The people I work with often believe that it’s easier to start over with someone else, or easier to be alone.
I tell them that, in my experience, healing and growing relationships are challenging — that all couples who desire to create a sustaining and loving relationship have to go through the trenches of healing their wounded-ness within the relationship.
And, while it may be easier to be alone, it’s lonely, and the major relationship issues never get healed.
Over the past weeks I’ve struggled with my own advice. I had fallen into the trenches of my feelings of loneliness and a deep desire for life to be easier.
Every time I tried to move forward with an idea, I could hear myself saying “this doesn’t feel right,” OR “I CAN’T DO THIS” OR “what would they think,” OR “fu*k% it, I’ll just start over.”
Then, I would give up and blame myself or my partner for not rescuing me.
Then it HIT me like a ton of bricks. I was trying to Control. I was trying to come up with the ULTIMATE idea. I was looking for PERFECTION.
I remember reading an article several years back where Ashley Judd said that, “Perfectionism is the highest form of self-abuse.”
None of us is perfect, but those feelings can grip us (consciously or unconsciously) and when we’re caught in them, we just feel like giving up because we can’t see a way out.
The lesson is . . . regardless of whether you’re single- looking for love or coupled- wondering if the relationship is going to make it – don’t leave, don’t give up, don’t stop!
No matter how bad the tension gets, the distance gets — stay with it.
It’s too easy to leave, too easy to blame the other person, too easy to miss the incredible opportunity that relationships and staying the course provide for healing and growth.
These opportunities will take you to the depths of your dark side and to the heights of your ability to love.
They will take you where you need to go, so don’t give up just because it’s so hard.
The challenge is to keep going within, connecting with your feelings and your inner wisdom, and learning what it means to move beyond control, resistance, punishing the other, threats, blame, being a victim.
No matter how difficult things get at times, you have a responsibility to yourself, your partner, and your family to learn what you came to do on this planet.
You reach a point where you will cycle back to love of self – and it won’t matter what others think.
Sincerely,
Paula
401.782.7899
P.S. Look out for an email from me about my upcoming 3 Part [Video] Series.
