Once Upon a Time, There Were Ten Relationship Myths
As he drew near the place, he heard a voice that sounded
familiar. He went towards it; Rapunzel saw him,
knew him, and running to him, threw her arms around his neck and wept.
Two of her tears fell on his eyes, and his sight immediately became
clear, and he saw as well as ever. He led her away to
his kingdom, where they were received with great rejoicing,
and lived long in happiness and content.
—From Ella Boldey’s translation of “Rapunzel, or the Maid with
the Golden Hair,” a story in Grimm’s Household Fairy Tales
Every soul sings the song of love. You were created for this feeling, which neither begins nor ends but simply is. Love shows no partiality and is its own reward. It can’t be possessed, nor does it possess. It withholds nothing, and with it, there’s no limit. Anything other than this is illusion. To understand true love is to embrace all.
In some fairy tales, though, this delight becomes a beast. From the time we’re children, these stories and other misleading fantasies teach us what true love is “supposed” to be. Who hasn’t heard about “happily ever after”? Who doesn’t think it’s immature and simplistic? But who hasn’t come under its spell and believed, even just a little, that the familiar phrase signifies some truth about how caring for someone “ought” to be?
If you’re like most people, you probably buy into at least one of the common cultural myths—our modern-day fairy tales—that can mislead you in your most important relationships. If you continue to believe in any of these untruths, they’ll interfere with your life like some nasty old witch with a magic mirror and a poisoned apple. They’ll shape your expectations and make you feel as if everyone else gets the fairy tale but you. You’ll be living in a monstrous falsehood, “suffering” from it, and feeling and acting as if all of this were true when it doesn’t have to be that way for you.
President John F. Kennedy once pointed out, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” He went on to say that the way out of the woods is to stop enjoying “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Are you willing to shine light into the dark corners of your mind and confront myths head-on? If so, you’ll get to step out of unfulfilling fantasy and into something far more inspiring: true life, true relationships… and true love.
Perhaps you don’t think that you’re caught up in any false ideas. Please take a moment to consider whether you agree with any of the following statements:
1. A (new) relationship will make me happy.
2. When I find my soul mate, I’ll feel complete.
3. The right relationship will last forever.
4. Once we get past these rough waters, it will be smooth sailing.
5. A good relationship requires sacrifice.
6. Great sex happens only at the beginning of a relationship.
7. In the right relationship, I won’t have to work at it.
8. If I’m not involved with someone, I’ll be lonely.
9. Children complete a marriage.
10. Opposites attract.
Believe it or not, every one of these statements contains a fantasy, a falsehood. In this book, I’ll help you see how buying into these childish ideas stunts your personal growth and keeps you from fully experiencing the riches every relationship has to offer. Let’s start by taking each of them apart and finding out the truth.
Myth #1: A (New) Relationship Will Make Me Happy
If you’ve ever been in business or in love with someone beyond that initial period of infatuation, you already know that relationships don’t make you happy. Instead, sometimes you perceive yourself to be feeling better, and sometimes you don’t—the same as when you’re on your own.
Have you ever thought that something would make you happy (a new job or house, for example), and then when you experienced it, you discovered another set of crazies, a fresh set of challenges? You finally received something you wanted, and then you found all-new aggravations and problems. What’s more, your fantasy may have set you up for a fall, such as when you romanticize an event to such a degree that the actual day-to-day activities following it can’t possibly measure up. No matter what this “thing” was that you thought you’d love to experience, you probably had other moments that you perceived as being pleasant, too…and moments of sadness, followed by gladness again.
I’m fond of saying that the “prepartum reds” become those postpartum blues, that the fantasy of parenting contributes to the depression that sets in when you realize that a baby isn’t only a bundle of joy but also brings its share of sorrow. Of course, this phenomenon presents itself in more areas than just childbirth. How many newlyweds have been so wrapped up in the wedding plans that the actual marriage seems like a letdown? How many people finish their schooling, get the promotion, buy that car, or what have you and are surprised that it doesn’t permanently assure their happiness?
Regardless of the circumstances, everyone oscillates between feeling up and down throughout their entire lives, and you’ll experience both sensations in every relationship, no matter how ideally it begins. You’ll have periods of comfort and discomfort. At times, you’ll be treated with what you perceive to be kindness, and you’ll also receive what at the time appears to be cruelty, no matter how “wonderful” or “beautiful” your mate may seem to be.
