choosing people to be in a relationship with who truly challenge us and help us become the best possible version of ourselves (at least, I hope that’s where we are headed). Because a relationship is the best vehicle for self-growth.
Of late, there’s been a lot of talk about focusing on the ‘me’, ‘I’, ‘myself’, ‘self-love’ (you get the drift) and while that’s a great thing to start with, it seems to me that we are spending a crazy amount of time discussing how we need to love ourselves before we love another and ‘only’ doing that (Don’t get me wrong, Self Love is equally important). But, what’s happening is, in our attempts to put ourselves and our needs first, we are constantly trying to prove to ourselves, how we need to remain unattached to practically everything and everyone! So much so that we are forgetting, only in relationships do we get triggered in the very way that we need to encourage ourselves to grow to the next level of our lives. And That’s how it is!
We are born living and loving at a basic level! As young adults, things felt simple. We chose people who were friends with our friends, who were cute, cool and so on.. We entered relationships because they posed a certain level of convenience, not because they brought out the best in us… But as we grow, we begin to need more from our partners than simply to check off the boxes that other people told us were important, and so begins our journey through the different levels of love and of knowing ourselves.. Perhaps some of us still love at a basic level our entire lives, but I’ve found that many of us long for a conscious relationship, one of the highest levels of love, so that we can use it to further our own growth.
The most crucial aspect of a conscious relationship is maintaining the ‘me’ while admitting that we need the ‘we’.. This means that while we don’t merge our names together or become one entity, we consider ourselves to be a team and make the team’s needs as important as our own.. So it’s no longer me vs you… It’s ‘US’… It’s not about what is right for me or what works for me, it’s shifting focus to what is right for us and how to make things work for us…
That said, when it comes to moments of growth or transformation, those in conscious relationships recognize that individual needs have to come before team needs… This means that sometimes we will have to let our partner go off on their own to battle their own demons or unfinished storylines. It might mean that we bless them with time and space they need so that they can sort through the chaos of their own thoughts, knowing that their behavior isn’t a personal reflection on us, but rather something they need to experience on their journey.
By practicing this, not only are we able to maintain our own sense of self within a relationship but the ‘we’—the team, is stronger because of it. A conscious relationship isn’t about two halves; instead, it’s about taking who we are separate, our whole flawed, beautiful self, and coming together with someone who complements what we lack.
None of us are meant to do life alone. None of us are meant to be everything and do everything. Healthy, Conscious Relationships are about letting down our guards and walls and seeing how well our crazy can dance with another’s, and what it feels like to truly let someone in who not only lets us be ourselves but also knows where to pick up when we leave off. It’s also important to understand that our individual growth becomes essential for the relationship to flourish. And that we don’t really have to give up who we are in order to be loved.
Everything in life is a practice, especially how we choose to love and understand within a conscious relationship because we’ll never be perfect at it!! None of us will ever reach an endpoint where we can no longer improve. The idea with this practice is to be real about where we are today and hopeful about where we want to be tomorrow. And above all, it’s about realizing that the person we’re with should want the best for us. Not their idea of the best, but what truly nourishes our souls.
In Conscious Relationships, where both people are secure within themselves, there is no goal to the union other than to simply support one another because we know that we are only as strong as our greatest weakness. And that is the best part about becoming a healthy ‘me’ within a conscious ‘we’!!! Because ‘We’ are ‘One’.
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