You would not want your partner to insist that you be anything that you are not – Would you? Therefore how can you insist that your partner be anything they really do not want to be, or to do anything they really do not want to do? You might really, really ask them to with all the powers of persuasion you know – but insist? Not right.
I am not talking about taking out the trash, washing the dishes, making the bed, going to the department store while he or she looks for some clothes they like while we just sit patiently and wait, or other things that are just part of the give and take of any relationship – part of the willing compromise we all do for the health and the continuation of the relationship. The simple things that we get irritated about sometimes but are really no big thing when we look at the big picture of our total relationship.
I am talking about big time things like wanting to date other people, going out more often with his or her friends drinking, playing cards or going to poetry readings that last late into the night and we end up having to eat dinner and go to sleep alone. I am talking about when our partner seems to be wasting their life on something they enjoy. I am talking about when our partner is not living up to the standards of success we believe they can achieve. They enjoy working at a computer store and you believe they can be the next Bill Gates.
All of us change as we go through our experiences of life and sometimes we start on the relationship road with someone who is in step with who we are and what we like. However, either or both of us can react to the same future situations differently and actually grow in different directions. This does not mean they do not love us, they just have changed from who they were when our dance began and this is who they are now. Perhaps you have changed and you are the one who is doing a different dance than when your dance of relationship began. It is not always the other person. Look in the mirror and have a good talk with yourself.
If your partner is not dancing the same dance of relationship you are, then you first ask your partner to get in step with the dance you are dancing. Tell them why you are unhappy and why you really, really wish they would get more in step with your desire of the dance.
If they do not want to, then your second choice is to decide if you are willing to compromise and change your dance steps to the ones they want to dance. This is not selling out. Perhaps what you still enjoy about the dance just does not seem worth losing because of you not liking parts of who your partner has become. Sometimes three quarters, one-half or even one-quarter of a pie is better than no pie at all. You have to decide what you can compromise while still feeling you have not lost your integrity, your sense of your true self.
Your third choice is to make a mutual deal – both of you compromise. If you do this, I will do that. If you change here, I will change there. Both compromise and both get something you want out of the relationship – without ending the relationship. After all, a relationship is full of rewards. There are many things you are getting out of the relationship that are worth making a compromise for in order to keep the good parts you want – aren’t there?
If you cannot feel ok making a compromise on your own; If your partner does not feel ok making a compromise on his or her own; If both of you can’t each compromise for the sake of the good in the relationship you both want to continue, then what is left?
What is left is accept that the dance is no longer the dance you want. It is time to turn off the music and end the dance as it is. Get a divorce. Move in your own direction. They move in their own direction. Dance your own dance even if you are dancing alone. A dance is still a dance. End the relationship but do it with love and acceptance. Especially, end it with a kiss. If it has to end, end it with the acceptance and the compassion you wish the other would end it with you.
Especially with a kiss – He or She was special – wasn’t he or she? Release your partner with the same love and acceptance that you would want your partner to release you.
Who knows, after being without each other for a while, both of you might just decide that a compromise is ok after all. You both might miss the parts of the relationship dance that brought both of you pleasure and comfort and you both decide the compromises are ok. You turn up the music and begin a new dance.
However, you cannot end the dance with the thought in your mind and the hope in your heart that the other person will come to his or her senses, that he or she will realize the good thing they had with you and want to get together again to dance hand in hand into the beautiful sunset of your life here on Earth. Ending it is not ending it while expecting it to begin again in a few weeks or months. Ending is ending. Go through the door of change with the intention of never going back, never looking back at what. What was will never be again. Perhaps it never was what you thought it was. Perhaps it only appeared to be what you wanted it to be. However, you can occasionally look back with love at the beauty of what you had. Even if what you had was not really what you thought you had, you still experienced a lot of beauty and enjoyment thinking what you thought. Whatever the relationship might be in the future will be what it is at that time. Perhaps it will be similar in appearance but it can NEVER be the same. Just the fact that you ended it and walked away will mean getting back together will never be the same. It will be what it is – a new dance with some shared experiences from the past to give the new relationship more soulfulness.
The bottom line is you must be complete within yourself before you can truly experience another. There is no soul mate to complete you – it is within you that the completeness must be experienced. Nothing and no one outside of yourself can complete you. If you think they can, then what happens if their physical body dies before yours does? What happens to your completeness then?
Your spiritual completeness is the child born from the intercourse, the integration, of the male and the female of the inner you. Think of a magnet with a positive pole and a negative pole. The two poles seem to be in opposition. However, stand back far enough that you can see the whole picture and you will see that what appeared to be polar opposites were in actuality just polarities of a singularity called the magnet. Your male aspect and your female aspect are but polarities of the singularity that is the “real” you. They are not “two”. Somewhere, deep in the core of you they are one.
The more complete you are within yourself, the more you will be yourself with another and the more you will enjoy them being their own authentic self in the relationship dance. After all, wasn’t the reason you wanted to dance with them in the first place the pleasure you received in both of you being authentic and not having to be anything you were not? What really turned you on was your belief of the authenticity of your relationship.
In Truth, since God is Omnipresent, the only dance, the only relationship we ultimately have is with God. The different dance partners are just different relationships we have with the Universal Self. Each of them has their purpose in the eternal dance of our spiritual journey as you have your purpose in each of their spiritual journeys.
