8.7
January 19, 2019

Breaking the Cycle of trying to make Every Relationship “The One.”

 

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We tie ourselves into knots trying to figure out why someone doesn’t want us.

We think somehow it’s meant to be, when the reality is—if they were “our person,” they would be here, next to us, in this moment.

There’s no rhyme or reason when it comes to love. While sometimes it seems that we love the ones who don’t love us—or turn away those who are offering it, it is all pretty simple: if someone is meant for us, if they are “our one,” our one person—then they stay.

They stay despite the challenges, despite the obstacles, and they work through anything that it takes in order to keep us in their lives.

If they don’t, then they are just one more beautiful lesson pointing the way to our forever person.

It all begins because we romanticize love. We have the notion that love must be worked for, earned, and in some ways—struggled to receive.

We take in story lines that love is work and that we have to be willing to stick it out and to sacrifice in order to actually get to that finish line and have the relationship that we know we deserve.

But all of this is meant to keep us in cycles. Cycles in which we perpetually give more than we receive, in which we barter with their emotionally unavailability in order to have someone in our lives—rather than just simply letting go and trusting that the universe always brings those into our lives who are meant to be there.

Sometimes, we want someone to be our person so deeply that we lie to ourselves in order to keep from giving up, or to keep from having to admit that we were wrong about them.

We mourn our lovers when they leave, when they choose others, treat us badly, or even ghost us altogether thinking that somehow, we’ve lost something—that we’ve lost love or our chance at happiness forever.

The thing with love is, that for those amazing relationships that last and encourage growth between both people, love is also a conscious choice. Both individuals have to not only feel love, but decide to act upon it each day. They both have to show up when it’s hard, be honest about their fears, and actually choose to be in a relationship with one another.

If not, then it’s not really a loss—it’s a lesson, an experience, and something that we can take while moving on in the direction of what is meant for us.

We don’t actually have to wait for anyone. We also don’t have to wrack our brains trying to figure out why they leave, and we don’t have to conspire on how to get them back.

If someone doesn’t want us, it’s because they aren’t our person.

It’s that simple.

Now, love does have a tendency of coming back and we aren’t perfect. Not everyone knows what they want even when it’s right in front of them. And we’re not all healed enough to enter into a relationship that would encourage our highest selves. But even in that very moment when they walk away, this is when we need to listen: they are not our person.

We need to forgive, to look at ourselves more closely, to do our own work, and also to leave our hearts open—so that we can be ready for when love does come knocking again.

Relationships are not about trying to figure out how to get the attention of our partner. They aren’t about how to make them start treating us like we deserve. And they aren’t even about trying to open their eyes to the wonderment that is us.

Relationships are about letting each person simply be themselves. If they can choose us without any convincing or without any games—only then will it ever be an authentic choice for them, and an authentic love for both of you.

When love doesn’t work out and our hearts become broken, it’s natural to want those good feelings back, to want the wounds to heal, and to have things as they were. But many times in life, that is not what is meant to happen.

If we consider that only one relationship is actually supposed to last forever, then that means a heck of a lot aren’t supposed to at all. And the worst thing that we can do is somehow think that it’s a reflection upon ourselves, or that this person who walked away was our person, and now we are destined for unhappiness.

Instead, we can choose to approach the severing of a connection or a break up for what it is: a decision made by another individual who is trying to make choices they think are right.

It doesn’t mean we have to agree but it also doesn’t mean that we have to take it personally. Yet we often do because love is as personal as it gets.

If we can have faith that our person, whomever that is, would never leave us, and would never walk away, then we can shorten the time that it takes to get over a break up and heal.

We can be confident that our person is still out there, that we haven’t lost our chance at love, and that this ending is really a good thing because it means we’re one step closer to finding that person—finding the one who has been dreaming of someone just like us.

But there is no shortcut to finding our forever love.

There are definite lessons that we need to go through, and this is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn. The sooner we can understand that if they don’t want us; if they aren’t calling or texting, apologizing, or trying to work things out—then they simply aren’t our person.

And that’s okay.

It’s okay that we had “amazing” and it’s okay that it’s over; it’s okay that we had love and it ended—because it’s not our last chance at love.

Instead, it’s the moment we’re set free to find what we’ve known all along that we deserve.

A love that wants us and chooses us—just as fiercely as we choose it.

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