One of my biggest pet peeves about the entire dating industry is that there seems to be a one size fits all approach to handling toxic relationships. We seem to love a good dose of advocacy and blame anyone who hurts us. From ghosting to blatant insincerity or abusive behavior, most of us have experienced at least one toxic relationship. Others of us find ourselves repeating the same cycles over and over again in utter despair. Women in particular tend to internalize these circumstances and cause our emotions to chain us into a life full of misery.
I remember when I went through the worst breakup of my life. Long story short, I was ghosted after about 2 years of dating and discussions of marriage. While I do go into more detail about this story in my forthcoming book, Toxic Insecurity: Our Search for Authentic Love, it would take me years of healing to figure out what was really going on with the patterns of relationships in my life.
And talk therapy is NOT how I figured it out.
For me, in this lifetime, I came to experience the equivalence of relationship hell (ask my astrologer) so that I could face my past life fears of men, abuses of power, and cultivate a love of humanity again. Through my spiritual journey, I’ve come face to face with abandonment, past abusive husbands, people killing my loved ones, and being jailed for my views. But I’ve also had past lives of beauty as a ballerina, musician and an artist. Mature souls choose to be incarnated into dysfunction and chaos as part of their spiritual path (I still think its a cosmic joke and that the Netflix series The Good Place has figured out how to make this concept more tolerable). Most of us just happen to be sleepwalking and miss the signs, synchronicities, and messages until it hits us over the head or when things get so bad we are forced to make changes. A spiritual seeker is usually born.
Modern dating and relationships are some of the most important lessons for our soul’s growth. According to Dr. Robert A. Johnson, romantic love is the biggest soul wound in western culture:
“Romantic love is not just a form of “love,” it is a whole psychological package — a combination of beliefs, ideals, attitudes, and expectations. These often contradictory ideas coexist in our unconscious minds and dominate our reactions and behavior, without our being aware of them. We have automatic assumptions about what a relationship with another person is, what we should feel, and what we should ‘get out of it.’”
In other words, buried deep in our unconscious we have stories of how we believe a courtship should go. We repeat these patterns over and over again until we begin to realize what true intimacy is supposed to be. We come to the realization that we have been playing out the same stories people have been for centuries often does not make us feel much better.
This week, a reader asked what you should do if you notice a pattern in your relationships or dating life. Do you begin to walk your path alone or do you continue to date? There is no right answer. If you subscribe to the idea that relationships can be a path to the Divine and a path toward enlightenment, spending too much time alone may not be helpful to you in the long run. If, however, you are healing from significant trauma from this life or previous lives, you may need to do that work without others around. Only you can decide what it is you need to do but there are a couple pitfalls to watch out for.
Defensiveness as a Way to Protect the Heart
Our anger with toxic relationships often covers up our fear and disappointments. We have been conditioned to think of relationships as a path toward marriage and babies and not a path of learning and growth. We are incredibly hard on ourselves when a relationship ends and often grip on to it for far too long. Letting go is not for the faint of heart and if there is a history of relational trauma, the abandonment fears can be incredibly painful. It is often easier to read a bunch of Facebook posts or Instagram memes about kicking someone out of your life than it is to sit down and ask ourselves why they showed up in the first place.
For most of the women I have worked with, these toxic relationships show up to give you an opportunity to learn to say “no” to behavior that is out of alignment with who we are. Yet, we have been conditioned by society to think that men have all the power. They don’t but they have fought like hell to try to dominate, manipulate and terrorize women through their control of a woman’s sexual energy. Women give up their power simply because we have not had an education about the power of sexual energy and how this feeds our sense of self. If it is depleted by sleeping with people with toxic energy, we will never step into our power.
Defensiveness comes from a closed heart and is simply a sign that healing is needed. Empowerment comes from becoming comfortable with owning sexual energy as a creative force. It is not an easy path toward healing the mind-body-soul-heart connection after a series of toxic relationships. All of these layers need healing and traditional talk therapy really only deals with healing the mind. Trauma is kept in your body, soul and heart as well. You can’t think your way through never being in a toxic relationship again — your energy needs to go through the healing process and there needs to be recognition that there may be many, many reasons for ending up in toxic relationships — all of which may not be your fault but rather missed opportunities for growth.
Seeing the World Through the Lens of Fear
Fear is the number one emotion that stops all of us from being able to sit and learn the lessons we need to learn from these difficult relationships. Fear is the opposite of love. Anytime we fear that someone is trying to hurt us, we are living in a place of disempowerment. There are of course realities that we need to be aware of. Serial killers and psychopaths are real. Violent domestic abusers are as well. However, if we have dipped into fear then we do not trust our intuition that we have the survival skills to keep ourselves safe or find help. Fear keeps us helpless and allows toxic relationships to thrive.
Many domestically violent relationships operate through the use of fear. Malignant abusers use fear to energetically feed off an empath’s energy. So many of us have no idea that this is happening. It is not until an empath is thrown onto a healing journey that they begin to realize that the fear that is induced is for the purpose of energizing the abuser. We can get mad at them — that’s legitimate — but most of them are completely unaware of the energy exchange that is happening.
Well, of course, unless they have been trained as a pick-up artist. One of the strategies to get women to sleep with them is to watch a scary movie with them first so the defenses are down and they more easily consent. This has been the advice given for many years and is nothing new. Fear is a powerful emotion but it is not as powerful as love.
We don’t just go through a healing process to stop meeting toxic people. We go through it to step into our power and repel such energy through opening our heart to love. When your heart is open, you won’t meet these type of people anymore — real love scares them.
Ways to Start your Journey
My journey after that breakup started the way most of our journeys do — by trying to date others and choosing someone completely different. After my breakup with a Jewish doctor, I met a musician. It was probably after one too many cocktails in a bar in New Orleans years ago, but I was the one who approached him. We had a great time but when it came time to go further, it was clear my heart was too broken. The liquid courage was washed away and I was functioning as an empty shell. Let my journey begin.
I would read all the dating advice, self-help books and other tips and trips to deal with my anxiety and attachment issues — just like you do now. It just wasn’t until many years later when an astrologer told me that things were supposed to happen this way to give birth to a warrior who would experience difficult relationships and then teach it. I’ve been on the path of relational spirituality for a very long time now. There were times I mindfully dated to practice skills at setting boundaries and speaking my truth and there were long times that I focused on becoming my authentic self.
If I could give advice to my younger self, it would be this: No one can stop you from becoming a warrior and honoring your desire for love if it is truly the path you are supposed to be on. Becoming who you are supposed to be will naturally filter out people who are not in alignment with your path. We sometimes forget to trust the wisdom of something greater than us but I can say that as you walk your path your friends and lovers will completely change. The truth is, the more powerful you are supposed to be, the harder the journey will be too. Facing the fear of relationships is not for the faint of heart. We need to flip the mindset that there is something wrong with us to a mindset that we are in relationship training and are learning to be more empowered human beings.
Your intuition knows what to do. Some of you will be called to travel into a new culture (when COVID is over) simply to experience different types of people who might be more heart-centered. Some of you will be drawn to a spiritual practice like yoga or meditation to care for your wellness. Some of you will practice dating more consciously and work with a therapist to better understand your desires and triggers. Others of you will experience everything there is to experience simply to tell others what works and doesn’t work. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong relationship advice. There is only your intuition. Trust it and when you are ready the right information, teachers and support really do appear.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” — Albert Einstein