Hi friend,
Your partner is not your parent, but they will likely set off alarm bells of all the ways your needs weren’t met when you were a child.
If you felt misunderstood, unheard, dismissed, invisible, too much as a child… chances are you might find yourself feeling that way in your relationship too.
Your partner will probably have similar traits to your parents in some ways. The good, the bad, the exciting and disappointing.
Partnership is a path to spiritual growth if we choose to walk it together with our hearts open and our eyes willing to see clearly.
When we say yes to liberating ourselves of the old patterns and stories that have lived in our bodies and family histories for generations, what we are really saying yes to, is allowing ourselves to let love in fully and letting life feel more easy and joyful.
“Doing the work” together may require a lot of processing and learning how to fight in those early years, but eventually the goal is to set your baseline in the frequency of peace, ease, play and enjoyment.
Not that you won’t go through hard times, all relationships do, it’s inevitable. But you don’t want to live in process land where your entire relationship is about talking and healing.
Sometimes the most healing thing is to have fun together. Your partner is supposed to be your close friend!
Don’t ever stop getting to know each other. See them with fresh eyes. Get curious about how they are changing and growing - because even if you don’t see it, they are always changing.
Let your love transform you.
Let your relationships illuminate the places you’ve been hurt, and find the courage and vulnerability to awaken.
You don’t have to remain in a dynamic that mirrors your familiar hurts.
You can grow far beyond that into a dynamic that inspires you beyond what you could have imagined for yourself.
Choose your partners wisely. 💕
Inside Today’s Newsletter:
✍️ A Practice + Journaling Prompts: To meet your partner as they actually are and notice where old hurts are shaping what you see.
✨ Practice for the Week: Meeting the Person in Front of You
When our partner sets off an old alarm, we often stop seeing them and start seeing everyone who hurt us before. This practice helps you feel the difference in your body between the person in front of you and the ghost your nervous system reached for.
A lot of our reactions in relationship are old memory wearing a new face. Someone uses a tone, makes an expression, goes quiet, and suddenly we are five years old again, feeling unseen or dismissed. This practice is a way to catch that moment in the body and gently come back to the present, where the real person is standing.
Set aside about ten minutes and find a space where you won't be interrupted.
Step 1: Settle. Find a comfortable seat or lie down somewhere you feel at ease. Take a few slow breaths, letting each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Step 2: Arrive. Let your body come to rest. Feel the surface underneath you holding your weight. Let your shoulders drop and your jaw release.
Step 3: Recall. Bring to mind a recent moment when your partner set off a strong reaction in you. Not the biggest one, just one that still has a little charge. Let the scene come back in enough detail that you can feel it.
Step 4: Feel. Notice what shows up in your body as you replay it. Maybe a heat in the chest, a knot in the belly, a pulling back. This is your nervous system doing what it learned to do long ago. Keep it company for a few breaths without trying to change it.
Step 5: Trace. Ask yourself whose face or voice is underneath this feeling. A parent, a caregiver, someone from long ago. See if the reaction belongs more to them than to the person you were actually with. Let whatever comes be okay.
Step 6: Separate. Now picture your partner and that old figure standing side by side. Notice that they are not the same person. Let your body register the difference between the one who hurt you then and the one who is here with you now.
Step 7: Return. Bring your partner back into focus on their own. Look at them as they actually are today, with their own face, their own history, their own growing. See if you can meet them as someone new rather than someone you have already decided about.
Step 8: Notice. Take a moment to feel how you are now compared to when you began. Notice any more room, any more ease, any more clarity in how you see them.
You will not catch every old projection in the moment, and you don't need to. Simply learning to feel the difference in your body is the work, and it gets easier each time you practice. Be gentle with yourself as you learn to see clearly.
Journal Prompts
Think of a recent moment when your partner set off a strong reaction in you. Whose voice or face came up from your past in that moment? What did the reaction have to do with them, and what did it have to do with someone from long ago?
What is a story you've been telling yourself about your partner? Where did that story first begin, and is it still true today?
When you were a child, what did you most long to be seen and understood for? How does that longing show up in your relationship now?
Write about a way your partner has changed or grown that you may have overlooked. What have you missed by holding onto an old version of them?
What patterns from your family history are you ready to stop carrying forward?
Imagine looking at your partner with completely fresh eyes, as if meeting them for the first time. What do you notice that you've stopped noticing?
So much of what we call conflict has very little to do with the present moment.
We look at our partner and see the parent who dismissed us. We hear a tone and feel the sting of being unheard at five years old. The person in front of us gets covered over by everyone who came before them.
Learning to see clearly is the work. It's noticing when you're reacting to a ghost instead of the person actually standing there. It's letting your partner be new, again and again, instead of the story you've already written about them.
And it goes both ways. The more honestly you can see them, the more room there is for them to see you.
This week, when the old feeling rises, pause and look again at who is actually in front of you.
Love,
Shay 💕
P.S. If you're ready to move beyond old relationship patterns and create a stronger, more connected partnership, The Path of Conscious Love will show you how. Learn more here.