Choosing a Partner
"Perhaps the best partners come to us when we neither seek nor avoid the possibility of finding someone. We simply live in accord with our deepest needs and wishes and notice people we meet."
"More important than finding a partner is taking care of our hearts in a dating game that can be a devastating enterprise of broken promises and disappointed expectations. Caring for ourselves while dating means not betraying our true nature in a desperate attempt to get someone to want us: “I want a partner, and I am taking care of myself as the first step. I remain the sentry over my vulnerable inner self during this process, which may be quite dangerous to my self-esteem.”
Am I Cut Out for Close, Intimate Relationship?
"An adult commitment is a thoroughly truthful enterprise of ongoing love. It entails an unremitting willingness to keep agreements and handle obstacles by addressing, processing, and resolving conflicts. Happiness and mutual respect result. True love cannot be fooled, nor does it attempt to fool others. As mature adults, we can no longer be charmed by looks or sweet talk. All that matters is enduring mutual commitment."
"Some people confuse attachment with love. Being attached will immobilize us; love, on the other hand, helps us achieve a progressively effective and joyous evolution. We can also mistake dependency for connection. Insecure people may try to create a connection with us by fostering dependency through the offer of riches, humor, flattery, indebtedness, and so forth."
"Of course, not everyone is cut out for a fully committed relationship. Some people are more comfortable with—and only psychologically calibrated for—light relationships or friendships. They are driven not by fear of intimacy but by truthful recognition that intimacy is not for them. There is no shame in not wanting a relationship. A healthy person is not one in a relationship but one in his own skin."
"Marriage and family are a special vocation not meant for everyone. It is an individual not a collective choice. It is for those who will enjoy a commitment to lifelong working through, working on, and working within a context of family."
"Some people see this issue in extremist terms: we either are or are not cut out for relationship. In reality, we can combine apparent opposites. We can know our own comfort level and design our commitment level to match it. We do not have to fear that someone will take over the oval office of our life and mind. We can decide the size of the foothold a partner can have in our psyche."
Qualified Candidates
"Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us."
A suitable candidate will probably meet the following additional criteria:
• Lives reasonably close by
• Has no distracting ties that make true commitment impossible, such as another relationship in progress, an old relationship unfinished, a divorce pending, a parent to be cared for or consulted (children do not
represent an obstacle unless they require or are given so much attention that he is tied codependently to their needs and has no life of his own)
• Has no active addictions
• Has no overpowering political or religious obsessions
• Wants children if you do or does not want them if you do not
• Has the sexual capacity, accessibility, and interest to satisfy you or can work on it within the relationship
• Has no disability with respect to money (e.g., cannot earn, spend, share, save, lend, contribute, receive)
• Is your friend and not just your sex partner; loves your company and is compatible
• Shares interests with you
• Is on a fairly close intellectual par, so you do not have to play down your vocabulary or acumen
• Is not looking for the ideal woman/man (To need the ideal woman is not to want a real woman—the only kind out there!)
• Does not appear to you to be ideal; you are not so infatuated that you cannot see his shadow side
• Has done at least half the work it takes to be healthy in life and relationships
• Satisfies the ruthless criterion that applies to all significant choices: that a relationship with him reflects and fulfills your deepest needs, values, and wishes
• Can and loves to focus on you in an engaged, lasting way (How do I know this is happening enough? You can remember the last time it happened.)
• Meets with the welcoming approval of your personal trio—your head, your heart, and your gut.
What Are We Up To?
"we have to learn how to finish our old emotional business on our own when a partner will not finish it for or with us."
"What are we up to when we look for a relationship? Our apparent agenda may be the opposite of our real agenda. We have a conscious agenda when what we say we want matches what we set out to do. For instance, we say we want a relationship and we mean it, so we are willing to make a commitment. A secret agenda, on the other hand, is usually unknown to us. We have a secret agenda when we actually want the opposite of what we say we want."
Full Disclosure
"The first requirement for trust and commitment is telling the truth. We sometimes do not share our feelings and reactions with a partner because we sense that she cannot receive the truth from us. Only when the relationship is over do we let go fully with all we have stored up and always wanted to say or show. Then we find out how inhibiting the relationship was for us and how afraid we were of the full truth, ours and others’. We feared saying what the other was afraid to hear."
"But we can say and hear anything when we trust the loving intent and loyalty of another. In the holding environment of intimacy, we can allow the truth to emerge without fear, shame, or embarrassment. Such trust flourishes when partners are committed to working on themselves."
Sexualizing Our Needs
"Sex with the five A’s might be like: the primary motivation for each of us is to bring pleasure to the other; there is no goal; we allow for shifting levels of arousal throughout the lovemaking; we continually check in with one another through eye contact, smiles, and hugs."
