Tuesday, May 17, 2011

THIS TIME, I KNOW BETTER - THE STORY OF GETTING IT RIGHT IN RELATIONSHIPS

At OvertheStory, we talk a lot about “stories” – manufactured tales of how we should be and what we should do that have been conjured up from our own minds or have been handed to us by others who intended to teach us what we need to know on our journey through this thing called life. Often, these stories are larger than life myths that exist to encourage us to continue our investment in the belief that at some point, the stories can or will pay off for us.

And what is one of the biggest stories of all time? The big, whopping tale that with experience comes a wisdom that will transform our dating and relationship lives; that at some point, we will have gone through enough stuff to know what it takes to mitigate our relationship damages. We will finally come to know exactly what it is that we need to do in order to succeed. At some point, we will know better. And because we will know better, we will do better. And then, we will get it right.

But, we have seen enough of our friends and family (and even ourselves!) repeat the same relationship patterns, with limited results, to know that this is not the absolute truth. Once burned, we are far less likely to touch a hot stove, so what is it with relationships that causes us to make the same “mistakes” over and over again?

I believe that it’s because when it comes to relationships, just as with everything else in life, it’s a “be” thing, not a “do” thing. It’s not so much what we do that yields us the results that we want. It’s what we believe, and who we are BEing in the space of that belief, that makes the difference. We need only to BE transformed; and that we can accomplish flawlessly if we are willing to allow ourselves the freedom to do so. The perfect thing to DO will come naturally; without the need to act in a way that we think looks different from our past. We won’t need to look for signs of what happened before to determine what we need to do in our future. We won’t need to choose better next time. We won’t need to get it right. Who and what shows up will be a perfect reflection of the relationship that we have with ourselves-as it has always been.


-Written by Angie