Happiness isn’t the reason for being with someone, anyway. The purpose of relationships is to help awaken you to the inherent balance existing within and around you, and to assist you in acknowledging your own magnificence and wholeness. In fact, after the initial crush wears off, your disillusionment (the realization that Oh, boy—this one isn’t going to make me happy either) serves as a reminder of this basic truth.
During the infatuation phase, you see mostly one side of the coin—the attraction, positive traits, and potential for happily ever after—but that’s delusional. This phenomenon of selective perception of positives is so common that psychologists have a name for it: the “pink-lens effect.” Ever hear of rose-colored glasses? Likewise, as a relationship matures, you can choose to see the negatives for the most part, but that’s equally delusional. (A blue lens, perhaps?)
Both of these phases reflect imbalanced perspectives, and neither can be called true love. To experience the heart of love, you’re wise to moderate the two extremes of infatuation (which breeds fear of loss and desperation) and resentment (which breeds distrust and disparagement). You learn to neither cling to someone else nor long for something that you perceive you don’t have; you feel grateful for what and who are in your life right now. You love what is.
This doesn’t erase the ups and downs, the ticktock of emotions. Instead, it dampens or narrows the oscillation. In your life, and because of yourself and no one else, you’ll still be happy and sad, accepting and rejecting, nice and mean, generous and greedy, polite and rude, and so on. You’ll be and feel all of this, because that’s just how humans are: We require both complementary sides of life to thrive.
Actual experience is far more inspiring than illusion and fantasy. How wonderful that you don’t just order up your emotional life and have it delivered to you like some relationship pizza. How magnificent that you, all by yourself, get to explore the incredible array of passions unique to humanity—and that connecting with others helps you expand into an everincreasing capacity to feel, think, and experience. How amazing it is that other people don’t give you your experience of life, but can help you become more deeply aware of it!
When you approach relationships with all this in mind, your appreciation will be radically increased. Instead of getting disappointed because you’re not happy all the time, you can start to identify all the facets of your life and grow from that experience, whether you’ll be sharing your days with someone else or not; and if so, whether it’s for a long time or just a little while.
Myth #2: When I Find My Soul Mate, I’ll Feel Complete
As you’ll explore in much more detail later in this book, there’s no such thing as one forever, fantasy-fulfilling person who’ll give you everything that you think you need. Rather than encourage you to look for a certain someone to fill whatever voids you perceive in your life, I’ll help you learn to find resources inside yourself and to see them in many people around you.
Carrying on as if your one and only soul mate will complete you leads to so-called heartbreak, although it’s not really your heart that gets broken. Rather, it’s the false ideas that you project onto your “loved” ones. You experience a “broken heart” only when you’ve been infatuated and now perceive loss of some kind. And when the fantasy falls apart, you’ll tend to resent someone else for not making it come true. Yet you set yourself up for that disappointment right from the start by denying the negatives, exaggerating the positives, and placing the other person on a pedestal. When that special someone behaves as any other normal human being would—by displaying both apparently positive and negative traits—he or she gets yanked down off the pedestal and thrown into the pit.
This is when people say things such as:
“I thought he was the one, but then he…”
“I thought she was different from all the others, but then she…”
You can fill in the rest.
Thinking that someone will know and love you so well that any negative traits will disappear sets you up for a fall. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a soul mate, just that we’re wise to redefine the term.
A soul mate is actually your full complement. This may be unified and expressed at any moment in one individual or be diversified into many people. This being participates in your expressing your wholeness. Here’s another way to put it: The soul mate helps you awaken to and love all components of yourself. This assists you in discovering and appreciating any of your disowned parts. But don’t fall down the rabbit hole and start thinking that someone else “fills in” your “missing” parts. There’s nothing lacking in you!
Your soul mate can be someone (or “some many”) with whom you merge and from whom you emerge as an individual. When you truly find this, you discern that the other person is (or other people are) no more the source of fulfillment than one star is the source of light for another. Yet two or more stars together shine beautifully full of light.
We’ll be exploring the topic of soul mates in more depth later on, and I promise you some mind-blowing perspectives. For now, let me leave you with this: Your soul mate is around you 24 hours a day. At the end of this book, you’ll understand completely that instead of endlessly searching, you can discover that being (or those beings). You’ll also discover how you’re constantly manifesting your soul mate according to the values you hold throughout your life.
