Ahh, relationships … we all long for them and when we set our heart upon ‘the one’ we convince ourselves that this person is going to complete us. They will be the answer to all our prayers, make us feel fantastic every day, show us what true happiness is all about … they’ll always be there for us, wipe away our tears, never hurt us, share our laughter, allow us to be our raw selves, love us unconditionally, support us in every conceivable endeavour we undertake and live happily ever after together …!
Jeez, that’s a bloody big expectation to have for one person to fulfil. The pressure of having to be everything to somebody is actually totally unrealistic and frankly, completely unfair. That level of responsibility should not be assigned to anyone, but especially not to the one who sets your heart on fire.
During the flush of giddy highs that come when you first meet your beau, you can’t get enough of them. They’re the most amazing, clever, funny, considerate, charming, kind and loving person you’ve ever met. We idolise them, and they us. We convince ourselves this person is our soul mate and we can’t possibly imagine life without them. They’re our dream person! In the beginning, a couple are on their best behaviour and will do anything they can to charm the pants off each other.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that ‘true love’ is all sunshine and butterflies, endless romantic gestures, hot, steamy passion, sugar and spice and all things nice. All that stuff akin to fairy tales that we’ve had rammed down our necks since we were little tackers.
Well it ain’t … there comes a time when it all comes crashing down.
Once the honeymoon is over, things can start to unravel and before you know it, it feels like your relationship is dying a slow, tortured death, leaving you out in the cold wondering what the hell went wrong.
Couples can become complacent. Are you and your partner going through a rough patch? Or maybe it’s worse than just a patch. It may have been hanging on by a thread for a long time. You may argue constantly, you may have discovered endless annoying things about your partner that now drive you crazy. Or perhaps you barely communicate with each other at all and feel like you’ve lost your connection lately? Some relationships are riddled with fears and insecurities that spiral out of control causing what feels like irreparable damage.
Do you still have it in you to fight for your partnership? Are you at a loss as to how to restore the magic? If so, don’t despair – even if you think you’re doomed as a couple, I’m going to share some simple, but ridiculously powerful tools that helped get my marriage back on track when it hit the skids.
Let them off the hook
You know, if we’re really honest, all of us have preconceived ideas of how a relationship should operate. Often, we carry a whole bucket list of desires and expectations of how the other person should be in order for us to feel satisfied. These ideals are formed through our life experience of observing others (such as our parents’ relationship) along with a million other influences. We end up with a list of requirements alongside a bunch of deal breakers and seek to find someone who ticks all the appropriate boxes.
Problem is, at the beginning, when we’re high on love, in a state of bliss and in full alignment with source, we don’t notice the irritating traits, habits or short-comings that may eventually become ‘deal breakers’. We only focus on the wonderful aspects of that person, because that’s all we CAN see when we’re being love-bombed. It’s impossible to see any negatives when you’re in a state of pure positive bliss. The scientifically proven Law of Attraction won’t let it be any other way!
But as time goes by and the ‘rush’ diminishes, your state of alignment is not always constant, and that’s when you start to think your partner is not quite the darling you thought they were. You start to focus more and more on their ‘not-so-nice’ traits and little resentments can start to creep in. You get bogged down in your busy lives with work, running a home and having children. There is so much to do and so little time to spend with each other. You judge your partner’s actions (or lack of!) and before you know it, you’re at loggerheads instead of a love-in.
In actual fact, it’s EXPECTATION that causes us so much pain. If we could just let go of any expectations or neediness from our lover, then we’d be on the right track to restoring harmony. Do yourself and your partner a favour - let them off the hook. Drop ALL your expectations and false beliefs and watch how things start to turn around.
Start to retrain your thinking. Don’t allow yourself to go on a downward spiral with your internal dialogue. Stop going over and over in your mind all the things you don’t like or wish were different. Stop the judgements and resentments. The more you focus on these, the more they’ll smack you right back in the face. Because your thoughts become your reality! The more time you spend thinking about something, the more energy and power you give it to manifest. So, it makes sense to not waste your precious time thinking irritating stuff. It takes a bit of training because this kind of ingrained thinking can be so habitual that it happens on autopilot. Become more aware of your thoughts, take notice of them, weed out the bullshit and begin to plant a beautiful new garden in your mind. [Word of warning: sometimes things get temporarily worse before they get better. The energy of old patterns can take a little time to subside, especially if things have been REALLY bad. Hang in there, once you’re over the bump, things WILL turn around if you’re consistent].
