Sustaining, Transforming, or Releasing Relationships

#HarmonicSong

The path of life, love, and relationships initiates a journey of understanding our desires, attachments, and one’s capacity to perpetuate a sense of unity in connection that empowers the authentic self, while honoring the authentic self of others. Relationship dynamics between family, friends, lovers, and partners present opportunities for personal and mutual self-development and invite us to discern what it means to create a healthy balance of give and take, definitions of loyalty and devotion, and upholding personal boundaries with self. This includes assessing the capacity of others to co-create in compatible ways with us. Relationship conflicts, whether beneath the surface or in open confrontation, pressure us to find better ways to communicate and assess one’s value of the bond, in order to decide whether the relationship is at a point for continuing as is, transforming roles or agreements, or releasing altogether.

            The path of self-development is an alchemical process with internal and external influences that engage us to see our honest perspective, consistent emotional responses, the applied strategies for coping with what is uncomfortable, a willingness to find healing and resolve, and the courage to learn more than what we think we know of ourselves. Relationships can create a mirror for reality checks on what we truly value and uphold versus what we project for appearances, even if it is our interest, yet do not embody as a way of being yet. They can also create blocks to growth and illusions about who we are becoming when our sense of self attempts to become like another to feel connection and maintain attachment or when we put a relationship before oneself without also tending the needs of self in the process.  Learning to choose how we detach or attach to the experiences of another is an essential part of managing how we are affected by someone we care about and how much of one self we give, withhold, or moderate in our attention and responsibility to that relationship as well as the values we seek to uphold.

            At times, it seems no matter how much we love, endure, seek resolution for conflict, or assert our boundaries, relationships still fail, fall away, or remain in stalemate. The differences in willingness, adaptability, communication skills, and valued interests with others are significant factors in whether a relationship survives and thrives. Childhood friendships, once close family bonds, and the promises of a lover or a partner are more fragile than many want to admit. These disconnections can feel abrupt or like long term decay, depending on how long we choose to stay in devotion to work it out or blissful denial that there is nothing festering beneath the surface of our interactions. Some people are not aware of others discontent or their own discontent until an impasse creates unignorable conflict that relates to the framework of the relationship. Some people do not know themselves well enough or uphold the values of healthy relationship and what seems like a minimal concern to one is an immediate ground for dismissal to another. The interest and value in a relationship can also change over time with closeness or distance or with the process of identity shifts as one explores who they believe themselves to be at different stages of life. Through all of these possibilities with self, with other, and with the perception of relationship, attachment and detachment play a key role.

            Attachment and detachment are critical strategies for managing one’s mental and emotional experience with the influences of our environment and the infrastructure of our identity, which becomes the perceptual bias of our life narrative. The more attached we are to someone or something, the more we seek to attain it and tend to it or possess it and be consumed by it. The more detached we are to someone or something, we have the ability to maintain objective analysis, discern when it is of value instead of giving it inherent value, disregard its needs for sustainability, and choose oneself first in beneficial or detrimental ways. This is why a healthy balance of attachment and detachment must be discerned in order to co-create with others in relationship, while learning how to clarify and honor the authenticity of one’s core values.

            Every relationship requires both individuals to build a language of connection for effective communication, to endure small to large conflicts, realize and maintain defined agreements, and blossom in the layers of intimacy that may be shared through a history of life’s struggles and enjoyments happening to one or both people. This communication requires dedication to co-create, co-maintain, and mutually support one another when requested. Barriers to realizing a shared capacity for communication and sustaining the interests and roles of a relationship may need to be acknowledged in order to further assess the possibilities of the bond in one’s life. These barriers include incongruence with how each individual is patterned to communicate, underlying entitlement beliefs of one or both individuals to the type of communication or lack of perceived necessity for communication, trauma responses from imprinting in childhood or major traumatic events that incite reactive emotional dysregulation, and blocks to communication due to assumptions led by distorted perceptions of another or the relationship. Other barriers to successful communication include relationships where one is more invested emotionally than the other or is carrying a heavier burden with tending and serving the relationship as well as other life demands than the other, general incompatibility that needs to be realized by both persons in who they are and how they define wants and needs as well as honoring practical realities of another’s inherent limitations mentally, emotionally. physically, financially, or spiritually, at any point in a relationship experience.