Myth #3: The Right Relationship Will Last Forever
What if I told you that for every relationship coming together, there’s one falling apart? This is certainly supported by the often-quoted statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce. And in countries where religious reasons prevent formal dissolution, there are affairs and forms of polygamy, which are really divorce processes without legal papers.
Having this fantasy that you’re supposed to stay together forever can be disheartening when you know there’s only a 50-50 probability of doing so. (Of course, when you add in the fact that in most relationships one partner dies before the other, the likelihood of spending your entire life with someone approaches zero percent.)
The right relationship lasts as long as both people in it would love it to last. If you’d love the kind of bond that stretches “as long as we both shall live,” you’ll be gaining some skills and methods for achieving that in this book. But keep in mind that there are no guarantees, and no matter what you do, it will most certainly not bring you a life of pure perceived happiness. No, you’ll grow old together for better and worse, in sickness and health, and feeling richer and poorer. You’ll experience the full array of complementary opposites.
The key is not letting your commitment to weathering any storms cloud your perceptions about what’s currently happening. Two predictable problems stem directly from buying into the myth of forever:
1. Taking someone for granted because you think this person has to stay with you no matter what
2. Feeling devastated and depressed if a breakup occurs and the fantasy self-destructs (“But I thought we’d always be together”)
The idea that a relationship “ending” is the equivalent of failing is a childish notion. If you can embrace the idea that the purpose of being with someone is to bring you to a greater understanding and appreciation of yourself, you begin to realize that “forever” is a ridiculous standard—unless you’re talking about the human heart and soul, which do remain connected no matter what. It’s the understatement of this century to say that things in physical form change, but it’s nowhere more evident than in relationships. Death, estrangement, divorce, and even amicable distancing—these are all common so-called endings to a relationship.
It’s worth pointing out, though, that these apparent endings are mere illusions to the human heart and soul. Quantum physics shows that two particles once connected remain so, as entangled partners, even when they’re removed from one another. John Stewart Bell, an Irish physicist, identified this phenomenon in the 1960s and called it nonlocality. In other words, the connection has to do with something that’s “not here.” So from a scientific perspective, there’s no such thing as an end to a relationship of the human heart, which is a form of energy (which is particles and waves). This could be likened to what Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”
On a more mundane scale, realize that staying together can be compared to what happens in the marketplace. As long as both people in a relationship believe that their partner provides a greater value (more affection, freedom, support, or passion—whatever’s important to them) than someone else might, they’ll remain coupled. Just as the shopper who loves the bargains at Kmart gets lured into Wal-Mart one day for a better deal, or, for that matter, the wine connoisseur who buys a different label instead of the old favorite when another vintner has a stellar year, anyone can be enticed away by the promise of something perceived as “better.” Set aside the commercial flavor of this and focus on what I’m telling you: People stay as long as they don’t imagine that someone else has something greater to offer. Therefore, they’re in their relationships or marriages by default. (I’ll explain more about this in the upcoming chapters on values.)
The solution? Instead of daydreaming about eternity, focus on what you can do today to be caring, honor your own and your partner’s values, and bring greater perceived fulfillment to both of you.
A couple of years ago while I was in Sydney, Australia, my late wife was sailing in the Mediterranean on one of our homes called The World, a luxurious floating city at sea that continually circumnavigates the globe. Upon anchoring just offshore from Portofino, Italy, she took a boat into the port, disembarked, and walked along the water’s edge into one of the many designer-shoe boutiques. Moments later, the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on entered the store and purchased three expensive pairs of designer shoes. (This, as you can imagine, is generally high on many women’s lists of values. Although men may have descended from apes, women most certainly must have come from centipedes—for how else can you explain why they purchase 50 times more pairs of shoes than they have feet?) This handsome fellow approached my wife and said, “My God, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Please tell me you’re not married.”
She, being momentarily stunned by his alluring appearance, said cautiously, “Actually, yes, I am married.” He introduced himself and stated that he was originally from Milan and had just arrived in Portofino on a ship owned by a prince of Arabia. He asked if he could please invite her to lunch or dinner, either on the ship or in the port. She said that she couldn’t join him, but was certainly grateful for the compliment and was flattered by his invitation.
