What causes relationships to degenerate over time?

Relationships of any kind can start out so great. Why do they degenerate over time? Most of the time it can be because of feeling hurt in some way. Accumulated hurt can begin with something like a slight difference of opinion, a sense of lack of importance, a feeling of unease or discord. Your mind may form images of those kinds of situations, where you put them in a box and assume this is who that person is becoming. Whatever you give a lot of energy to, grows. It can create a distance between two people. Those images become like strong judgments…which cause you to start to doubt the intensions of that person. Well, you know where this is going….when you start to doubt their intensions….when you start to not trust them….you will then start to become indifferent to each other. You mute any sense of pain within yourself and any sense of feelings in the relationship….which virtually brings it to an end.

Inability to be with hurt, whether it’s the other persons or your own….the emotions, the charges, the fears, may cause you to not stay in your relationship….which means you will more likely leave sooner than stay to work it out. The totality of your emotions, come to the fore front in a committed relationship of any kind.

In those relationships, can you move toward lesser conflict and more towards greater consciousness? Can you start to see a bigger purpose in all of what is happening? Going from the everyday life stuff of ‘they did me wrong’….to a bigger purpose where ‘what are they showing me on a day to day basis about myself?’ You see, the bigger purpose of relationships….as you grow together…those great qualities that you found so wonderful in the beginning, you may find hard to deal with now. Is it the other person that is getting hard to deal with or are those qualities the issue?

I’ll give you an example. You love how your partner is so gentle and kind with you. You haven’t been treated like that in any other relationship before. Over time, you start to feel agitated when he is gentle with you. You start to get jealous when he is so gentle and kind to other women. It becomes a bother and now an issue within your relationship. What changed? Was it your partner who seems to be the same wonderful kind and gentle partner you know……or did something change in you? You see….as you both grow together in your relationship, your heart starts to soften with the kindness, with the gentleness, and you start to open up to that great wonderful quality in you as well. If you aren’t used to that part of you, it may cause some discomfort. The feeling of jealousy may come from fear…when you start to feel that kindness and gentleness within your own heart, you may then feel the fear of losing it to someone else. Can you clear that within yourself, so jealousy is never an issue again? You bet you can! You only need to find someone like me.

Here's another example. One of the things you love about your partner is how she flows with money. She doesn’t seem to be bogged down with any financial issues at all. You think….wow, someone who doesn’t have a care in the world about money! In the beginning it’s fun to start to flow with money, like you are learning from her! Then along comes one big financial challenge in the marriage and you both have to walk through it. She wants to flow with it like she always does, but for you, now in front of your face are the financial issues, bothers, challenges that seemed to have held you back most of your life. Think of the pain in that. You start to get agitated and frustrated with her because now she’s not being responsible in your eyes….she’s not thinking things through as much as you feel you both need to do…..the list goes on. You start to feel your marriage isn’t working because she’s not listening to anything you say and she’s not this and she’s not that. Who has the issue in your relationship?

If you are both committed to grow together like in a marriage for example, each person has a responsibility to the marriage. If you were going to put it in a triangle, one point is you, one point is your partner and one point of the triad is your marriage. Each point influences the strength of the whole triangle. From my very educated experience…..energetically speaking – the person who has the issue, the bother, the problem with something that is being or not being done……they are the one who has something to clear.