In previous posts, I talked about the importance of being in charge of your own happiness in relationships, and the pain and suffering that can result from relying on someone else to satisfy your needs. This can be anyone from your partner, to your family, to your friends.
Often with regards to relationships, we hear phrases being used such as “two become one”, “my other half”, “he/she completes me”. The issue with these sorts of analogies is that they suggest that we are in some way incomplete unless we have these other people in our lives.
Yet, the truth is: we are complete already on our own. Your partner should not fill a gap in your life, but rather should add something new.
With this idea in mind, I suggest the following exercise:
1) Ask yourself: what are the gaps that someone close to you fills in your relationship? This could it be partner, parent or friend.
2) Write what you need to complete within yourself to fill that gap.
For example, I have a person dear to me who I feel is one of the few people who unconditionally accepts me for who I am. To me, my relationship with this person fills a gap – my craving for unconditional acceptance.
This clearly shows me that I need to work on unconditionally accepting myself more.
The list could go on, and could be anything. Does your partner make you feel protected? Make you feel happy? Make you feel loved?
Yes? Now figure out ways in which you can achieve that feeling within yourself.
Ultimately, these gaps are the things that are currently missing in the most important partnership of all: the relationship between you and yourself.
As you start to slowly re-discover how to access these elements again, your relationships with others will no longer be one where you are relying on them to fill in a void within you. It will be a relationship where two beings approach each other in their entireties. This allows for the highest form of creativity to occur.
When this happens, two doesn’t become one. Two becomes three.