Ask Parvati 36: Compromise, Acceptance and Getting the Love You Want - Part 4: Getting The Love You Want

GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT

(Continued from Acceptance and Insight)

 

Intimate relationships can be complex. We say we want to find love, yet we are often attracted to people from whom we find it hard to get what we feel we need. Some psychotherapists suggest that unconsciously, we seek to fix the wounds of our childhood through our intimate partners. It is like we want our mummy or we want our daddy through them. In fact, certain theories suggest that our unseen wounds help us find our "perfect" match. The problem is, the person we find at first to be "perfect", turns out to re-enact the very pains we experienced as a child. One morning, we wake up to find that we are not in relationship with our ideal mate, but with a replica of our clingy mother or our aggressive father. Then we ask, how did we get here? Unhappy, we push against what we see and inadvertently move into power struggles, trying to fix the other person, who once seemed to fill us up just the way we needed. We think of breaking up and may even choose to do so. Or we choose silent resignation, because, unwilling to risk change, we sum up that this is just the way relationships are - tough.

 

We are told we cannot change the other person, but can only change ourselves. Then what are we to do when we find our partner is not who we thought them to be? Do we break up, time and time again, until we find the one perfect person, with whom we interact perfectly? In search for the ideal, life could soon feel like a never-ending chase for Mr. Perfect or Miss Right. So we ask ourselves, do we stay unhappy in power struggles or in silent resignation, saying this is just what couples do?

 

In the absence of what we feel we want from our significant other, we are offered a tremendous gift to find what we may truly need to become whole. We are offered something that does not exist outside of ourselves in another person, to touch something that comes uniquely from the infinite. We cannot find this perfection from another person, who is limited and not whole. We can find it through inner awakening, when we embrace the perfection of this moment, and reside in the expansive experience of being the very fabric of life itself: love.

 

"Okay," you say. "What does that mean? My partner still drives me crazy!"

I say, You are love.

You say, "But I don’t feel loved."

I say, How can you feel loved when you don’t experience yourself as love itself? How can something broken, truly feel whole? It is only in the receptivity to and the realization of wholeness that we can feel whole. One who feels he/she wants to be filled up, because he/she feels broken, will not be filled up, but will only find temporary fixes that soften the pain of separation from the One source of infinite love.

 

When we realize that what we think is love is not love but wanting, we start to find the love we always hoped to find. What we call love is often attachments to forms of emotional bartering. They are more like contractual arrangements to suit our limited ego perception of reality. As such, they are bound to leave us empty and wanting more.

 

When we don't find the love we want, we are called to remember that we are to return to the One, the permanent, undivided state with the source of life. When we don't find the love we want, we are called to remember that we are love. It is our attachment to illusion that makes us think anything else.

 

These illusions are part of psychological distortions we carry from previous incarnations. We then attract the perfect family to exacerbate our disconnected tendency, to help us see it, so we may release our attachment to it and return to love. As children, we were dependent on our imperfect parents for our needs. But they were not one with the pure source of love, so they were bound to err. We then take that personally as a sign that love is imperfect. So we seek to fix that in our intimate relationships, seeking a fix for a disconnected wound we have from childhood (and previous incarnations). This is why we unconsciously look for mummy or daddy in our partners, so we can fix that deep wound.

 

But ultimately, we come to see that mom and dad were imperfect and so are all humans. Our source of love cannot depend on others, because everyone is flawed. Everyone will let us down at some point or another, if we expect them to be perfect. We are imperfect. So are others. This is why we are called through intimate relationships to tap into the source of love we are, not try to "get love" from outside.

 

So at some point our "perfect" partner will not give us what we want and let us down. We could keep looking for someone who will. And maybe that next relationship would be good -- up until we face our own feeling of inner lack.

 

Relationships are not meant to bring us infinite happiness. Only we can give that to ourselves. They are not meant to give us all the love we need. Only we can tap into that ourselves. So then why be in a relationship?

 

We will look at that question in Getting the Love you Need in tomorrow's entry.

See you then,

Parvati

 

PS: Don't forget tomorrow is the last day to submit your question to be answered for next week's blog. Please send yours to ask@parvatidevi.com.