Whether you‘re completely single and have been for years… Or recently separated having gone through a gut wrenching breakup, there is something I need to bring your attention to.
Many folks believe that “relationship” starts and stops with another warm body, be it your intimate partner, ex or best friend. But what if I told you that there is another critical relationship that exists forever and always in your life at this very moment?
What if this hidden relationship was the FOUNDATION for creating healthy, clear love with another human being?
You see, it's often the neglect of this hidden relationship that causes all of your romantic endeavors to fall apart at the seams. In fact, if this relationship isn't healthy, it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to create a thriving partnership with a lover… Period.
So what is this hidden relationship that's right under your nose?
Well, it's your relationship with reality, the way life is right now. In other words, the relationship you have with the present moment.
Let's unpack this.
If you’re single and reading this email, how do you feel about being single? When you’re feeling lonely, do you distract or disconnect from that feeling because it’s painful through say social media, eating, drinking or work?
On a more general level, how do you deal with any uncomfortable emotions that enter your experience?
If you typically disconnect from your experience of the present moment, then you‘re not in right relationship with life. What you‘re practicing is abandoning the present moment. And if you‘re abandoning the present moment, you’re abandoning yourself.
You’re not being intimate with yourself, nor your feelings, which is actually the true starting place for being intimate with another (and building a relationship that lasts).
Instead, what you‘re practicing is an unfulfilled, disconnected way of being that often leads to emptiness, loneliness and discontent.
And here's the kicker: if this is the neuronal highway you are continuing to fire in your mind repeatedly—disconnect and abandonment about where you‘re at currently in life—then another human being will not come along and change that way of being.
Imagine a guy comes along and you have practiced creating an identity of lack, missing, dis-ease. It will typically play out in one of two ways:
1. You believe something is missing and you will look for evidence of such.
Your neuronal pathways will have experience and strength firing, “something's not right”. So, you may be suspicious, unsatisfied, “not feeling it”… with the people you date. You have trained yourself into looking for “what’s missing”. Your expectations of what the right partner will feel like will be so enormously out of proportion to reality that no mere mortal will fill those shoes. So you‘ll hold back – driving with the breaks and become defended in your interactions with men because you’ll be thinking it’s too good to be true. Or if you’re in relationship, you’ll feel dissatisfied and this pattern is ultimately one of self-sabotage and constriction.
Or on the flip side:
2. You will be desperate because you‘ve been training a “scarcity mindset.”
A man entering the picture you feel you click with will just be a blank canvas for you to project all that has been missing from your life. He will feel projected onto as golden goose; him being positioned in your mind on a pedestal that will both flatter and put an unreasonable amount of pressure on him to be what you want him to be.
This will drive him away because they won’t feel you are in relationship with them, but in relationship with some fantasy of a savior who is going to rescue you from your discontent. In short, they won’t feel like an equal.
At the core in both paths, the disconnection with the present moment breeds desperation because you‘re ultimately outsourcing your connection to self, through connection to other as the only way to achieve fulfillment.
Make sense?
If you can relate to anything I’ve just unpacked here, know that you’re not alone. This is a very common phenomenon. It is your responsibility, though, to step out of it if you want to create healthy, clear love.
So, how do you break this cycle if this is where you‘re at?
First, you must realize that your emotional experience is your responsibility and see the game that you’ve set up, that in order to feel happy, secure, free, loved, and desired, you have believed you need a partner.
Just become aware of this.
You have authored the idea of, “I can't feel the emotions I want until I'm in a partnership” and therefore, you have the power to dismantle it.
So start to flirt with the idea that a relationship might not make you happy. I know plenty of folks in relationship with the “right partner” at one point that don’t feel any of those things above. In large part, because they never practice creating those feelings for themselves.
The secret is to discover how to arrive at that destination of contentment, feeling loved, secure first, without a partner.
Now look, on this path there are going to be periods where you do feel discontent, sad, disappointed with not having a partner. This is normal and natural, but the way through these feelings is to not run from them. And it’s not to try to fix them or distract yourself from them (like checking your phone incessantly whenever you feel lonely).
It's not to make these feelings wrong or run from them through achievement, workaholism, or judgement that you SHOULDN'T be feeling this way; judging the feelings leads to them staying stuck. The way through these often painful emotions is to be with them.
To welcome them, welcome all of them as guests. Build intimacy with each of them and expand your relationship with the present moment self. Use each emotion as a gateway to building a more resilient, loving relationship with you.
To say yes to the present is to say yes to yourself.
When you are in right relationship with the present moment, you come into right relationship with yourself as a creator of your experience. You‘re then gifted with the ability to author a more compassionate story about why you are where you are.It's an opportunity to practice self love and intimacy through communication with yourself in a way that builds all the necessary scaffolding you GET to bring with you as an offering into your next relationship.
No more putting pressure on someone to fix your experience. No more not recognizing love when it’s staring you in the face.
Relationship at that moment then becomes a platform for you to give and be, rather than a place for you to take from.
I believe this poem by Rumi captures the essence of this “being and welcoming” the present experience.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
If you‘re a woman reading this, I'll end this with an invitation. A powerful invitation to a program that my friend, fellow coach Jack Butler and I created called Relationship Ready—Becoming The One.
Its goal is to take care of this area of your life. To give you access to a powerful, connected relationship with self, the present moment and your life, so that creating love that fulfills you doesn't feel like such a leap, but rather a natural, and simple next step.
I've included the link here for those of you who are ready to take this understanding to a transformative level.
It starts with this free masterclass. Click here to register.
With love,
Clayton
