Question: The problem seems to be that when you are in a relationship, in the beginning everything is happening, but when you marry that person it changes.

I’ve been in several relationships, major relationships, and been married and divorced twice and I’m searching for something special. Something I’ve been told has been called a soul mate. Do you believe in such a relationship or person and what would that mean? How would I know that?

Ram Dass: Got it! Keep looking! I’ll give you the farthest out answer first and then we’ll come back to something that everybody can handle. In the farthest out answer, we have all been around so many times that every one of us has been everything with everybody else. So when I look at you, you and I have been in so many relationships together. It’s just that we don’t remember.

You are in for a treat today. My friend, Dr. Gary Sayler, has written a game-changing book, Safe To Love Again How to Release the Pain of Past Relationships and Create the Love You Deserve. 

In this book he skillfully illuminates the origins of the blocks to love so many suffer with, whether its around finding love or keeping love. This magnificent work offers practical, healing solutions that will put you on the path to deep and lasting love.  Today. Dr. Sayler has written a special blog for us that shares a big piece of his wisdom:

“If it’s not one stunt, it’s another!” Amy exclaimed in a defeated tone. “Every time I turn around, I’m being ghosted or stood up. What’s up with these guys? Why do I have to meet someone new every two weeks? Since when did two months become a long term relationship?” Then Amy voiced the real heartbreak beneath the tears—“Maybe it’s just better not looking for love . . .” With a heavy sigh, she continued, “I’m just going through the motions when it comes to finding my dream man. I feel empty—like I’ve lost all of my passion. Living for my kids seems to be my only option when it comes to feeling loved.” So how do we find love when hope is gone?

Claiming your part helps you step out of tangles with others and yourself.

What's your own role?

The Practice:
See your part.

Why?

In situations or relationships with any kind of difficulty—tension, feeling hurt, conflicts, mismatches of wants . . . the usual crud—it's natural to focus on what others have done that's problematic.

This could be useful for a while: it can energize you, bring insight into what the real priorities are for you, and help you see more clearly what you'd like others to change.

But there is also a cost: Fixating on the harms (actual or imagined) done by others revs up your case about them (see JOT "Drop the Case")  with all the stresses and other problems that brings, plus it makes it harder to see the good qualities in those you have issues with, the influence of additional factors, and your own part in the matter.

For example, let's say you work with someone who is unfairly critical of you. Sure, there are the ways this person is out of line, self-righteous, whatever. Additionally, there are the ways that this person is also doing good things, plus the ways that other factors—such as a distracted boss who hasn't stepped in or coworkers who like to gossip—are helping or hurting. And there is your own role as well: what you're doing—in thought, word, and deed—that's beneficial or harmful.

I am a very “bottom-line” person. I speak my mind. I call it as I see it, without all that flowery talk. While this communication style may be very useful in the workplace, I discovered it’s not a quality most men find endearing or attractive.

One evening, when I was in my early thirties, I had been on a date with a man I found rather obnoxious, superficial and patronizing. Admittedly, it was a really bad date. Completely unintentionally, Dirk said something that changed my life:

Have you ever watched a mother hold her new child, or seen a doe gently nuzzle her fawn as it stood there balancing on uncertain legs? Did you ever stand outside in the still air washed clean by the passage of a spring storm, or feel yourself moved by the sight of tall trees swaying in a summer’s breeze? Maybe your imagination has been caught and held still as you stood looking out over a rugged seacoast, or you’ve found your attention willingly arrested by some late-afternoon light whose colors made heaven seem not so far away.

All moments like these share a quality of quietness that is timeless, even as they whisper these traits to us in the perfectly present Now. The silence of such stillness is golden because it is uncorrupted; its quiet presence within us enlarges us because through our communion with it we are entered into a relationship with the peace of a vital Now beyond the reach of time.

Goodbyes are never easy. Saying farewell to a loved one who’s dying can be one of the toughest things you’ll experience in this lifetime. No matter how ready you think you are, it’s never easy when the time actually comes. If you’re dealing with this at the moment, my heart goes out to you.

