How We Avoid Conscious Relationships

We play hide and seek with our feelings
You must have honesty and openness in order to create a truly spiritual, conscious, sacred relationship. It is critical to communicate feelings as they occur or as soon as possible. When we don't communicate openly, we create a distance and strain in the relationship. By holding back, we remove the sacred feelings that we seek.
We sit in the victim corner
This plays out in many different fashions in our relationship: in our communication, in our criticisms, when we correct our partner, upsets about broken agreements. Instead of focusing on what our partner has "done to us," it is more empowering to focus on our own intentions for the relationship or situation. "I intend for us to leave on time." "I intend for our house to remain clean." "I intend for the bills to be paid on time."
We deny the solo time
Human beings ironically have opposing needs for both intimacy and separateness, needs that often may create a lot of frustration and confusion in relationships. We can, however, embrace the natural rhythm to this cycle in our relationships and schedule time when we will be alone or away from our partner. This will give us time to be creative, to meditate, to collect our thoughts, to get in touch with our feelings, to enjoy our favorite hobby, and to even sometimes just to do nothing at all!!!
We fight to be right
The short-term satisfaction of being right will surely come up short of the long-term satisfaction of a harmonious relationship. Whenever we feel the need to prove ourselves it is based on an attempt to avoid some fear (losing control, being alone, being left, being engulfed, etc). We also stop being present in the relationship when we fight to be right, severing our sacred connection to each other.
We become control monsters
This is so common! One person is messy; the other is a neat freak. In a connected, spiritual, and sacred relationship, the person who wants to control the other person just lets the whole issue go and focuses on having a good time together. Once this takes place, magic occurs! The messy person becomes cleaner and the cleaner person becomes less focused on needing everything to be so well kept! Harmony and connection once again exists!!! Of course this takes some practice, and it's important to remember that whenever we have a need to control or criticize another, there is always some truth that we are avoiding. Look for that truth. Allow the conflict to be your lesson.
We fly autopilot
Often we subconsciously recreate the patterns that we learned as children. Maybe we saw our fathers get really angry with our mother and we learned how to avoid anger by keeping quiet and not communicating our feelings. Maybe we learned to shut down completely to avoid feeling hurt. Perhaps we learned to just walk away and avoid a situation completely if it feels unpleasant. We often don't even realize that we are doing this. Completely on autopilot, we wake up one day next to a partner who acts just like our mother, or just like our father. Wouldn't you rather consciously choose your partner and the relationship that you create?
We cut feeling cycles short
We can help each other discover subconscious patterns if we are genuinely committed to helping each other vs. being right in the situation. Instead of telling our partner how stupid or irrational their feelings seem to us, thereby breaking their feeling cycle, we can encourage our partner to actually work through the feelings that are going on for them. By doing this, it is possible to help our partner break a pattern that they have lived with their entire life!!!
We don't keep our agreements
We have to be very careful with this one. Sometimes amazingly enough we aren't even aware that our partner believes we have made an agreement! Making sure we are in integrity with our partner requires very clear communication. When we do break an agreement, it is always important to acknowledge that the agreement has been broken. So many times we've been programmed to just say sorry and expect it all to be forgotten. What we really need to do is to encourage our partner to air their grievances about the incident in order to release any remaining negative energy and to once again regain the sacred connection.
We tip our relationship seesaw
We need absolute equality in a sacred relationship. On the soul level, we are all equal to each other. Connected equally to one reality in the universe and part of the one omnipresent intelligence. Ideally in our magical meta relationship, we will share as much as possible on equal terms. Housework. Money. Taking care of the kids. But even if the partnership does not split every item equally, both partners in a sacred relationship share an inner intention toward equality.
We forget to water our relationship rose
Without water, our relationship rose will soon die. We need to remember to schedule time to play with our partner. Do those things we both enjoy doing together. It's so easy to let our jobs and other aspects of our lives take over and forget that we say "to be" in a relationship - not "to do" a relationship.

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Counterpoint - The Personal Development Article Library

How We Avoid Conscious Relationships

By Hether Ayres