I remember a mentor saying Happily Ever After is a fantasy. While I understand what she was saying about the fantasy of meeting your Prince Charming and riding into the sunset being happy forever not being realistic, I do believe you can have Your Happily Ever After.
The two of you create your Happily Ever After by how you treat each other.
We come together in relationships to grow ourselves. So many people don’t realize that and think something’s wrong when there are problems. We have two different sets of life experiences and how we think life should be, therefore affecting the way we think the relationship should look, how our love should behave.
When our partner doesn’t behave in a way that we believe is right, we can become hurt or judgmental about the behavior. It’s easy for us to blame our partner when we think they shouldn’t be doing that thing that isn’t the right way in our minds. Who are we to think our way is the best way anyway? What if there’s an even better way than the picture we have in our mind?
Here are some examples of things that come up to trigger us that I see all the time with the men and women I’ve worked with.
Examples
*Not texting or calling when at work or everyday
*Doing something without their partner like having drinks after work with coworkers
*Being on social media when sitting on the couch together
*Leaving dirty dishes in the sink
*Having friends of the opposite sex
*Needing time to chillax
*Coming home later than expected
*Getting upset when our partner is later than expected
*Our partner needs something different than before
When our partner doesn’t do the thing that we think they should have done, we become triggered and may lash out at our partner in haste, rather than taking a time out and asking ourselves where this upset is coming from. During that time out, we could also release the emotion first, then come to our partner in a calmer state. A simple technique I learned years ago is called Shamanic Breath. You breathe in through your nose and imagine all of the emotion gathering in your fists. On the out breath you explode the breath out through your mouth as if your making an explosion with your lips. As you’re exhaling release the energy in the fists by thrusting your arms down and opening the fists. You could also listen to a song where the emotion you’re feeling is expressed. If we don’t deal with the emotion first, our partner could become defensive when we unleash our big emotions on them that we haven’t allowed ourselves to sit with.
What if we could ask ourselves if we have placed an expectation on our partner based on how we think it should be from in our mind? Where do these come from anyway? I had a belief of how things should look based on a belief from a parent. I didn’t even like the belief. Why was I putting it on my partner? What if what our love did wasn’t meant to hurt us, but to give them something they needed so they could be better for us? What if our wounding, such as a deep feeling of abandonment, caused us to be triggered by their behavior in the first place? I absolutely love what my friend said about this, “If he touches my wounds it doesn’t mean he put them there. He brings up so many. So easily!” What if we could separate the wound from the behavior that triggered it and leave judgment about our partner for doing what they did?
A good way to heal a deep wound is to go into our ancestry and heal the root of it. It may not all be yours. You may have inherited it as a generational wound. You can even ask your angels and guides to release any old inherited DNA and emotional energy around it. Place your hands face up and you just might feel the energy releasing like so many of my clients have reported.
Upsets happen in relationships as people have different needs that change over time and a partner who is truly our partner will accept us with our flaws, blaming moments and all. That is, assuming, we took responsibility for our own wound or beliefs that caused the trigger in the first place and made amends for lashing out. Nobody deserves that and cleaning it up is highly restorative for both parties. Not blaming our partner is a good thing to strive for.
What if we could accept our partner even when their needs change?
What if we could accept ourselves with all of our flaws? Even when we behaved in a way that we aren’t proud of? Nobody’s perfect. Why should we hold ourselves to a standard of perfection?
We make mistakes and clean them up, apologizing where we’ve been wrong or hurt someone.
We get to decide how our happily ever after is going to be in all of our relationships, whether it be during the good times, the bad times or the ugly times.
Love,
Corinn