She rushed back to The World and immediately e-mailed me about the meeting. She said that she was truly touched that such a handsome young man in his mid to late 30s found her so attractive. I responded in agreement: that she was truly beautiful and that I could easily see why he was so spellbound. I told her that she deserved such acknowledgment and that if she’d love to enjoy his company, then by all means please feel free to do so. I wrote to her that anything could happen to me as I travel, and that it might be wise to accept such an invitation so that she could rule him in or out, especially since it was a unique and serendipitous meeting.
I felt at the time that she’d make a wise assessment of his overall value, power, and presence. I was aware that each person does a conscious or unconscious evaluation of all relationship prospects relative to the seven areas and powers of life, which you’ll learn more about in later chapters. I knew that she’d easily discern his spiritual, mental, vocational, financial, familial, social, and physical powers and standards.
I also knew that if she let the meeting remain as just an alluring fantasy, I’d then be compared to what she imagined him to be like, and I wouldn’t fare as well in contrast, particularly since I was more mature in age. If she made a more complete evaluation of him, however, she’d be free to either fulfill her ever-growing aspirations with him or rule him out completely as someone not as fabulous as she might have initially imagined—and I would be appreciated even more in comparison. I felt that I couldn’t lose by encouraging her to make such an investigation.
Since she met me in Venice just days later for a romantic rendezvous, I fared well in the competitive market—I might even say with more than normal affection. Only if I were certain in my own power could I encourage such freedom for my lovely wife, thereby honoring her values and providing her an essential power to make decisions. For this she respected me even more and appreciated that she had someone who knew that nothing’s missing and that love can never be destroyed, only changed in form.
Myth #4: Once We Get Past These Rough Waters, It Will Be Smooth Sailing
Relationships aren’t static, so no one fix eliminates all your supposed troubles. As I’ve already said, it’s human nature to have ups and downs, happiness and sadness, support and challenge, attraction and repulsion, and so on.
Even if you’ve already embraced this idea, it’s still tempting to think that if life gets easier, things with other people will be “better.” Not so! Maximum evolvement occurs at the border of chaos and order. Therefore, if you ever get everything just so, you end up attracting or creating new confusion just to keep you on the edge, to make things challenging, and to guarantee continued development. Whether you know it consciously or not, you have an undeniable impulse to grow, so you automatically put things in place to ensure that it happens, such as getting involved with someone who will push you in that direction. Remember, the purpose of relationships is to balance your perceptions and to help you perceive, own, and appreciate your own wholeness. This purpose requires periods of difficulty just as much as times of ease. Life involves a balance of each, of liberty and constraint.
Myth #5: A Good Relationship Requires Sacrifice
Simply put, sacrifice breeds resentment. Although some religions glorify acts of selflessness, there’s actually no such thing. Ultimately, attempts to annihilate any motive to do well by yourself are futile. This means that any time you do something you don’t want to do and don’t see any benefit for yourself in doing, you’ll resent it, either immediately and consciously or on subconscious levels that will bubble up later, without fail. It looks like this:
• You give something you didn’t really want to give.
• You don’t get the acknowledgment, reward, or reciprocation that you think you deserve.
• You become disappointed and resentful.
• Then you feel guilty for not being unselfishly generous.
• And finally, you feel the need to sacrifice again.
It can become a self-defeating cycle. I don’t care if you’re a parent giving to a child, a worker to a company, or a romantic to a lover, this behavior eventually leads to resentment. There’s always a hidden agenda of What’s in it for me? It’s often suppressed, and this is why sacrifice is ultimately unwise and incomplete.
Does this mean that there’s no such thing as altruism, philanthropy, or generosity? No, it just means that anytime these exist, so do egocentricity, misanthropy, and greed. There’s always a balancing force, even if it’s sometimes hidden or unconscious. Acknowledging this fact helps you see why it’s so important to link what you love with whatever you do, or to simply say no.
The corollary to the myth of necessary sacrifice is the idea that you have to consciously and continually balance give-and-take. The challenge of living with this approach, though, is that your idea of equilibrium is often defined according to your potentially one-sided perceptions and doesn’t always recognize a true “fair exchange,” since it doesn’t always consider all parties’ needs or values equally. If you try to make sure that things are always even with your partner or friends, you might wind up keeping an unfair score. As you run such a mental tally, you can start to experience varying degrees of selfishness and stinginess when you feel you’ve given too much, and grades of guilt and unworthiness when you feel you’ve taken too much. When you live according to this myth, such a road can, again, lead to resentment.
