It's a Guy Thing (30 page)

Eventually, a realization may dawn. Yes, a relationship is limited and painful—but it’s the perfect place to practice incarnating love. It eventually becomes clear to you that love is what you are here to do, and that an intimate relationship provides you with a vehicle for growth in love. When you realize this, you can make a full commitment in love, knowing its inevitable limitation and pain—just as knowing that birth is a commitment to inevitable death.

Every experience comes in the form of a pair. You can’t experience physical pleasure without also experiencing physical pain at some point. You can’t experience satisfaction in relationship without also experiencing dissatisfaction. You can only know one by comparing it to the other. For instance, you can’t experience liberation unless you are also very familiar with confinement and constraint. To resist one side of any pair only postpones your embrace of the whole, and it is this embrace which is the purpose of our birth.

Intimate relationship, no matter how painful, provides us with a uniquely effective means by which to fulfill our purpose, to grow in love.

Wouldn’t He Treat Me Differently If He Loved Me?

If he loved me, he would treat me differently
. This is a dangerous assumption to bring to your intimate relationship. Men are often not sensitive to how they affect you. Try telling your man, “I feel unloved when you do this.” Then work it out from there. But do not assume he knows he is hurting you.

If he turns away he is probably doing so because of his own need. Rather than assume he is rejecting you, assume he is needing love. Discover your own patterns, discover when you are withholding love, and when you are giving it. This is the real lesson to be learned in relationship.

You don’t have to punish him back. If he turns away from you, you don’t have to feel, “You turned away so I’m going to turn away.” You can recognize his turning away as his own pain, his own call for love.

Realize that both of you will be opening and closing,
loving and turning away. This may continue for years. The relationship itself is your teacher. You can come to understand your own reflex mechanism of shutting down, of closing. Then, instead of feeling rejected or betrayed by your partner’s unlove, you could help each other re-open in love. You can practice loving in relationship.

Expect that whoever you are with will hurt you, turn away from you and withhold their feelings occasionally. This is a normal part of a relationship because most of us have not yet transcended all of our patterns that are less than absolute love. We are only in the process of learning to be open. We are students in the school of love.

Why Should I Give Him Love When He Pulls Away from Me?

The cycle of coming closer together and then moving farther apart continues throughout a relationship. Even if you make some kind of formal commitment to get married or live together, this dynamic will continue. This dance will continue within the confines of the commitment.

The measure of a working relationship is not, “Can this dynamic stop?” This cycling between closeness and distance will probably continue. The measure of a working relationship is whether both of you can remain communicative during this dance. Can you remain open? Can you continue serving one another? Can you stay connected to your heart? Can you continue giving your gift of love, even when your partner hurts you by pulling away?

Observe your reactions to the ongoing dance of rejection
and desire. What do you do when he pulls away? Are you angry? Do you doubt yourself? Do you feel hurt? Do you hold yourself back until he does something? Do you give love no matter what he does? Observe your pattern in the dance of relationship. Are you practicing love or withholding it?

Rather than taking it as a personal insult, rather than needing his love in order for you to be loving, simply remain open as heart-feeling. You may be hurt. Your heart may be deeply wounded. However, it is possible to remain open even with a wounded heart.

When he pulls back you probably feel it as a rejection of you, but he is actually pulling back because of his own need. His withdrawal from you is an expression of his own need. You can practice love even when he pulls away from you. It is through your demonstration of love that he will learn love. It is through your vulnerable heart that his heart will learn to open and receive your gift of love.

When you feel rejected and pull away, you offer him nothing except distance. Closing your heart hurts him and you. Remain open and loving even when wounded by his turning away.

If you pull away when you feel rejected, then you are giving your man this message: “I will only love you when you show me love.” What he hears is that love has to be earned. If you give this message to each other you will become performers, working to get love, instead of lovers, freely giving love to each other. Love is a free gift or it is not true love.

Why Should I Trust Him If He Hurts Me?

Trust is a matter of moment-to-moment practice. There will be moments of unlove that come between you and your man, but you can still trust each other’s ability to practice love. When he turns away from you, you can still trust his process of practice; you can trust that he will recognize his turning away, breathe fully, connect with his true heart, and practice love. If you do not trust his ability to practice this recognition and return to love, then you are in a relationship that will only torture both of you.