When my mom went into long-term palliative care, I received a small booklet by Hank Dunn called Hard Choices for Loving People. It prepared me to cope with one of the most emotional and arduous times in my life! I share the following excerpt in the hope that you’ll find some comfort in the words now or in the future:

There are two ways to hold on. We can grasp tightly as we would a coin in our fist. We fear we will lose it, so we hold it tight. Indeed, if we open our hand palm down the coin falls from our possession, and we feel cheated. The other way to hold on is by opening our hand palm up. The coin may sit there, or it could be blown away or shaken out of our possession. But while it is there, we are privileged to have it. We hold on with an open hand. Our hand is relaxed and we experience freedom.

All of our relationships, in particular with the one we love, exist for a dual purpose, along with their great promise. First, most of us understand that our partner in life is there to help us grow, and to awaken and stir in us, accordingly, an awareness of love's highest possibilities. But the other - and equally important half of this same purpose and promise - without which the first part can't succeed - is as follows: our partner in life is also there to help us see everything in us that now stands in the way of our coming to realize this same higher love.

Here are two transformational revelations of love.

Do you ever feel unlovable? Does it ever feel as though true love eludes you?

You see others who are happy but you can’t seem to find that same happiness for yourself.

If you ever feel unlovable or undeserving of love, you may have an unconscious program running that says you are not worthy of love.

This unconscious program affects your operating code which will inevitably attract situations that prove it.

We all live by codes

Without exception, everyone operates by one of these two basic codes.

“Do you REALLY love her?” I asked.

“Yes, but I am afraid, I just don’t know if I can commit to her”.

How many times have you heard this, or said this to yourself?

Many of my friends have recently expressed to me that they are afraid of committing to a relationship.

Ponder this:

The real commitment is to Love itself.

When you commit to love itself, it’s then that you are truly free. All forms will change. Your lover will change. They won’t be the same person that they were when you met them. You will change. You will grow, mature and evolve.  The relationship itself will also change.

We recently went to Las Vegas to see Lady Gaga perform her “Jazz” show.

It was a beautiful mix of classic American standards (many she had sung on an album with Tony Bennett) and a medley of her pop hits.

Whoever would blame another for feeling misunderstood, or who becomes bitter towards those thought to have let them down, has failed to realize the following self-liberating truth: the first root of sorrow in this life is not for what others have or have not done to us. Our suffering over the “shortcomings” of others is nothing less than the stuff of what we have not yet understood about ourselves.

Let’s apply this truth to two common types of “problem partners” and how to deal with them.

The Real Reason Resentment Grows Toward Our Partner

Perhaps you and your partner have always had a pretty strong relationship. But, of late, it takes less and less things that he or she does (or doesn't do) to bother you more and more! You may even be mature enough to know that you must have some hand in this growing sense of disappointment, but you just don't know where it is that you’re complicit.

My dear friend Marci Shimoff taught me the phrase Love Philanthropist, and every time I say it, it makes me smile.

Just as I’ve learned that tithing not only makes me feel good, and does good for others, it also brings me more abundance.

Being a Love Philanthropist brings more love.

All of our relationships, particularly with those we love, exist for a single beautiful purpose that expresses itself in two different ways. First, our partner – whether spouse, that “special” someone, or even a would-be companion – is in our life to help us grow; to provide just the conditions we need to become that better, truer person that they see in us, just waiting to be brought forth. But the other and equally important half of this same purpose and promise – without which the first part can’t be realized – is as follows: our partner is also there in our life to help us see everything in us that now stands in the way of our realizing this same higher possibility.

Here are three ways to use difficult situations with your partner to help you fulfill the true purpose of your relationships.

Everyone has their own unique soul’s journey.

You may not understand it, and you may not agree with it.

It’s O.K.

It’s their soul’s journey.

Perhaps, you love and care for your child, grandchild, spouse, friend so much that you don’t want them to suffer in any way. And so you end up doing way too much to help them.

Or feeling over responsible for them, where you have a tendency to take on and do for them what they should be doing for themselves. In doing so, you think that you are helping them, but you really are not.

