Monday, November 6, 2017

What Hidden Agenda Are You Bringing Into Your Relationship? By Bloomwork


To the degree that early unhealed wounds and unmet childhood needs are carried into adulthood we may see our partner as having the power, even the responsibility to rescue us from the residual pain from these experiences by providing us with the kind of love that we had never received. What we deeply desire is love that is healing, affirming, redemptive, and unconditionally accepting. In short, salvation. Not only is this expectation unrealistic, it’s unattainable. Still, the desire for love can be so compelling that it frequently blinds us to this reality.

When we feel ourselves to be incomplete or lacking a sense of wholeness, we often seek out others to fill our emptiness, someone who seems to possess the power to restore us to wholeness. Generally such a person embodies inner qualities, character traits and ways of being that are similar to those of one or both of our parents or caregivers. This sense of familiarity is one of the things that make this person attractive to us.
Such a person often inflames the desire for redemptive love, the kind of love that can heal our hearts and souls. When we are redeemed, we feel “right” with ourselves and relieved of feelings of unworthiness, doubt, anxiety and shame. “This time,” we tell ourselves, “this person will love me in the way I really need and deserve to be loved, and their love will remove the pain and suffering from my life.”
This then is the redemptive longing; the hope of being saved once and for all from the suffering inherent in a life in which we feel ourselves to be undeserving of love. When we fail to recognize the illusory nature of this expectation, relationships that began with dreams of divine bliss, can deteriorate into unrelenting frustration, and the person whom we had hoped would be our salvation becomes the source of more emotional pain.
It’s in our ability to see the true source of our attraction and attractiveness to others that we can begin the real healing work that can free us from relational patterns that no longer serve us. With this awareness we can learn how to put out the fires of suffering at their source.  When we do this we diminish the inclination to compromise ourselves in order to gain love and acceptance from others. Looking for wholeness and security through another is like seeking relief of a toothache from a painkiller. There’s nothing wrong with doing it and it will temporarily alleviate the pain, but it is not an effective long-term solution.
When the source of the problem has to do with an unwillingness to honestly face ourselves, the solution involves the ability to remember (literally, to put back together again) our essential selves and claim all of the parts that comprise the fullness of our being, including those parts that are in need of attention and healing.
This doesn’t necessarily require us to reveal our deepest darkest secrets to the world, but simply to honestly acknowledge and experience the truth to ourselves. In so doing, those aspects of our personality that we have tried to conceal gradually become exposed to the light of awareness and compassion. This process of gradual awakening is the essence of the work that over time will set us free. And freedom, isn’t just having nothing left to lose, it’s the foundation of fulfilling relationships and fulfilling lives.
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