On the other hand, your partner usually reflects your own patterns. If he is not able to recognize his closure and return to love, then you, too, are probably withdrawing and closing. For instance, if his closure hurts you and so you close down, then you merely reflect each other. If he becomes mechanical and unfeeling during sex and so you become angry and close your heart, then you merely reflect each other. You cannot oblige your partner to be more than an accurate reflection of you. You can only practice love, grow in your capacity to give love and trust love, and thus serve your partner’s growth in love.

True intimacy requires active trust. If you are closed or turned away from him, you are in no position to serve his ability to love. But when you are present with him and trust in the process of love itself, then you provide him with a reminder of love. He will either respond in love, or he will not.

You cannot make him love. The best you can do is to
be
love. He will either meet you in love, or he will turn away. In either case, you are love. And your love will attract love, absolutely, either from him or from someone more capable of practicing love with you.

16
Embracing the Parents in Your Head and in Your Bed

Why Do I Always Get Involved with a Man Who Can’t Give Me What I Want?

Most of the patterns that limit our intimate relationships develop in our childhood before we are two years old. They have no verbal components and no conscious mental components. They are emotional and physical patterns. Like digestion, they operate at an unconscious level even though they may be very complex.

If you look at the intimate relationships you have had, you will probably notice a pattern, a similarity. There are, of course, differences, but if you look at the similarity in each one, you may see the pattern of intimacy which started in your childhood.

Your emotional needs in an intimate relationship reflect the emotional needs you had with your parents. You want to be acknowledged as special, just like you did with your parents; you want to feel secure in your partner’s love, just like you did with your parents; and you may want your partner to give you more attention, just like you did with your parents.

Very little of this is conscious. You don’t see a man and say, “This relationship will match my childhood. I will try and get from my partner what I always wanted from my parents but never got.” All of a sudden, we find ourselves recreating our childhood pattern once again.

As adults, we develop internal conflicts and stress because, although one part of us is unfulfilled by our intimate relationship, another part of us is actually satisfied by replicating our early childhood patterns. This is the part of us that is willing to settle for consolation and security. But there is a larger part of us that is not happy being stuck in a pattern which continually limits our sharing of love in relationship.

In our early childhood we learn, or take an imprint, from the “love” we experienced from our primary caretakers, usually our parents. The way our parents treated us, whether it was abusively or dotingly, becomes our template for love. It is like radar. When we are with a partner who treats us as our parents did, then our bodies and emotions feel: “Oh yes. This feels like home.”

For instance, if one of your parents emotionally abused you, you will be unconsciously attracted to an emotionally abusive partner. If your father or mother neglected you, you will be unconsciously attracted to a man who won’t provide you the attention you want. If your parents were critical of you, you will unconsciously be attracted to men who criticize you. You will unconsciously try to recreate the feeling of “home.” No matter how unpleasant that situation was, your body still interprets it as “love.”

In addition, people repeatedly try to get the love and acknowledgment from their intimate partner that they never got from their parents. They repeatedly engage the psycho-emotional dance they learned as children in rhythm with their parents, and attempt to lead that dance toward the feeling of love and acceptance.

For instance, if you were the “caretaker” of an alcoholic parent, you will tend to play the caretaker role with your intimate partner. If you got your parents’ attention by being cute or even flirtatious, you will play the same role as “seductress” with the men in your adult life. If you learned to suppress yourself and agree with whatever your parents said, you will tend to do the same with your intimate partner.

It is inevitable. As children our emotional and even our physical survival depended on our parents’ love. Our nervous system learned what it had to do to get it: smile, agree,
perform, control, admit fault or act strong. As adults, we continue to unconsciously act out our search for love and acknowledgment in the form we learned as children with our intimate partner.

Remember, you will continue to unconsciously choose men who can’t give you what you want, as long as you are trying to “get” love. You are actually
choosing
partners, unconsciously, who can’t give you the love you want, in the same way your parents didn’t give you the love you wanted. You will do this until you learn that you
are
the love you always wanted. Then you
do
love and open
as
love rather than seek it like a child.