One great way to kick-start this is to remind yourself of all the reasons you fell in love with your partner in the first place! Seriously, sit down and write yourself a list of five to ten wonderful qualities that you adored about them way back in the beginning. Remind yourself of these qualities as often as possible, but particularly last thing before going to sleep and as soon as you wake up in the morning. This will set you off in a better vibe to start the day. And when you slip up during the course of your day and those negative gremlins start creeping into your mind again (and they will because we’re only human) nip it in the bud as soon as you become aware. Say to yourself, “Stop!” and try to focus on one of your partner’s positive traits.
It doesn’t matter if you have legitimate gripes about your partner or if you think the reasons why you fell in love don’t seem apparent anymore. You may even feel like you’re being fake or kidding yourself to begin with. It’s okay. The reality of now doesn’t matter. You were happy once, so if you have the desire, then you absolutely have the power to reignite that again. The whole point of this exercise is to lay the groundwork and start building momentum to create a happier future together.
Practise this every day for a month and I guarantee you will break down a massive chunk of negativity between the two of you. You will have started to build the foundation of flowing better energy. Your partner will consciously or unconsciously notice the shift in your vibe and start returning the same good vibes straight back at you. You will start to bring out the best in each other again. And it isn’t essential that both of you practise this. It works when just one of you can be consistent with it, but obviously the results will be even more profound if it’s something you decide to try together.
Sounds like hocus-pocus, but trust me, my husband Akila and I have done this and been totally amazed by the results. Never underestimate the power of energy work!
Love Yourself
This is a lesson I learned myself going back a few years. I went through a very insecure phase after our youngest son, Harry was born. I was an exhausted, unattractive, irritable, cranky and housebound version of my old self. I felt like the most uninteresting person in the world. I had nothing new to discuss with Akila and was almost jealous that he could escape the house every day and have the ‘pleasure’ of going to work while I was stuck in groundhog day with a screaming baby that I felt unable to placate. I would see him out the door as he left for night-shift and beg, “Take me with you!” I was kind of joking, but deep down I would have killed to be able to escape the monotonous routine of home, just for a little bit. I love my children more than I could ever put into words, but people don’t actually tell you how bloody all-consuming it is to grow and take care of the little darlings.
I lost myself somewhere in the chaos of motherhood. My self-esteem dropped to an all-time low and I suddenly feared that I was going to lose my husband because of the funk I was in. And the more I feared this, the closer I got to making it my reality! (Because you get what you think about, remember?!) It became a horrible vicious circle. I couldn’t stand myself because I knew I was being so clingy and pathetically insecure which did nothing except create an even larger divide between us. The harder I tried to bridge the gap, the more I actually repelled my husband with my irrational, needy behaviour.
I used to be a confident girl who mostly had it all together and I desperately wanted to get back to my old self. Even my counselling skills and tools couldn’t lift me out of this rut. Eventually I discovered the Law of Attraction and got to understand exactly where I was going wrong. I gained a whole wealth of knowledge about how thinking, energy and vibration affect EVERYTHING!
I learned that I had to start feeding myself instead of relying on Akila to fill me with love and validation. No matter how much approval we get from others, it doesn’t satisfy us for long if we are not content within ourselves. There was a huge light bulb moment where I realised I had been putting unrealistic expectations upon my husband since the beginning of our relationship. I considered him my Prince Charming while I was his Cinder-fukin-rella. I was like an addict who expected his love and attention to fill all the gaps and emptiness within myself. He was supposed to whisk me off into the sunset and fix everything!
Shame on me.
So, I went on an inwards journey to learn to love and accept myself for who I was. Instead of putting myself down, telling myself how boring and unattractive I was, I reminded myself of my greatest qualities – I was doing my best to be a great mum to three kids. I did a reasonable job of keeping our home clean and comfortable. I am mostly kind and considerate, have a good sense of humour – a pretty decent human being really.
I realised I hadn’t been nurturing myself, so learned to put me first occasionally. I started doing guided meditations at bed time where I could lose myself in some other reality for a while. This helped to re-energise and reground me. All my worries and stresses slowly started to melt away. Being more grateful for the little things in my life also became a practised habit.
