Yesterday I shared a post that I wrote a while ago, called What’s Become of Us.

It’s on my page if you’d like to read it.

It was prompted by a few things. Many women sitting with me and talking about how difficult it is to talk to their male partners about sexual and relationship issues, how they think they have to do it carefully so as not to upset them, how delicately they have to handle it.

There were some great discussions, comments and questions that prompted these thoughts.

We have to heal for ourselves.

We have to grow, to expand, release, for ourselves.

We can’t do it for another.

We can’t do it for a relationship.

We have to do it for ourselves.

When we do this for another it leads to resentment, to anger, to frustration, to disconnect.

It takes us to places, on a deep level of self-hatred, judgment, misery.

So many people come and see me to save a relationship, to change for someone else.

Maybe it doesn’t matter too much how we start the journey, and that’s another discussion.

What is important is that we realize that we do it for ourselves.

We can’t heal, change for another.

So often when we do that we become something that we’re not, something that we think, that we think, someone else wants us to be.

Which is not our selves, not our authentic self.

I’ve done that in the past, I really wanted you to stay, to love me.

And I gave myself up.

That’s not to say that healing our past, becoming aware of and changing our patterns, finding who we are, creating lives of greater fulfilment and awareness.

That is so important.

And to do to it for ourselves is just as important.

To become who we are, and love from that place.

Love in a way that expresses the fullness of who we are.

And to share that with someone.

In a relationship that allows us, not just allows, but fosters, growth, expansion, exploration, and the inner journey.

To share that with someone is so beautiful, challenging, and has such possibility.

It comes from a different place inside of us.

Changing for someone, to keep someone, to stay in a relationship, so often comes from a place of fear.

Growing for ourselves, to love more as an expression of that self, we’re coming from love, for love.

And firstly for love of ourselves.

There’s freedom in this.

Freedom to explore, to grow, to learn.

To see how much we’ve done from someone else’s idea of who we should be, of how we should be.

How a relationship should be.

Rather than what it is, and what it can be.

For us.

Not to fit in.

And not to be in a space of ‘I can’t say that because it will upset him, or I have to find the right time, or I can’t damage his ego.’

To say what we need because we’d like to have more intimacy, openness, sharing, love, pleasure, excitement.

And openness.

To have an open space to have the difficult conversations, for me as much as us, for the expression of myself in that space.

There’s something interesting in this.

Being in relationship because it’s a space for me to grow is so different.

A long time ago I read a book by Anthony de Mello called The Way to Love.

There was a piece in it about selfishness.

Which said, as I remember, that we’ve been brought up with the idea that selfish is bad.

And at the expense of others it takes something away from us.

But when we live to know ourselves, to express and experience ourselves, with openness, honesty, to grow, to see more of who we are, and to share more of that, love changes.

I choose to be with you as the space to have that.

I choose it for myself.

And open the space for you to share that with me.

And I do it for me.

For me to be more of myself in the world, and our space, our relationship becomes the place for so much of that to happen.

I’m working with many couples at the moment, exploring so many aspects of sexuality, love and relationship.

One of the important things in the framework I work in is that things will only change in our relationship when I do my work, and you do yours. Until then we’re just going to play our patterns out, do what we do, in the way we do it.

Esther Perel talks about how we can have so many different relationships with the same person, when we’re willing to do this, keep bringing more of ourselves.

When we do this we see relationships differently, as a space for growth, not a space to fix and change each other.

Then we love in a different way to the way so much of our world sees it.

Love in the field of possibility.