Many people struggle with finding a happy, sustainable partnership. You’re not alone if this has been the case for you. In my private life and private practice, I’ve witnessed many a relationship fall apart in a flurry of misunderstanding, confusion, and pain.
We all crave deep connection. We are social creatures, and connection is one of our basic, foundational needs. To be seen, to be known, to be able to share with another being…these are our inherent nature, as natural as breathing. Yet like breathing, so many small choices, usually made subconsciously, inhibit that natural flow. When that flow is blocked, tense, tight, or shut down altogether, attracting and maintaining partnerships and even friendships that feel satisfying and real becomes very difficult.
In this article I’ll give you a few common reasons why you’ve struggled to find and maintain meaningful connection, and how to align deeply with your intent so that attracting love becomes an effortless, joyful experience.
Love and Power: Always at Odds in You?
We all have within us an innate nature of love. We are love manifest in physical form! The more in touch with that truth we feel on a daily basis, the warmer and more enjoyable our experience of life becomes.
Another aspect of our being is power. We are the power of the divine manifest. We are the doer, the creator. The power frequency gives us the ability to move forward, take charge, and to protect ourselves and what we love.
I invite you in this moment to connect to your own energy. First feel the love frequency. Does the energy of love in your system feel open? Soft? Hopeful? Available? Or does it feel hesitant? Fearful? Withheld? Wary?
Now try attuning to the power frequency. What does the power energy in you feel like? Is it strong? Expansive? Celebratory? Excited about all that it will create in life? Or is it rigid? Controlling? Explosive? Edgy?
Any relationship between two people is a dance of these two frequencies. Any hidden patterns, wounds, and issues in the frequencies will be revealed as the relationship deepens.
Most of us have a greater identification with one or the other of these frequencies. Someone who likes harmony, warmth and sweetness above all might say, “I’m a lover not a fighter.” However, we all have both, so if we overidentify with one aspect, we might come to suppress and judge the frequency of the other polarity in ourselves and in others.
This could cause a love-polarity person to shy away, get their feelings hurt easily, or leave a relationship when the power energies start to come out as disagreements and personality clashes. On the other hand, a power-oriented person might find themselves struggling to let love in…they might try to control or dominate the other person rather than relaxing their boundaries enough to feel love flowing freely between them.
This is why the healing process involves engaging both frequencies in a person: both are alive, so both need to be engaged in order to bring the person into balance. When we stay in the polarity that is most comfortable to us, we will have a hard time attracting wholeness in relationship, instead finding ourselves in a limiting role.
When the two frequencies are both active, there is a great possibility for life to start to manifest in a way that brings satisfaction. When the need for love/connection and the need for personal power/boundaries are both met in you, real connection becomes a part of your daily experience. Intimacy comes in as the natural benefit.
As a practice, you can start developing the aspect that has less flow in you. If you lean more to the love polarity, developing your sense of self-respect, honoring yourself, and standing up for yourself more fully will be beneficial. These activities build boundaries and attract relationship that feels more respectful than you’ve had in the past.
If you lean towards the power frequency, try opening yourself to receive from people who you feel safe with. Love is the frequency of bonding and connection. You can practice this by stopping what you’re doing and really listening to what a friend is saying, or sharing something that is real and vulnerable for you. This will help you attract relationship where you don’t always end up in the leadership role, where you can actually feel met and cared for as well.
Letting Go of Pictures
When we get stuck in a picture (or in healing language, an idealized image) of who we/our parents/society think we should be, relationship will be a constant source of disappointment and confusion.
Let’s go back to the “I’m a lover not a fighter” person, who is tightly holding to that image of himself. Say that his new love interest gets her feelings hurt through a miscommunication, and expresses anger and frustration towards him. Because he is strongly identified with his idealized self image that doesn’t approve of confrontation, however, he feels irritated by her for having an uncomfortable emotion other than sweetness. He shuts down his energy to avoid feeling the non-sweet emotions. He chooses to disengage, dropping the connection and judging her for having difficult feelings in the first place. Ouch, that just creates more separation between them!
In fact we all have ways of doing this. We create separation so easily by reacting and holding on to ideals and expectations of ourselves and the other person. It is quite painful, and we end up not getting what we want: love and connection.
Who does your idealized self tell you you should be? Does it demand that you always be wise? Always cheerful? Do you think of yourself as “the spiritual one” who always has to look poised? Always helpful? Or are you the tough one who can’t show emotion?
Everyone’s idealized self image is different, and is an amalgam of subconscious and conscious reactions to the pain and insecurity of life. The imperfect tumult that is relationship will always threaten to shatter the perceptions and ideas of the idealized self.
But thank God for that! Staying in those images is like wearing a pair of jeans that are a size too tight. It’s uncomfortable to stay in, and stifling to who we really are.
Instead, can you show up for your relationships without attachment to idealized pictures and outcomes? This is the art of relationship. It is about being with someone, both of you imperfect, both human, and seeing what will unfold. Seeing what beauty wants to arise from that person, making space for it. All that you can ever do is try your best, and be aware that you’ll probably mess it up anyway. Or they will. But if you and the other person are both willing to show up without pictures reigning in the energy of life, something real might actually happen.
What is Your Intention?
When we are triggered and frustrated around relationship, it can be hard to connect deeply to our inner intention for love and connection. In my experience, the most important thing that I learned when navigating the sometimes frustrating and disappointing dating scene between relationships, was that if I stayed connected to my intention, I could feel (mostly) sane even in a time of a lot of change and upheaval in my life, and I could feel my next partnership getting ready to manifest even while having dinner with someone who was an obvious no for me.
The power of intention continues to amaze me constantly in my life. Honestly, when I work in energy sessions with people who don’t have an intimate connection with their inner intention around love (or anything else), I think, “jeez, this is going to be challenging for you.”
Why? Because without intention you are a boat adrift at sea. Without a sense of where you want to be headed, you could land anywhere! And anywhere you land won’t be a good fit anyway, because you won’t have really chosen it, you won’t really believe in it because you won’t have worked toward it with your whole heart.
I witness so many marriages that start to unravel after a decade or so when it is revealed that both people entered the union unconsciously, without a deep intention or a real choice at the soul level. That is not to say that falling in love on its own is not a beautiful and powerful thing; it is only to say that falling in love with intention behind it is 100x more powerful.
Whether you are single right now and hoping to find relationship, or ending a relationship and considering getting back out there, try connecting in this moment with your intention for partnership.
You might ask yourself: why do I want this? If you really get honest, does your desire come from a feeling of lack or disappointment, thinking maybe a relationship would solve your sadness? Be careful of attracting from that place. Or is your reason for wanting partnership a desire to share, grow, learn, and support/be supported by another amazing human being? That one might land you in a better position!
Your desire for partnership, your reason for wanting it, is what will become your attraction point. So make sure it feels like a healthy, happy one! If you can do the work that it takes to get clear, transparent, and honest about your needs and authentic desires, the relationship that you brings in will be much more likely to feel healthy, happy, and enriching.
To have long-term, happy love, you have to be willing to let love impact you, shake you up, and challenge the crystallized images you have of yourself. You will have to develop the aspects of you that are unconscious. It will bring you back again and again to a choice in yourself between showing up or walking away.
My hope for you is that you find the courage and faith to call in authentic, real, messy, fun, enriching partnership.
For more information about how I can support you in creating a healthy, fulfilling partnership, please contact me at nina@ninahandwerk.com for a free consultation.