Love is NOT all you Need: The Truth About Relationships

“There are no happy endings in Love.  Because as long as love exists there is no ending but transformation. Love is the force that transforms eternity.”  Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon

 (Angel singing all you need is love) “Love is all you need.” The Beatles

Yet, love is not enough for a relationship between two people to flourish. Long-term romantic relationships require effort applied to the appropriate object (the relationship) in order to work long-term. And the appropriate object is not the other person in the relationship with you - that results in the desire to change the other person, or fixate on them for good or bad, and it creates dependency on them like a substance. (now you want to love and care for and be kind to the other person but that is not the focus point of your effort when in a romantic relationship). 

So, let me backup for a second. Let me describe what I’ve learned about relationships hermetically.  Imagine that a relationship is a pyramid (a triangle). The two people in love and in relationship form the base of the pyramid so man and woman or man/man, woman/woman are at the two corners - then at the top of the pyramid is The Relationship. It is a 3rd entity, a “child” so to speak created by the two beings in relationship, through the exchange of masculine and feminine energies. The Relationship itself is an entity and it is born of the two making a commitment to themself and to the other to always better themself (because we are not perfect) and better the relationship (because its made of two imperfect beings - so needs effort and nurture and improvement of those two beings to thrive). The only way the relationship is going to work is if there is

1. TRUST - consistency of actions and repeatedly doing what you said you were going to do for and with the other person, and for and with yourself in relation to that other person.
2. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY - recognition that as a human being you are not perfect and that you are always seeing, hearing,doing things thru a filter of your mind/thoughts/programming and that you are going to do your best to acknowledge and take responsibility for your mind/thoughts/programming in all of their imperfections.
3. COMMITMENT - commitment to the relationship via the discipline of being a better individual through personal growth and development. Discipline to know thyself better and be better in the world through the positive actualization of your purpose. Finally encircling all of these, ideally there is a shared understanding of value in something between the two people - family, faith, spirituality, purpose. Maybe simply the recognition that all humans are just that, human, and we all deserve to be treated as such. 

Returning to the point - If you are committed to making yourself better because you Love yourself and respect yourself as a divine being then you can respect the other human in the relationship the same way, and then work with that person to nourish the relationship like you are raising a child. Resting this nourishment on the foundation of Trust, Honesty, Personal Responsibility, Commitment and Care - you can love and flow love in this cycle because the channel for that love to flow is held open by those foundational elements I described and the archway they create. (and if one of these elements is missing then like a dam the flow for your love gets blocked and the child/relationship will suffer).

If you can’t see yourself first as the central sun of your universe, making your own world with your thoughts, actions and perspectives, all of the foundational elements are challenged.  If all you see is the world acting upon you, standing in need, or in victim or blaming other people for not treating you right or giving you what you need, then you are not able to take responsibility for yourself as the creator of the central source of awareness in your universe. It is essential to recognize that every relationship with every single person, place or thing in your life starts in your mind.  It lives first in your thoughts and those thoughts are colored by that mind. 

So let me put a pause on the relationship between two people, for just a moment so we can understand this extremely important point.  First let’s just define what is a relationship period, and how relationships work in your life.  A relationship is simply a connection you have with a person, place or thing and it can be positive or negative. It does not require there to be affection, for example you can have a relationship with your car, your computer, your house, your city of residence. You can also have relationships with pets and with people - family, friends, colleagues, employees, your favorite barista.  And then you have romantic relationships with your spouse, lover, partner whatever label you choose and state of commitment you are in. 

Everything you do is in relationship and every relationship is colored by your thoughts and thus your mind (because this is Hermetic Principle #1 ALL IS MIND). It is an oversimplification but no matter where you go, what you have or who you are with THERE YOU ARE.  You cannot leave yourself out of any relationship, or else you would be dead and there would be NO RELATIONSHIP for you (you can have relationships with dead persons but that is a whole other topic for another day). You are the CENTER of your relationships not because you are the center of everyone’s universe but because you are the center of your own universe.  And all relationships with everything in your life first take place in your mind. Your thoughts affect every interaction and connection you have.  And these thoughts come from your mind. You act on what is inside your head for better or for worse. Thus, if we are going to improve our world and our relationships (which are our world) we first have to clean up our thoughts/mind so we can start to discern what really is going on inside us and thus truly see what is happening outside of us. In addition - how we treat ourselves is tantamount to how we treat others. So we have to take responsibility for how we love and care for ourselves, and know ourselves first before we can really know what it is to love another person, and understand better what is happening in the relationships we choose to make. And we choose all of our relationships consciously or subconsciously, we are 100% at the epicenter of every positive or negative relationship in our lives whether those are with people, places or things.  So the Key to us having healthy positive relationships (and a good life because our entire life is made up of relationships) is having a good relationship with yourself. Knowing Yourself. Taking care of yourself. Loving yourself. Taking responsibility for yourself. If you first know thyself - you will have good relationships with persons, places and things because you’ll realize that your external reality is a reflection of your inner reality (Hermetic Principle #2 As above so below, as within so without). And you will start to actualize the reality you desire to live in and experience actual joy and purpose.

OK so with that all reviewed let’s go back to the main event. My bold statement that Love is not enough for a romantic relationship to work. I’m definitely statistically accurate in the United States with marriages currently having a less than 50% success rate. But this is not a podcast about legal trends or even the cause of divorce (but I will note that the #1 reported cause of divorce is infidelity, The Destroyer of Trust, one of the 3 foundations necessary for nourishment to flow to The Relationship). 

