If you have the fortitude to stick it out, your true love awaits…
Act I: Twitterpated
You see each other for the first time, and it’s instant chemistry.
Giggling together, you feel butterflies in your tummy when you think of each other, and count the hours when you’re apart. You thrill to touch each other and can hardly keep your hands to yourself!
Beyond the physical attraction, you don’t know it yet, but you two are a match on multiple levels. All you do know right now is that you’re delighted to be around them, and you don’t ever want it to end.
(Curiously, this is where most love stories do end, when it’s only the beginning…)
Act II: Triggered
But then some not-so-good feelings start to creep in.
Your insecurities begin rearing their frightened heads, and you feel hurt by the things that your new mate says or does – or doesn’t say or do.
Fights erupt. One may yell, the other may shut down and withdraw. Perhaps you both yell, or both withdraw.
Your respective insecurities begin to clash and claw at each other for validity and safety. You begin to doubt whether this was such a good match after all.
Although painful, what’s fascinating here, is that this is precisely why you were drawn together!
You were attracted to each other for the very reason that you are hurting each other: you are each fulfilling the childhood traumas of the other.
On a more cosmic level, you were also brought together to provide the opportunity for both of you to overcome those childhood traumas.
You are two perfectly imperfect humans, perfectly matched to imperfectly heal each other.
Act III: Tempered
On the other side of all this hurt, should you both persevere, you finally come to a place of stillness and peace.
You have bled your souls (or rather your egos) on the battlefield of your relationship, and are left with only the purest cores of your beings.
In this state, there is nothing but true love.
If you can both find the will to practice the love you desire on yourselves as well as each other, you will pass through the minefield of trauma activation, and move into the realm of true love.
This actually comes about quite often by the exhausted surrender of one or both partners – where you’re so ready to give up the fight, that you end up baring your vulnerable side and stumbling upon the door to real intimacy.
At this stage, you are now connecting authentically, and you are finally able to communicate from a place of sincerity, where you can express your needs, without demanding that they be met.
In this final act of the story, you have transcended the unconscious programming of your upbringing, and are now interacting from a more conscious awareness.
You hold space for your experiences and for you partner’s. Perspectives are shared with love and acceptance.
You exist in a fairly regular state of bliss, knowing that your partner will support you, and that when they can’t, you have the security within you to support yourself.
There is trust in the interdependence of your relationship, and it allows both of you greater independence in your respective endeavors.
This is a love that expands each of you, and empowers you to create more expansion in the world.
(Updated March 19, 2021)