Relationships
If the problem were the other person, changing person would fix it.
There is something uncomfortable about relationships: they repeat. The face changes, the city changes, the decade changes, and the argument is strangely the same. That is not bad luck, it is information.
A relationship is where personality stops being theory. It is where you discover that giving too much and receiving too little can be the same strategy; that silence can be a form of attack; and that what we ask of the other is often what we refuse to give ourselves.
Working on relationships here is not learning communication techniques. It is noticing who is speaking when we speak, the person, the pattern, or the fear.
- Name what repeats
The same argument, with different people, in different years.
- See the other's pattern without using it against them
Understanding is not excusing, and it is not winning the argument faster.
- Tell a request from a demand
Almost all conflict lives on that border.
- Practise the forgiveness that actually works
Not the kind that pretends it didn't hurt. The kind that no longer needs it to hurt again.
And when understanding the pattern isn't enough?
There are relationships in which we understand perfectly well what keeps repeating and, even so, we keep ending up in the same place.
If you feel this is happening in an important relationship in your life, we can look together at what is repeating and work out what the next step might be.
Miracles (almost) Every Day
Book
Forgiveness
Subject
Practical spirituality
Subject