            Learning when to sustain, transform, or release a bond with another is highly dependent on the capacity of each person to communicate, adapt, perceive and uphold the needs of the relationship while meeting their own essential needs, as well as a clarified value and want to sustain, transform, or release the relationship with each other. Sustaining a bond over time requires a healthy relationship with oneself, an interest in enduring and resolving conflict with transparent and thoughtful communication with another, and the desire to co-create devotion for longevity of negotiated agreements in the bond, regularly. Transforming a relationship invites both individuals to redefine roles within a bond while upholding desire to discover it in new ways that are in service to the love shared.  This is often the hardest approach to relationships because one’s attachments to the initial assumptions or defined role for another are not always easy to re-envision and allow. At times, distance is necessary for both individuals to dismantle attachments they carry to a role for another or their expectations of the other to be a specific role to them. This most often presents in loverships or partnerships and friendships but may also occur in family relationships as the reckoning of a sibling, parent, or child becomes more or less of a friendship with more or less expectations for reliability related to life circumstances. Adaptability to expectations and open communication are essential when both individuals seek to transform a bond with redefined roles. Respecting and allowing these new roles to take form must be held close at heart in service to the intention of sustaining an expression of love and appreciation for one another in this new way. The capacity to transform roles in relationships reveals the power of both individuals to fulfill and share their value for self, other, and the bond that defines a deeper sense of intimacy that is not achievable by sustaining a bond, as is, in one initiated role or releasing a bond completely as no longer relevant or valuable.

            Knowing when to release a bond with another may come abruptly or with long term evaluation. It may be done carelessly without consideration for anyone but oneself or be carefully put to rest with a period of grieving what once was or what one once dreamed it could be. How we exit relationship reveals a lot about our own character and integrity, our ability to communicate in healthy ways to define our boundaries, wants, and needs, as well as our interest and capacity to create healing resolution even with chosen endings. The skill and the interest to create healing resolution as a final act of love in our release of another is often the least achieved. The emotions of resentment, regret, grief, and disillusionment can overwhelm and stagnate an individual’s perception of what ends for long periods, even an entire life. The distorted perceptions of the mind that result with these emotions dictating and a lack of willingness to communicate for understanding further compounds the illusions and possible suffering from these lost relationships if one is not in disregard and cold-hearted detachment. This is unfortunate and often the unresolve from our closest relationships leave wounds or behaviors that show up in other relationships if we do not tend to the healing of our experience in productive ways that maintain an open-hearted curiosity and presence for our bonds with others. This can only be achieved by not pre-emptively structuring assumptions about others from wounding and coping strategies we carry from past relationships.

            Our past experience defines the stories we have lived but it does not have to define who we are, how we connect with, share, and love others or how we behave and communicate our needs, wants, and boundaries. We have the capacity to continually redefine what we understand and who we are by being open to learning more fulfilling ways to communicate, adapt, discern our core values, to co-create relationship intentionally and compassionately with others from beginning to end- and though any opportunities to transform for growth together that arise.

            Love is the innate language of connection. It is an invitation to witness what we hold sacred within ourselves and another. Love is a journey that opens alchemical doorways to the authentic self and one’s power to co-create with others. It is an opportunity to be in service as a witness of another in compassionate and supportive ways, even when what needs to be acknowledged feels hard to say or receive. Honoring love and what one holds sacred has the power to engage self and other to be willing to learn the skills available to sustain, transform, or release relationship with healing solutions and heartfelt intention.   

Excerpts Written By Julie Hightman