When we say we are not getting what we need from our relationship, i.e. from our partner, lover, husband, wife, more often than not we are seeking from this person what actually is not available from any human. What we are seeking is only available from God.
A relationship is not a place we go to get. A relationship is a place we go to give. This is such a profound and unassailable truth that it boggles the mind to recognize the extent to which it is not known. I have come to believe this is the true measure of one's having acquired adulthood, this shift from what do I need and where do I get it, to what do I have to give and where do I go to give it. If this is the case then it also is the case that many of us travel from birth to death without getting past adolescence.
Without a doubt, romantic relationships are a place through which we try to work out our childhood wounds. There is something I should have received from my parents, some form of love or acceptance or encouragement, something that would have helped me find self-love and self-acceptance and the capacity to succeed in life. Almost everyone we know has their own version of this. We grow up never having solved the equation of how to get our parents to give us this thing we needed, then we naturally are drawn to lovers who in some fashion will present us with the same equation. We will have another opportunity to solve the problem. They seem to be carrying this thing we need, and if we succeed in doing it just right, now finally we will get it. We will win. Chances are we will crash and burn at least a few relationships as we blame our partner for not doing it the way they're supposed to be doing it, for not giving us what we need. In this modern world of ours, we will probably change these people out for someone else, because even though initially I was sure he was the love of my life, 'the One,' in fact now I see that I was mistaken and actually the source for my fulfillment now is over there. Then we will go down a road that looks completely different from the last one, but will find ourselves once again in that exact same place with the exact same complaints about someone else.
If this has happened to us, if ever we have found ourselves with the same complaint about two different men or two different women, then we have to start looking at the common denominator in the equation. That would be me. And chances are that what I am complaining about is this other person's inability (or lack of desire) to give me something that in fact is not in any way their responsibility to give. Chances are I am demanding of this other person that they fulfill a need in me that should have been fulfilled by my parents, but since it wasn't, now can be fulfilled only by God, by my relationship to God and to my inner self, my higher self.
A shrink once told me a story about a patient of his who had wanted a certain cowboy suit when he was a kid. Back then they sold these outfits based upon TV cowboys--Wyatt Earp, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassady, Bat Masterson. (The one I had was from Have Gun -- Will Travel. The story of Paladin, played by Richard Boone. Black holster, long-barrelled pistol, silver bullets, business cards with the silhouette of a chess knight on them. But I digress...) This patient had asked for one of these outfits that included vest and chaps and hat along with the holster and weapons. He thought he was going to get it one Christmas, but didn't, and carried this un-met need as the epitome of his unfulfilled childhood. He grew up, started a business that became terribly successful and then, as an adult, set out to find this cowboy suit. At a certain point, a toy company went out of business, an auction was held to get rid of all the assets and this particular cowboy suit, still in its original box, came available. He won the auction, willing as he was to spend an amount far in excess of the market value for the toy. "And you know what he found, Jeff, when he got it home?" asked the shrink. No, I said. What? "It didn't fit."
Our childhood wounds were put there to give us the tools that will make us most fully of service in this life. We embrace them, and together with God and meditation and whatever other source we find the need for, we heal them. Then, filled as we will be with the currency of selfless love, we look for a place to spend it.
Today I will make sure I am not asking my partner to give me what only can be provided by my relationship to God.
Have Gun--Will Travel
