I recently watched an Esoteric Women’s Health presentation by Natalie Benhayon on relationship with self and others, for the purpose of evolving together. In her presentation, Natalie spoke about the intent behind the choices we make to be in a relationship.
With this I realised that I have never chosen a relationship to evolve.
I have chosen to be in relationships for love – true love and the emotional kind too – but I have never consciously chosen a relationship to evolve. By this I mean knowing I am amazing and I have so much to give, and choosing to be with someone who is willing to grow and evolve with me too. By choosing to commit to deepening and expanding our love together, to letting go of old patterns and behaviours, and moving on from past hurts. And to never putting a lid on the level of love we can and are able to express.
Even relationships I have been in and look back on, with deep love and care, I chose from need. I was looking for someone else to bring me what I did not want to be responsible for bringing to myself – and that was love.
I thought I was open and willing to evolve, to work through issues that came up and to actively develop our love together, but the truth was I didn’t want to take responsibility for being love first. There was a hurt, a lack of trust and commitment, and a fear of opening up.
I thought it was safer and easier to let my partner in so far, then shut them out. I didn’t let them see me in full all the time because I was scared of getting hurt. There were moments I would fully open up and be the love that I am, and then I would return to holding it back, like a ransom: if you are love with me, then I will be love with you too. What an exhausting way to live for us both.
The truth is, it is holding back love that actually hurts.
In the past I wouldn’t always speak up when I knew things weren’t right in a relationship due to a lack of self worth, but also because of the potential of being on my own, the fear of being rejected and not being loved.
I now understand rejection has nothing to do with the other person rejecting me; it is love we reject, not the person. To reject love, we first have to reject the fullness of the relationship we have with ourselves by ignoring, dulling down or avoiding committing to and deepening the love we feel for ourselves.
With this understanding I am learning about evolving relationships on a whole new level – and with that I mean all relationships – not only with partners but also with myself, my family, friends, work colleagues and strangers too.
I now know in every relationship there is the potential for us all to evolve.
Inspired by Natalie Benhayon and Serge Benhayon – and the deep care, truth, love, integrity and commitment they live.
By Gyllian Rae, 37, Scotland
Further Reading:
Starting a New Relationship – The Pictures we Hold
Fairy-Tales – why a romantic relationship is so hard to find
Something Beautiful Part 1 – My Unfolding and Being All of Me with a Man
1,333 Comments
What would life look like if we went to work to evolve and then how we interact with the staff, my feeling is that our way of living would turn the corner towards the most amazing way of connecting with others, so thank you Gyl, this is definitely a subject worth delving into.
” I was looking for someone else to bring me what I did not want to be responsible for bringing to myself – and that was love.” Nailed it!! this is so true and you speak for many.
When we have understanding that a relationship or relationships are constellated to support us to deepen the love for ourselves we realise they are golden opportunities to deeply appreciate. I get to understand then that evolution is the true purpose of every relationship in different ways however the same learning is there in each and that is to accept and surrender to a greater love that is to be lived.
This is so awesome to commit ‘to never putting a lid on the level of love we can and are able to express.’ Would not claim to be able to do this on a consistent basis but recognising that this is possible and getting rid of the issues that stand in the way of allowing this to happen is something that I am working on.
Great point to consider whether we’re choosing to keep evolving in all of our relationships: firstly with ourselves and then with friends, family, work colleagues, people we barely know but whose paths we cross.. every moment is an opportunity for a greater level of love to be felt and then expressed, from within.
No one hurts us. It’s the holding back our love that hurts us. It’s taken a few years and I am continuing to learn it’s mastery. But everytime I go to an issue with “what part of love has been avoided/rejected?” Or such a question. It lances the heart of the issue and stops it then and there. That’s not saying I can’t recreate it but often if I have felt the suffering the issue creates then I choose not to repeat it.
It’s a continual choosing to bring our love in full to every situation, and never holding this back, ‘The truth is, it is holding back love that actually hurts.’
Relationships are a great way for us to learn – we learn our weaknesses and our strengths and we can be massively inspired by other people who have mastered what we have not yet got to grips with.
I love how we are continually learning and becoming more aware in life, ‘Even relationships I have been in and look back on, with deep love and care, I chose from need. I was looking for someone else to bring me what I did not want to be responsible for bringing to myself – and that was love.’
Choosing relationships to evolve includes getting it ‘wrong’ because there is no wrong just an opportunity to learn – and evolve.
I love the concept of choosing a relationship to evolve, supporting one another to be more of the love and amazingness that we are.
