that perfect and then even, possibly do a little work on it after we have created it, because our idea of perfect changes…
So happiness and true love? Yes, they do exist, yes, sky is the limit and yes, you can have it all, but only when you stop settling for less…