"It seems that nature intended sex to be connected with nurturant tenderness, as if, in love, we breast feed one another’s hearts."
"We sometimes seek a sexual relationship not to share an adult passion but because we believe that a sexual response from another person fulfills our unmet emotional needs or even grants us a sense of security. We may feel we are simply looking for sex when we are actually seeking to be personally received and confirmed with the five A’s. When we sexualize our needs in this way, we are recruiting our genitals for tasks they are not designed to fulfill."
"We sometimes seek a sexual relationship not to share an adult passion but because we believe that a sexual response from another person fulfills our unmet emotional needs or even grants us a sense of security." " A relationship based solely on sex, rather than on a fulfilling friendship that includes sex, can turn to ashes in the years to come."
“If your life at night is good, you think you have everything.”
"Medea" Euripides
Such Longings
"We may feel our life is meaningless if we are not in love with someone or not in a sexual relationship. If so, we discredit ourselves and miss out on all the rest of what our life is about. When we feel the absolute need for a one to-one love relationship, we are really meeting up with a strong need for personal work on ourselves. Our longing for that special someone, the be all and end-all of our lives, also distracts us from our spiritual practice of compassion, the broader love that is our real focus and destiny as enlightened beings."
Practices
COMPARING WISHES- Do you have (or want) a face-to-face lifestyle or a side by-side lifestyle?
CAN YOU ANSWER YES TO THESE QUESTIONS?- "Can your partner focus on you and respond to your needs? Is your partner working on herself? Does your partner love you sanely—rather than need you desperately? Does she keep agreements? Does she collaborate with you to handle obstacles together? Are you happy together more than half the time? Can she handle your strength, your feelings, and your freedom? Do you feel loved in that special way that is unique to you, and do you feel it bodily? Can you share with this person what troubles, excites, or delights you?"
"If you can see the difference between a good partner and a not-so good one but cannot let go of someone who is wrong for you, if you make the same mistakes with one partner after another, or if you are the victim of—or the volunteer for—one predator after another, ask a friend to be your relationship sponsor. "
USING THE “EVEN THOUGH” TECHNIQUE- "Answer yes or no aloud: Would you eat strawberries you knew to be deliciously sweet if you were seriously allergic to them? Would you eat mushrooms that looked delicious if you knew they might be poisonous? Would you attempt to read a book you knew to be interesting if it was written in a language you did not understand? Would you stay in a relationship with someone you loved if you were unhappy."
"Would you blame the strawberries for your allergic reaction, the mushrooms for poisoning you, or the book for confusing you? Do you blame your partner for your unhappiness?"
"Adults can let go of the good things if the one bad thing outweighs them: “Even though I’m crazy about you and you’re a great provider, I can’t stay with you while you are such a liar and refuse help.”
"Here are the words of an adult: “Even though you please me sexually, even though we have been together so long, even though I don’t know whether I will ever find someone else, I have to let you go because you do not meet me at my soul/adult level.”
"Come up with your own “even though” statement using the adult formulation: “Even though… since… I therefore …”
VOWING/DISAVOWING- "Ask yourself: Am I making a vow of commitment to my partner while disavowing an essential partnership with my inner Self? Ask these questions of one another: Can we find ways to work separately"
TAKING A SEXUAL INVENTORY- "In your journal write an inventory of your own sexual behaviors over your lifetime and ask yourself if you are satisfied with them."
OPENING WINDOWS- "draw a square room, seen from above, with a picture window in each wall. Mark the windows with the directions of the compass. Under the word east, where the dawn appears, write three things in your life that are now arising. Under the word west, where the sun sets, write three things in your life that are now ending. Under the word north, write three things in your life that stabilize and guide you, as does the North Star. Under the word south, write three things in your life that evoke your spontaneity and creativity—the kind of opening up that can happen when facing a warm southern exposure. You have drawn a picture of a healthy human mind, a clear space that opens in all possible directions without obstruction, distraction, or fear."
" Picture yourself sitting mindfully in the center of the room, alternately turning toward each of the four windows. The challenge is to face your east with a willingness to take hold, to face your west with a willingness to let go, to face north by staying with your spiritual practice, and to face south with an ever-enthusiastic creativity in the reinvention of your life. "
"Now ask yourself if your psyche is a room with openings like this. How do you look out of each of the windows? Who helps open your windows and who attempts to close them? Who says “Whoa!” when you say “Whee!” and who says “Go!”?
If you are interested in this book, you can email me (kh.nebulishvili@gmail.com) and I'll send the PDF version of this book :)
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