Soon I was able to actually live in the moment more frequently instead of being consumed with doubts and fears. Harry (our little guy) and I got out of the house more often and we’d delight in things like seeing a butterfly flitting around us, or bugs crawling on the ground at the park. We enjoyed feeling the warm sun on our faces. In the months before, I was too busy, preoccupied with the never-ending pile of housework or filled with self-loathing to even notice the natural wonders around me.
I made huge efforts to stop the spiral of negativity that had been oozing out of me. Eventually, my confidence returned – and thankfully, so did the spark between Akila and I.
Let’s face it – insecurity and lack of self-love is a total turn-off in a relationship. There’s nothing worse than a needy, unfulfilled person draining their partner in their desperate search for validation. Learn to frequently pay attention to your own beautiful attributes and in time, you’ll come to accept and love yourself, warts and all. You will begin giving off such a great vibe that your other half will suddenly start looking at you through fresh eyes. You’ll be irresistible and they’ll be asking if you’ve cast some kind of magic spell upon them (to quote Akila lol!). It’s such a simple concept that it’s hard to believe it can be so effective, but it really is – energy is everything!
Forgiveness
The following quote says it all really. Holding grudges and wanting to punish someone for hurting or offending you is just a waste of your precious time and energy. Having the ability to forgive, releases both parties from the trap of negative vibes, allowing you to move forward in a healthy, positive direction. Nobody wants to carry all that baggage around for longer than necessary. It will literally make you sick, bitter and twisted. One of my favourite quotes is from Gandhi which highlights this: “An eye for an eye makes us all blind”.
You can apply the same thinking principles here as mentioned above. Train yourself NOT to think about the upsetting stuff. Nip it in the bud as soon as you find yourself going down that rabbit hole. Refuse to be a victim. All you have to do is distract yourself with any other thought that feels better than the crappy one you’re having. Sometimes we can be so far down the emotional scale, in a place of pain, despair or anger, that it’s actually impossible to shift that mood to a much higher frequency. But if you can just find ANYTHING that feels a little better to comfort yourself with, then you will be making progress. Your mind is yours and yours alone – you can take yourself off into some imaginary wonderland to distract yourself momentarily. Or consciously find some small thing to appreciate and be grateful for. Ride those thoughts for as long possible until you start to feel a shift in your mood. If you apply consistency to this, over time the results will astound you. Not only will your relationship improve, but everything else in your life will start to magically fall into place. All from practising every day to become a little bit happier and focusing a little less on grudges and resentments.
Another powerful tool to help you along the road to forgiveness is to use affirmations. I used to be so sceptical about such things years ago. I had the false belief that something so simple could not possibly be effective. How could just saying a few positive words over and over possibly achieve anything constructive? But through sheer desperation, I’ve personally been practising for years all the suggestions outlined in this post and the magical results still blow me away. The common denominator is, all these tools are about intention. If you change your intentions and focus on what you really want, instead of what you don't want, then you start to give off different energy and therefore attract the same back. It gives you your power back so that you can leave victimhood behind and instead learn how to manifest anything your heart desires. I am eternally grateful for the light and liberation that continues to flow through me since discovering these truths.
Here is an affirmation you can try that has worked wonders for our marriage. Say this in your mind or out loud, morning and night (or any time in between that you may feel triggered into going down that negative slippery slope) for thirty days and watch the magic happen!
[insert your partner’s name here] you are a pure and peaceful soul
I am a pure and peaceful soul
I apologise for any hurt I have caused you during our journey together
I forgive you for any hurt you have caused me
Past is past, we now begin a new path together
Love and respect are the only things which we now exchange
Grace and purity are with us both from this day on
In time you will feel such liberation you’ll wish you’d known this stuff years ago.
So to sum up, the cold, hard truth is; REAL happiness can only come from within. It’s almost corny, but absolutely true. If you and your partner can love YOURSELVES first and have no expectations of each other, then you cannot fail to have the most beautiful, genuine, caring relationship beyond your wildest dreams. It’s a crazy paradox huh? The less you need and the less demanding and clingy you are, the more delicious love you will ultimately receive!
I truly hope you’ve found some resonance here and that you may be inspired to give some of these empowering tools a try. Thanks for reading and enjoy the process! Your relationship is worth the effort!
Onwards and upwards!
Shelley