If instead you can learn to see that there’s already a perfectly balanced give-and-take in any relationship—that it’s just a matter of discerning the forms of exchange that are unique to you and your loved ones—then you can change your perspective entirely. You can begin to see that keeping mental tallies isn’t what’s important. Instead, it’s the ability to articulate and translate what you’d love to receive and bestow in terms of what your partner wants: That’s true fair exchange.
What if you could experience what you’d love to have by helping someone else get what they desire? Conversely, what if you could help someone else see how they receive according to their values by giving in alignment with yours? You could eliminate sacrifice altogether and empower one another to grant each other’s heartfelt requests. There’s an art and science to asking in a way that inspires an unreserved yes, as well as knowing how to hear requests so that you see how to say yes without hesitation. It also helps you get clear on when no is the right answer for you so that you can decline without a hidden agenda or brewing resentment—and you can then hear others say no with the same equanimity. Again, you’ll learn more about how to do this in upcoming chapters.
Myth #6: Great Sex Happens Only at the
Beginning of a Relationship
There’s no denying that sex for the first time (or first several times) can feel hot, electric, ecstatic, and mindnumbingly, flesh-tinglingly new. I sometimes call it the “mounting reflex,” which is in response to the yearning and passion of the sex organs, also known as lust.
There’s also heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye, light-to-light cocoon love. It’s intimate. You get lost in someone else’s being; and you stop feeling the separation between your bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. This is no reflex. It’s the personal, heart-to-heart aflex, a word I made up to describe the free choice to love in the present, in contrast to an automatic response. Let’s call this true and intimate lovemaking.
Which one is better: lust or lovemaking, reflex or aflex? Which one would you want to experience for the rest of your days? The good news is that you don’t have to choose. These two types of sex can occur at different levels all through your life, even in relationships that last beyond the initial infatuation stage. Both lust and lovemaking can continue to grow and evolve, as long as you understand and disable the mechanisms that might shut them down.
These disruptive phenomena amount to letting your fantasies and unrealistic expectations (not necessarily your sexual desires, but the myths I’m describing in this chapter) dictate the relationship. Nothing flips the “off” switch faster than putting up emotional barriers as a result of someone not living up to your unwisely projected expectations. If you don’t know how to dissolve those walls, your sexual interest and intensity will predictably dwindle.
By the same token, I’ve seen the gift of sex resurge, as with one couple I knew who’d been married for 30 years. They dissolved the emotional charges between them and initiated an entirely fresh, grateful, and intimate bond with incredibly satisfying sex. (Later in this book, you’ll learn and practice the method that they used to do this.) Soon, you’ll discover how both partners can continue to grow sexually for the entire life of the relationship.
Myth #7: In the Right Relationship,
I Won’t Have to Work at It
This one’s almost a no-brainer, although many people hang on to the idea that being with someone should happen “naturally.” As you probably already know, at least on an intellectual level, a fulfilling relationship requires concentration, organization, effort, and skill. There’s serious work in keeping and developing any connection with others, whether it’s personal or professional. Think of work only as the movement of some force over some distance, as action and energy. Using this definition, it becomes obvious: Any relationship requires work if it is to live.
Anytime you don’t put action and energy into your relationships, they automatically undergo entropy and decay. Staying close to someone is an uphill process because both people are changing and evolving. If you don’t keep up with the other person’s value system and your own, and maintain the skills of communicating your preferences in terms of theirs (skills you’ll learn in an upcoming chapter), someone else could come along and distract one of you, perhaps permanently.
Myth #8: If I’m Not Involved
with Someone, I’ll Be Lonely
Have you ever been physically close to someone, even in bed, and felt a huge distance between you? Have you ever been thousands of miles from another person yet felt as if they were right next to you? If so, then you already know that loneliness has little to do with being alone.
Feeling lonesome is more a function of how you perceive yourself relative to your environment. The myth that this problem will be solved by someone else’s presence goes back to one we covered earlier, the idea that someone else can “complete” you. Both of these myths come from a common phenomenon that all of us have in varying degrees: not recognizing all parts of ourselves. For some reason, everyone thinks that other people possess qualities they themselves don’t—the grass is always greener, so to speak.
In a dependent relationship, you assume that the other person has something you don’t. Yet you do have their traits, although possibly in a different form because you have a different hierarchy of values. Honor your own way of being! The next time you meet someone who seems to have something you lack, you’d be wise to look deeper and see where you actually do have it. Keep asking yourself where you possess this attribute until you can see that you own it in equal measure—yes, to the same degree. It completely changes the dynamic of the relationship and erases dependency. Over the last 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to watch tens of thousands of people from all over the world make this amazing discovery. It’s incredibly powerful and life changing. We’re truly mirrors of each other.
