It Takes Two, Baby

Whenever there is a conflict in a relationship, you can be sure it is not one person’s “fault”.  There is simply no such thing.

You see, we all have unresolved issues from the past, whether they be from past lives or this current lifetime.  I don’t think all the work ever gets done.  (Well, there’s one exception, you are temporarily done when you die.  Thus the good old expression:  “When you’re done, you’re dead.”)  I’m sorry if I’m the bearer of bad news.  We are here on earth to learn and grow.  If everything were perfect all the time, how could we keep learning and growing?

Working out these past “traumas”, if you will, is the purpose of relationship.  Only our beloveds can push our buttons in just the right way so that what comes up are the most painful core wounds we have.  Only our beloveds have the power to give us so much joy at times, and to be be part of so much agony at others.  Sound familiar? 🙂

In a relationship, one person does not get to corner the market on all the learning and growing.  Being in a relationship is an equal opportunity endeavor.   Both people get the “benefit” of having all their shiniest buttons pushed and the potential to heal their deepest core wounds.  Therefore, whenever there is a conflict in a relationship, the problem is always co-created.  Never one person’s doing.  And always, the solution involves both people.

I do want to clarify one thing: It is usually best if both parties seek some kind of outside help from a therapist or coach (or sometimes they can get away with doing inner work on their own, if they already have a lot of tools and skills).  AND, I have seen relationships improve a seemingly huge amount when one person in a marriage, say, comes to me for coaching/therapy and the other also begins to change, almost through osmosis from living in the house with the person who’s getting the treatment.

Just as it is with every couple, so it is with my primary partner and I.  I had unresolved issues from my past that were getting in the way of having a healthy relationship, and so did he.  So, remember the Gentle Reprocessing I told you about in my recent  blog titled ‘A Major Miracle’?  Well, soon afterward, he saw how much it was helping me and got his own G.R. therapist.

So if you’re not happy with some aspect of y0ur relationship and you think you partner is the only one who needs to shift anything inside his or her self, think again.  That’s not how it works.

In our case, I can’t tell you the resolution of the whole thing yet, since we are still in the process of trying to work things out.  And I can tell you that as a result of both of us being in treatment, we soon started to get along much better.  Neither of us was triggered by things in quite the same way that we had been before.  At least for a while….