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How do you see yourself in the reflection of your primary love relationship? What does it reflect of you? (Or, if not in one now, in the last one you were in.)
When I try to explain this concept of The Mirror to couples in my practice, it often takes a few passes for it to sync in. Your relationship is naturally your mirror because your partner mirrors back to you what you actually need to see about yourself. This is not what your partner tells you, though that could be part of it, it’s more about how the relationship makes you feel, what it shows you about yourself, which blind spots it points out, and growth opportunities it presents.
Your relationship and your partner give you the opportunity to see about you what you need to see. The relationship itself becomes the mechanism for personal growth. When embraced in a positive way, seeing relationships as the evolutionary opportunities that they are, old notions of finding that perfect mate actually fall away.
Isn’t it time that falls away?
There is not a partner that is going to complete you, because in that case, you are asking for their puzzle piece to fill up your puzzle. When your job here really is to be your own complete puzzle. What if we actually defined the perfect partner not as who could fill us up but who could naturally help us be complete in and of ourselves?
In that way, you can see now how you can thank all of your ex’s for what the relationship was trying to teach you! Did you incorporate those lessons and become a more whole person in the mirror of that breakup?
It’s our work, each of us humans, to evolve into the best versions of ourselves. When two people come together in mutual agreement that they will use the feedback received in one another’s mirror, it takes so much pressure off of the relationship!
Another person will NEVER fill you up. It’s impossible.
We all come to relationships with traumas and wounding, and maybe our habits in the relationship started way back with our parents. You are not expected to fix everything about yourself, or pretend it doesn’t exist, in order to be in a relationship. You can give one another the grace of coming authentically, agreeing to see vulnerabilities as places to offer compassion, while the relationship reflects what growth opportunities each person still has to do.
I do want to say that in this concept, each person is taking personal responsibility for their own self-growth. You are not responsible for managing another person’s realizations or how they go about their self-growth. But, when the agreement is in place to use the relationship as an evolutionary tool, no one has to point fingers. The rates of blame and misunderstanding go way down. Love, compassion, tenderness, and gratitude increase.
You can be who you are, right now, and still be in the relationship you desire when you see relationship this way. There’s nowhere else you have to “get to” or thing you have to “achieve” before you are worthy of the relationship. This style of relationship allows you to be as you are.
Doesn’t that sound good?
I work with couples who are steering the ship of their marriage, learning new ways to relate. If this mirror concept sounds like a tool you’d like to use, see my mentorship opportunities on my website, www.yourembodiedbreath.com.
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