When you see that trait in yourself, you suddenly realize that you can share your talents, mutually empowering one another. For example, if your career was to suddenly derail while your spouse was excelling professionally, you might minimize yourself in the relationship if you thought that your partner had something you didn’t. You might become addicted to this person and frightened of being left. Yet if you can see where your power is and the form it takes, you can choose to share your strength and enjoy the other person’s energy, too. In the coming pages, I’ll show you how to awaken conscious awareness of all that you are and all that you have to share.
People often use the illusion of loneliness to stay in an unfulfilling situation, or to jump from one commitment to the next without discrimination. For those who are seemingly alone and buying into this myth, watch out for the number one relationship repellent that this false belief creates: desperation. Remember, nothing’s missing. You can become aware that you have everything you think a relationship delivers without the other person “giving” it to you. You’ll see how as you continue reading.
Myth #9: Children Complete a Marriage
Child rearing has two sides, just like everything else. As a parent, you have one part of you that consciously or unconsciously feels elated and excited, and another part that wonders what on earth you’ve gotten yourself into. Having a baby is happy and sad right from the beginning.
Clearly, children don’t complete a couple any more than romantic partners complete one another. In truth, the most common effect of having kids is for the parents to live vicariously through their offspring, getting to reexperience old pleasure and pain in familiar or novel ways.
At the same time, children tend to express the parents’ repressed or disowned parts. For example, if a mother and father are unable to embrace their own sexuality, a child may become promiscuous, horrifying them and forcing them to confront aspects of sexual expression that they’ve avoided. Or, as another example, if the parents always hold in feelings of anger, the child may rage, giving voice to unspoken fury. I’ve heard it described as the plunger effect: Whatever emotion one person pushes down comes pouring out of someone else who doesn’t have the controls screwed on so tight.
Children become a mirror that parents can look into and learn to appreciate. The members of this relationship temper one another and teach each other about the yin and yang of existence. By learning from their kids’ behavior, moms and dads can also impart some wisdom about human nature, accelerating the personal evolution of the child.
Studies show that the more educated the culture, the slower its population grows. There are religious exceptions, but in general, this is true. The more socioeconomically depressed a society is, the higher its reproduction rate. As people gain more knowledge, they become more integrated and recognize that they have all parts—they don’t need offspring to deliver what’s supposedly missing. What’s more, they understand a concept I call childrenomics: They realize that wealth depends on having fewer children. The educated also tend to live at a higher level on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which means that they’ll be more interested in such values as personal empowerment (self-actualization) than in the physical perpetuation of the species (survival).
Children foster a feeling of completeness, in that they can feel like an extension of yourself. Are they necessary for that? No. Are they a manifestation of that? Yes. Are there certain things that children can bring to you in awareness and education? Yes and no. Please understand this: No one’s missing a mother, father, sister, brother, son, or daughter. Nobody! You’ll appreciate and integrate that as we continue. The truth is that everybody has everybody.
Myth #10: Opposites Attract
At this point in your reading, you may be starting to see that you have no real opposite. You may have disowned parts of yourself, which you’ll decide to date, marry, or even parent. But make no mistake: All parts are there inside you, whether you acknowledge them or not.
It may seem as if opposites attract merely because you don’t see yourself in someone else right away. You get infatuated with parts of them that you think are special and theirs alone, and you can’t see that you have them, too. When you do this, you unconsciously filter out anything that goes against your values and exaggerate whatever you consider more supportive or positive.
Later, when friction starts to develop because of perceived differences, you again deny that what bugs you, turns you off, and drives you crazy also resides in you in equal measure but in a different form. The other person appears not to support your values, so now that’s making you nuts. When your partner begins challenging you, you may think, I don’t want to be in this relationship! That’s because your unawakened self, that part of you living in the fantasy of having pleasure without pain, positive without negative, is attracted to whatever you think is similar to you or what you believe supports your highest values.
Psychologist Carl Jung observed, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” When someone starts to get on your nerves, that’s your opportunity, again, to look inside and find that very same trait in yourself—and discover that you have it in equal measure. This could be described as claiming your disowned parts, and it’s when you experience a personal growth spurt in your relationship. Indeed, the universe is designed to assure your growth, so you attract and are drawn to people who appear to be your opposite, and as a result, you get a balance of like and dislike, support and challenge.
