Are You (& Your Partner) Falling Short?
{Photo via Vintage Everyday}
By Helen Betty Corday
All relationships are mirrors.
If you feel your partner is falling short, it invariably means you are too.
Mirrors. The world is a hall of mirrors. When some random person really gets under my skin and on my nerves, it almost invariably means they are reflecting a dysfunctional behavior that I share with them. It’s not them, it’s me.
Well, it’s both of us, but I’m just going to own my shit and you can own yours.
So when someone really gets under my skin, they’re often doing me a favor by holding up a mirror and giving me the opportunity to consciously recognize the behavior in myself.
Then I have two choices: I can either continue being a hypocrite or change myself.
The truth of the matter is that if you have a dysfunctional partner, then you are also a dysfunctional partner, no exception. If you don’t think so, that is because you are hiding your dysfunction in a victim mentality.
Here is some good news though… you and your partner are a perfect match. Yep, a perfect match for bringing up each other’s shit.
You can either spend your time throwing that shit at each other like mindless apes, or you can seize the opportunity to own your shit, then evolve beyond it to expand your consciousness and your heart.
Oftentimes, too, I admire and feel love for others who have qualities or attributes I wish I had but can’t see in myself or I’m failing to cultivate for myself. There can be a neediness to the admiration that seeks to be with a lover so that person can make up for the things you lack but wish you had.
Trying to live vicariously through you partner’s better qualities so you can avoid working on those areas yourself is a fast track to codependency.
There’s always more to look at in these mirrors. A mirror will always illuminate a lack of self-love.
Facing your reflection
The way your partner loves you is a reflection of how you love yourself.
Like many women, I have a terrible relationship with my reflection. Looking in the mirror is an exercise in self-abuse.
I wanted to love my reflection, but instead of working on the lack of love, I made mental lists about what needed to change in my reflection so that I could love it in the future.
I did not know how to break the habit of fault-finding. I did not know how to end the constant background noise of self-denigrating criticism.
How do we learn to love ourselves?
I had been contemplating this question for ages, and an effective answer always eluded my grasp.
Then I started practicing Tantra. There is a Tantric practice called Transfiguration. It is a practice of a meditative eye-gazing with your partner where you look at each other from your heart, with all your love.
I don’t currently have a partner, so I was only practicing this with strangers during Tantra workshops. This simple practice is so powerful that I was able to have transcendent experiences with almost total strangers.
Then I went home and didn’t practice it because there was no one around to practice with — or so I thought. Then my Tantra teacher, Sean O’Faolain, suggested a mirror.
Transfiguration in the mirror every morning has changed my relationship with my reflection, with myself, immensely.
Instead of looking with the intent to identify my flaws, to cover up or add to my to-do list of eradication, I look at myself with the intent to give and receive love. That’s it.
The sole purpose of looking in the mirror for those ten minutes is to share love with myself as I am. Some days it is harder than others, but I can drown out that fault-finding background noise with a shouty inner voice saying “I Love You” on repeat, till I start to feel it.
When it works and I break through the negative thought cycle, I see a totally different person in the mirror, yet she looks exactly the same.
In that moment I see myself, my reflection. She is beautiful and I love her.
As the proverb goes — you cannot be truly loved until you truly love yourself.
If your relationships with others are causing you more harm than good, perhaps you should start by looking in the mirror.
*****
“Helen Betty Corday has really lived” — that’s what she wants her epitaph to read. Well, either that, or “the trouble with trouble is that it usually starts out as fun.” She’s a seeker of truth, an explorer of curiosities, a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, a traveler, an adventurer of inner and outer realms, a student of history, a hedonist, a mother, a whore, a warrior, a lover, a fool, a sage. She hopes her words connect her heart and mind to yours across the ether.
{What Do You See?}
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