All our conversations are either evolving us, keeping us in the same place or actually involving us – that is bringing us down…..the choice is ours.
“I now understand rejection has nothing to do with the other person rejecting me; it is love we reject, not the person.”
This hit me like a ton of bricks this morning, and has given me much to ponder upon, thank you.
Gyl a great blog and as someone that used to choose relationships to ‘make me feel better’ today, in most cases, I choose them to evolve. The difference is incredible.
Yes, it brings relationships to a whole new level, choosing them to evolve, rather than from a need, ‘I have chosen to be in relationships for love – true love and the emotional kind too – but I have never consciously chosen a relationship to evolve.’
When we hold love back it hurts for in the long run we hurt our body and all the others that we protect ourselves from.
Expressing what we actually feel is such a huge and underestimated part of relationships, and probably at the root cause of many, if not most, relationship issues. Learning first of all to decipher what it is and how we actually feel, and then to express that to another in a way that is open and transparent and not laden with emotional reaction, is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves, and all others in our lives.
Suppressing our expression is huge and for me recognising the hurts that I bring to relationships and how that impacts my choices to express or not has supported me to become more open and willing to be vulnerable.
By choosing relationships to evolve, requires us to vacate our comfort zone and to take responsibility for expressing with our all so as to create space for an allowing of a deeper and more expansive connection with each other.
We associate openness with airing angst and hurts – it needn’t be but could just be felt in sharing in absolute vulnerability and transparency.
When we develop the relationship with ourselves and are open to looking at our own evolution, and barriers that we put in the way of it, there is then the potential for deepening and expansion in our relationship with all others.
The alternative to evolving relationships is arrangement and arrangements keep us stuck in old ways of being.
The games that we play with ourselves and our partners is something that we can hold onto and not truly allow the love that is on offer. A love that is everything all of the time yet not settling for anything less. This is for every relationship that we have, to live and share the Love that we deep down know it to be.
thank you Gyl, so true, I will take this forth..Am I in my relationships standing there and claiming them to evolve me or suit my needs/protections?
Thank you for sharing Gyl, that the true purpose of relationships is evolution, such a completely different way of looking at relationships to the way most of us has viewed them from, usually from a need to be wanted to be loved. Instead we can now claim our own love for ourselves and bring true love and honesty to every relationship we have.
A relationship with it’s prime focus to evolve might not always be easy, but is the only way if we want to have a relationship based on love. A love that, just like the universe, is always expanding.
If there isn’t a purpose to evolve then abuse, boredom, stagnation, ignore each other until a need needs filling or comfortably numb with an underlying tension of ‘this isn’t it’ is what the relationship becomes. But how many can raise their hand and say they’ve experienced this in a relationship at some point in life?
Waiting for the ‘one’, the relationship that will help you evolve is like waiting for a train by the road side. The evolution we seek begins with us and our willingness to give irresponsibility up.
My relationships tended to be quite intense as they really mattered to me. It allowed me to let my partner in and allowed us to stay together.
So often we choose relationships for convenience or comfort but not often do people seek a relationship to grow, evolve and draw out all that is within. This is why there are so many relationship issues as a deeper and more truer purpose has not been connected too.
That is beautiful Gyllian, I too have been feeling this way.. Now starting to see what relationships, and the quality, I have chosen and what quality I was bringing to the relationship. An interesting proces and when honestly applied – truly evolving.
Yes, that is a very good comment – relationships are a great reflection and can tell us a lot we weren’t aware of before.
The truth is, as you have pointed out, every single relationship in our lives offers us the opportunity to evolve. We only need to be open to being honest as from here the truth will lead the way for us to deepen our connection to love, and to be more of the love we innately are.
I too can relate to looking for a relationship to bring me something, mainly to bring me a level of closeness with another. What is interesting is that often when this is on offer I reject it and push it away, I find a reason to not open up. I am learning that I need to develop this level of openess with myself first and then with others who I already have relationships with.
Yes. I am realising this too, that the commitment I have in the relationship with myself, the way I treat myself and how deeply honest I am able to be with myself allows an enriching and a simplifying in all my relationships and this is a daily, one could say moment to moment, practise.
Wow Gyllian, this is me all over. It becomes such a normal way of living in relationships you don’t question it. Until you start to feel love is so much more, and that what love you have is not yours to hold back.
Great sharing Gyl it really is so different to be in relationship for evolution. I don’t think many people on really would live this. I am truly grateful for those who do have evolution at the heart of all they do to inspire us to how much more there is in life.