Just to drive this point home, let’s imagine that you meet someone and go out on a date. You project onto him or her an ideal of more positives than negatives, imagining that this person supports you more than challenges you. You like this person and you’re infatuated. You start seeing all the things in him or her that are similar to you: “Oh, you have two eyes! So do I! How many ribs do you have? The same number as I do! We must be soul mates! Look … you have skin! And two nostrils!” All right, I’m being facetious, but you definitely identify the similarities and exaggerate them and their importance. Infatuation, according to the Greeks, was an exaggeration of similarities. Resentment is an exaggeration of differences. Love is equally embracing both.
Once you’ve lived through the infatuation stage, and the other person doesn’t live up to the fantasy, you resent him or her. Guess what you say: “We don’t have a thing in common. We don’t see eye to eye anymore. We have two different lives, and we don’t get along. We just don’t have the same goals.”
When you first engage in a relationship with someone, you tend to put that individual on a pedestal and minimize yourself. You feel as if you can’t live without him or her, and you want to hurry up and be together. That’s conditional infatuation, not love. When the person doesn’t live up to your fantasy, you realize you’ve been gullible; and you get angry because you were foolish enough to project your values and therefore unrealistic expectations onto him or her. You notice all the differences while becoming blind to the similarities, and you start punishing the other person.
Anybody whom you praise, you’ll also reprimand. If you elevate someone on a pedestal, you’ll also banish the person into a pit. It would be wiser to put people into your heart, wouldn’t it? Nobody deserves the pedestal or the pit, and everybody is worth caring for. Yes, everybody!
Breaking Free of the Myths
Just reading the words in this chapter—even if you see their wisdom right away—won’t immediately and completely detach the hold that myths may have on you. That’s why, at the end of this and every chapter throughout this book, I’ve included exercises that will help you integrate these ideas and make them seem even more real to you than the fairytale fantasies.
Do these exercises as you go along. You don’t need to finish the entire book right away—but do begin the exercises as soon as you turn the last page of each chapter. If there’s a daily application, add the item(s) to your calendar so that you have a reminder, and take at least one action toward completion right away. You’ll find the rewards nearly immediate in helping you create more fulfilling, more real, and (if you’d love to have them) lasting relationships.
Actions to Create More Fulfilling Relationships
—Keep a notebook. Get a loose-leaf binder, purchase a blank journal, or set up a file on your computer to make notes about what you’re learning. Notice whenever any of the myths show up as fantasies that you’re projecting onto someone else. Step back and see how the Words of Power (explained in the following paragraph) can effectively assist you in creating the kind of personal and professional relationships you’d love to have in your life.
—Integrate the Words of Power. Here’s an exercise that I created for my book You Can Have an Amazing Life…in Just 60 Days! It’s based on an affirmation technique I devised when I was transforming myself from being a surf bum and high school dropout to living the life of my dreams, with abundant wealth in all areas—spiritual, mental, career, finances, family, social, and physical. I’ve found no other method more powerful than this for changing false beliefs (fantasies) into more empowering expectations for myself and what I can truly create, so I’ve included some Words of Power at the end of every chapter for you. Try this:
1. Read the Words of Power out loud seven times. Unlike some affirmations, they’re not lopsided promises of happily ever after. They’re balanced, inspiring statements of true possibilities—the opposite of the myths addressed in this chapter—that call you to live more profoundly in their presence.
Words of Power
My relationships move me toward a
greater appreciation and understanding of
my own wholeness.
Nothing is missing in me. I am complete
unto myself.
I am the same in essence—though different in
existence—as all others, and it is primarily or only
my hierarchy of values that distinguishes me.
I embrace the truth that love has a balance of
support and challenge.
I am surrounded by love 24 hours a day.
No matter what I have done or not done,
I am worthy of love.
2. Create your own Words of Power using your own language and any phrases that inspire you from the chapter you’ve just read. Write them in your notebook and then repeat them seven times.
3. Take a few moments to reflect on what you’ve read; and in your notebook, record any insights that come to you.
4. For 21 days, repeat the Words of Power (both those I’ve listed and the ones you’ve written yourself) seven times each day, ideally either at night as you’re falling asleep or first thing in the morning as you wake up.