Alright so if love, or loving the other person is not enough, what is?  Well that is just it. It is the focus of your attention on the appropriate object, and in the case of Your relationships what is the one common denominator?  You.  You must be committed to knowing yourself,  and creating positive growth of the self so that you are able to capably understand and discern that you are actually in a relationship, and be the person that allows that relationship to grow and sustain. 

Let’s use an overly simplistic thought example.  If you think “this person is harming me.” Then that is your reality. But are they?  Are they stabbing you with a knife? That would be objective harm. Are they saying no to a particular request? Is that NO harm?  Maybe you just do not like the answer and it “hurts” you in that you feel something you do not like.  But what is that actually?  Maybe they are preventing physical harm by saying no?  What is the objective reality of the situation? What if you analyze the inputs from around you, and within you, and acknowledge what is happening? Can you discern reality? Or are you experiencing a fact pattern that the negative ego mind is putting directly into a proof to make the other person wrong for their boundary i.e. saying no and because you don’t like this, you label it bad or harm? 

Now let’s take an example from my life. First I want to be really vulnerable about my life.

If you were to look at my track record of relationships you would see a pattern of me experiencing a pattern of major betrayals of trust.  One partner I have “loved” after another in my life has significantly lied to me, usually around a core issue of fidelity at major points in our relationship, or I have been left suddenly (in most cases because they chose another). I actually, until recently, had a lot of shame around this. I felt like there was something wrong with me. All I’ve ever wanted was a devoted partner to share this life with but all I found was one heartbreak after another. (long sigh)  Boohoo tragic me. That is until I owned the pattern as a reflection of how I treated myself. I was subconsciously setting myself up to fail by choosing relationships that would result in the very outcome my little person and anxious attachment abandoned me was trying to avoid.  It was me who kept leading myself to situations where I was ultimately going to be rejected, lied to, and/or experience infidelity. 

Recently, the universe delivered me the gift of having to start dating again. This time around knowing what I know now about my patterns I went into it promising myself I would not repeat what I did before. I was also going to be very aware of my past hurts and triggers and not project them upon anyone I am dating. Furthermore if I was going to date anyone they had to be on the same page about this and willing to and be able to communicate in the moment about thoughts, feelings and not take the process personally. But instead be willing to come to the table to discuss in the moment what happens between two people when they learn to relate.  Essentially, I was going to follow the formula I am sharing with you. Hours and hours of hermetic and spiritual training have been about overcoming this core issue in my life. I’ve achieved everything else. But this area I keep failing at. So with that lens of seeking someone first who was willing and able to communicate, in the moment, directly, objectively, and with the same desire of truly getting to know the other person for the sake of creating a long term relationship - I find myself practicing just that with someone. And as I continue to get to know him, things have come up that set off my anxiousness, my fear of betrayal, my fears of screwing things up, of being too much, of driving people away.  But the difference this time, when those fears come up, we have together created a safe space to share them, acknowledge what is happening in the moment, and inquire further where they are coming from. 

For example, in my life -  I called my new Significant Other and said I needed to go to Southern Florida to help my father, he mentioned some resources he had in that area, and without clarifying if he was actually offering them to me specifically - I heard it as an offer to help me with my situation. But we made no firm plans, like a date to go and use these resources. And then a week later when I was going to start confirming specifics he tells me he is unavailable as he had some serious health appointments he needed to go to. Two things happen at this moment for me - 1. A part of me was like OMG he made a promise and now he isn’t following through (siren alarm! Red flag! eep!) and 2. Why didn’t he tell me he had this health stuff going on? And then I paused myself from the emotional drama train and asked what actually happened? What objectively occurred? (versus what I thought happened)  What did you actually say in that conversation? Were you clear? Did I ask for assistance directly? Did you make any firm agreement to anything? And then as far as the health stuff, at our stage of relationship most people don’t get out their planner and just start listing off major doctors appointments coming up.  I didn’t tell him about mine, why would he tell me his?  Telling myself the truth, I had to acknowledge that there was very likely a huge gap between what objectively occurred and what I perceived. So instead of turning over the proverbial table in some sort of temper tantrum and playing right into negative emotions from old patterns and self sabotaging -  I chose the opportunity to learn how each one of us works better.  And that is how I presented it when we talked.  I started with telling him that I think I misunderstood something, and I wanted to know where that miscommunication rooted from, so that going forward it didn’t happen again. We came to a very easy and thoughtful place of clarity on what happened with no drama or erosion of trust.  Just the opposite. We now have a reference point for planning things together in the future. Which if applied consistently by each of us will create more trust.

Alright my friends, I hope you are seeing the necessity of self-clarity in your relationships. You can love someone but if there is no trust, no personal responsibility for your thoughts and programming, no commitment to working on yourself for the sake of yourself and the relationship then there is no container for that love to flow into, and the child (the relationship) will starve. Meanwhile, if you do not know yourself, if you do not love yourself, then you will not be able to discern what really is going on in your relationship with yourself, let alone your relationship with others. 

So, my exercise for everyone this month is just this.  You are going to look into the mirror every morning for the next 7 days and say “I Love You”  to yourself. Seriously, look into your own eyes deeply and say it.  I love you. Do it. Then repeat it. I Love You. Allow the words to sink deep into your heart. Then repeat it again. I Love you. Sit with it.  And do this every day for 7 days - in the morning, first thing. And if it is hard - then you know that you have some things to work on in your relationship with yourself. and I can help with that!  Reach out and book a call with me. Let’s get you on the road to being able to say “I love you” with ease and see how that self mastery blossoms into a bouquet of beautiful relationships with others.