What makes a good relationship?

We love and we grow through our relationships and the unfolding love stories of our lives.

The essence of every good story, no matter what genre, according to Shawn Coyne is the necessity to have obligatory scenes.  In a love story we have two people and we know that they are in love because of the obligatory kiss or scene which describes their love.   Of course, there will be the challenges and the character’s internal and external triggers to be overcome along the journey through their love story.

And in order for the story to work we want to see change in the characters because that is what compels us to turn each page in the story.    We are willing them on to take a certain action and if they get so close but then let go due to fear we feel their sadness and sense of frustration. Perhaps there is a surge of jealousy when they realise that they made the wrong choice and see their lover with another.  We will them on to have the courage to make amends and let the other person know how they really feel.

Our personal love stories can be quite similar, there is as object of our desire, we have challenges and obstacles to overcome and growth to happen in order for manifestation of what we want.

We often sacrifice things to support another and sometimes the sacrifice is in letting go.       

Our relationships are what challenge us most in our lives and allow us real growth whether these relationships are with our parents, our siblings, our lovers or our children.  It is said that we hurt the ones we love the most.    And the reason we do this is because of the invisible “space” we know is there for us to be ourselves, to be vulnerable and to just be with those closest to us.

A child who behaves well at school may come home after a day mentally exhausted by the effort it has taken them and let all the pent-up energy held in during the day out.    It may erupt like a volcano and leave havoc in its wake.

In that situation there is growth for the other family members.   Don Miguel in his book the Four Agreements tells us not to take things personally.     This is something most of us struggle with in some form or another, it may not be in every part of our life but just the part that holds a wound.     It’s like this wound gets pierced when someone takes their frustrations out on us and we take it personally.

An essential ingredient in any relationship is support.

Whether or not support is present is crucial to any love story.    True emotional support in a relationship allows for the other to grow in whatever way they require in order to fulfill their purpose and reach their full potential.

While I write this Venus is in retrograde in our skies.   Venus of course is the ultimate Goddess of Love, and those who track her journey through the skies describe how we feel this in our personal myths.    When Venus disappears from our skies during her journey, we may liken this to the mythological journey to the underworld of Inanna.

We can see this panning out in our own personal love stories when we too may find ourselves being stripped bare of what makes us happy, we may feel as if everything we know is being taken from us with or without our consent, we may feel we have to sacrifice too much.

However, no change happens without loss.

This loss may be dropping our limiting beliefs that tell us we will never find the man or woman of our dreams.    We may feel real wounding around this belief because if we have never felt real love in the past.      As a child we may have felt unloved, unseen and unheard and carry these beliefs into our grown-up relationships.     However, just as Venus re appears back in our skies and Inanna comes back from the underworld, we too can rise up from those stories refreshed and renewed.

We may have had the courage to strip back the layers of story that kept us stuck in our own underworld, time and time again getting the same old results from the same old stories, getting into relationships where we feel unloved, unheard and unseen.

“I offer you a chance to re-write your love story and ask yourself”

I offer you a chance to re-write your love story and ask yourself

• What love story do you want to rewrite now?

• Who are the characters in this story or who do you want them to be?

• What do you know you need to shed in order to fulfil these desires?

• Do you need to allow yourself or another space to grow?

• Do you need to allow yourself follow your desires regardless of how the other person reacts remembering in a true love story each person allows the other to be supported and nourished in order for the relationship to flourish?

• What story will you shed?

• How do you want to appear to the world through your relationships? Do you want your relationships to reflect true love and intimacy and allowing?

What can hold us back from writing our personal love story is that the prospect of loss can be far more powerful than the potential gain.  This is why we need stories, to help us realise we can grow, we can change and we can rewrite the love stories of our lives.

As always the first step is become aware of the personal love story we are in and decide if we are living to our fullest potential in all of our relationships.   

I invite you to join me for a week of rewriting your personal love story, subscribe to email list for more details over the coming weeks and to get my weekly inspirational, empowering email.