Being renewed by love, and beginning your life all over again, are one and the same interior action. It starts with becoming aware of, and then bringing a conscious end to all lingering relationships you may have with old thoughts and feelings that want you to keep seeing your life through their eyes. Ending these connections with wrong parts of yourself is key to starting over in your relationships with those you love.

A student once wrote to me that she felt as if she was stuck in a kind of purgatory. She explained, “I’ve just entered into a relationship with a wonderful new man, and I want to embrace this opportunity – love him – as fully as I know I'm capable of doing. But, I'd have never met this man if it weren’t for a real jerk crushing my heart less than a few months ago. I can see I’m afraid to let go and trust my new partner, but I know that if I don't, then our love will have no way to grow.”

They say we teach what we most need to learn and lately that has been true for me. I have decided to tackle a new project…I am calling it my “creative challenge,” and it is SO BIG and so intimidating to me that I am not sharing it with anyone… just yet.
Every day, as I carve out time to work on this project, I am confronted by a ton of thoughts of why I can’t do it, why it’s impossible, etc., and then I spend a bunch of time diving into my spiritual tool kit to off load the negative thinking. 

Needless to say, the project is moving at a snail’s pace.

It’s so easy to let the negative monkey mind chatter take over and I’ve had enough of it so here is my new commitment.

Today I am reminding myself of three very important things I seem to have forgotten:

We are not meant to keep accounts with others, to fill ourselves with blame about where they failed to meet our demands. Nor are we created to carry around with us the cruel and careless remarks of others, and this includes our regrets for where we may have done the same. We can learn to exchange this nature of resentment, that lives to revisit disappointments, with a new and higher understanding that can no more feel punished by the sleeping actions of others than does a mountain feel pain in the midst of a thunder storm.

Here are three examples of how to make the exchange from resentment to higher understanding:

Does the idea of communicating with your loved one involve idle chit chat while gazing at the T.V. or glossing over your mobile device? Are you struggling with conflict and disagreements internally that show up as passive-aggressive behavior in yourself or others? What about with colleagues at work or even with whom you interact with on social media?

You’d think they are all different- that close relationship should count more, but why is that? Truly, anyone you communicate with deserves respect, kindness, and authentic dialog. No one needs to accept anything less.

Good communication is essential to having a loving, harmonious relationship. But, most of us were never really taught the art of relationship dialogue. Sure, we read magazine articles about finding the right moment to express our needs and how we need to learn how to compromise, etc. We try to keep trying to get them to hear our point of view and then get frustrated when our partner, colleague or friend doesn’t seem interested.

Letting go of a relationship can by scary and painful. Particularly if you still love the other person. It is easy to stay out of fear or familiarity, even when things are no longer working out. However, it often takes more love to let go than to stay in a stagnant relationship.

Listen to this insightful episode to learn why ending a relationship is not a failure, but a sign of growth.

Some things you will learn:

• Why we stay in relationships way longer than is healthy.
• The reason you should not get attached to the person you are in a relationship with.
• How you can still love your ex.
• How a relationship is a blessing, regardless of how it ends.

I hope you are feeling energized by the possibilities of 2019!  As you may or may not know, I am getting married in 2019! It seems hard to wrap my head around, but after 15 years of being single, I will be “walking down the aisle.”  Planning a wedding as a 58-year-old bride has been interesting, especially when I compare it to the experience I had as a 28-year-old one:

• Salespeople and vendors tend to do a double-take when they realize that it is me and not one of my 20-something year old daughters who is the bride. 

• Instead of feeling compelled to follow protocol or formalities, you quickly realize that you are in a situation where “no rules apply.”

And the biggest and most profound difference is that this time the most important aspect of the whole event is the walk down the aisle and the person and life I am walking toward. And here’s what I truly find so fascinating. Even though I thought I was I pretty aware person, this imagery of walking down the aisle has provided a huge breakthrough in terms of all aspects of my life and being truly cognizant and conscious about what and whom I am walking toward.