Difficult Relationships

I received an email about difficult relationships, describing pain I have felt and I bet you have, too:

“… my heart is very heavy with sadness, abandonment, and betrayal from the people I loved most of all. How do I move on from here? “

You can’t.

There is no moving on into light from “here” if “here” – your here – remains pointed at darkness.

That seems backwards and perhaps even unfair when our hearts are hurting, but all we can expect when we stay in our “here” hurting place is… more hurt. And that hurt isn’t because of what happened or who it happened with – it may have been initially – that on-going (in this case paralyzing) hurt is due to the repetition over time of old ideas about it all.

We can’t move forward if we are still thinking old thoughts about any subject. Worry about money takes us to worry about money. Hating your neighbour takes you to more hate. If we feel anchored down anywhere in our lives, it’s not the people or the circumstances that are weighty, it’s our on-going thoughts.

Relationships have been one of the most challenging Big Subjects of my life and I continually strive for greater peace and understanding about the many people who have come and gone from my experience. Most recently my husband moved out. I have shared extensively about my once-over-now-blossoming relationship with my late father. Friendships made and lost, love affairs, boyfriends, in-laws, blood relatives, co-workers and bosses, the “types” of relationships are countless, and the “bad” endings numerous. So I’ve spent a lot of time examining why people came, why they went, what I did right, what I did wrong. Learning as much as I can about relationships has been an on-going quest for me, so that the new people who come into my life are met by someone who has done his best to know what relationships are really all about.

Here are a few truths I have learned about relationships. If you are struggling with difficult relationships, use these ideas to create a #ThoughtRevolution about them:

No one is sent by accident to anyone. >Tweetable.
This means the person you pass on the street, the person you’ve sat next to at work for years, the brother-in-law, the wife, the parent, the teenage brat, the one-night stand – they aren’t in your orbit by accident. And when you can regard your intersection with them – for seconds or years – as bigger, cosmic, part of a beautiful unravelling that needs both you and them in it in order to unravel perfectly, you begin to wrap a brighter light around people you encounter. Including that nightmare chickie-poo coming around the bend.

Relationships that end don’t fail. They reach their completion. >Tweetable.
I cringe when I hear anyone say words like “failed marriage”. It promotes a false premise that if a relationship ends that you and/or the other person screwed it up. Relationships are so much more holy than that. A person comes to your life for a reason, you and they take and give what was needed from each other, and the time comes to move on and grow, relationship completed, mission accomplished. No one was right, no one was wrong, no matter who did what to who. It’s all so much bigger – and you were handed the relationship and what transpired because you are strong enough to handle it.

Just because you are relatives doesn’t mean you have to be friends. >Tweetable.
This is a huge one. We are taught family is everything, and if if that is working for you, great. But I don’t know a lot of people who can say it truly does, and that false premise knocks us over so often because we somehow expect if it’s our father, mother, sister, that they should not act like normal people act. But then they act like normal people act and the sense of hurt that comes is greater than ever. Strip down family titles and then look at what happened from this new perspective. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. Even your brother. A little of looking through that lens let’s a lot off the hook.

The path of forgiveness pays off.  >Tweetable.
Bitterness about the past sabotages the future. Even “I will forgive but I will never forget” holds you in a place of suffering or victimhood, which you bring forward with you into new relationships. For your own good, bless the situation that has occurred and the people in it. When Patrick moved out, I began thanking him for doing so before I even knew what there was to thank for the rug being pulled out from under me. I just knew I needed to be there in that grateful space fast; it was another life preserver. More than a life preserver it was a life-giver. Fast after entering that zone blindly, the understanding came, the truth, the authenticity of what there was to be thankful about within the marriage mess – so that now I continue to reap the benefits of an ongoing peace with Patrick and with life as I now know it that I wouldn’t have had without laying claim to love first, forgiveness despite everything.

You can bounce back from anything. Even a difficult relationship. >Tweetable.
Take the bounce where your relationships are concerned – where anything that has hurt you is concerned. Have you ever dropped a tennis ball? Noticed how high it bounced back up? Now imagine that tennis ball and smash it to the ground with all your might and watch how high up that ball goes. To the degree you feel let down by those around you is the degree of soaring that awaits you. You just have to start thinking thoughts that allow you to take that bounce.

Without relationships you could not be you. >Tweetable.
When someone has hurt you or left you feeling less than in any way, it can feel impossible to be open-hearted about them and what happened. Why, when their hearts were so closed?  But that is how we grow. And you just have to want to grow. It’s why we came here in the first place. Hence those difficult relationships, those people, those situations, those emotions.

Without relationships there would be no you, in this hot moment, reading this.

Next Week: Is nothing the worst thing that can happen to you? A #ThoughtRevolution about what happened in the past.

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• Related: How I Learned There Is No Death
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