Ask Deepak: Relationships as reflections

February 27, 2009

Question:
I have read so many books…many of them yours. All say that relationships are your Self reflecting back to you. I have never had a healthy relationship with a man. I had a childhood that seems to have left me feeling unlovable. Abuse and no real concern expressed for its impact upon me. I have a turbulent, very one sided relationship with my husband. I stay because I keep reading that he is only reflecting back to me my own self and convince myself that maybe he is normal and I am the one that is totally messed up inside. Other days I am convinced he is a full blown narcissist. I try to change myself but it is very difficult with him continuing to be hurtful, impossible to please, and chronically dissatisfied with me on some level. Yet, he tells me that I am actually the one who is hurtful, impossible to please and chronically dissatisfied. I have spent so much time trying to diffuse and avoid conflict with him that I no longer even know what the truth is anymore.

How do I come to terms with the idea he is only reflecting back to me the most awful parts of me? Doesn’t he have to face his own dysfunctions as well? Could it be that I am reflecting HIM back at him and feeling out of balance constantly because he brings me to that level of dissatisfaction and misery with criticism and constant focus and discussion about HIS needs and wants and upsets?

I have relatively healthy and supportive relationships with others but people are tiring of listening to my pain and frustration and my unwillingness to act decisively on my own behalf. I stay because I keep reading it is only myself reflecting back to me. Change me and the relationship with change…but so far it isn’t working. I have become very angry and otherwise numb and this is making the idea I am causing all of this all the more plausible to me.

Please help me sort out this spiritual teaching. I don’t think I am a bad person. I do my best. But the men in my life have always been awful to me. I don’t understand how these mean men, some of them physically abusive, have for my entire life been there because there is something bad in me. I self reflect, read books, try to be aware, “in the moment” – let go of the past -it does not exist, reflect on what I am grateful for and give thanks to all the abundance I do have. I don’t understand what I am doing (or not doing) to cause all of this. Thank you for any advice you can give on this.
Answer:
You have said that your childhood that left you feeling unlovable. The idea that relationships are reflections of yourself is simply that the feelings that get triggered in you by your partner –that you are unlovable—are precisely the unhealed feelings you harbor inside your own heart already. The idea of the mirror of relationships doesn’t always mean that if your partner is hard to please, mean, and messed up, that you are all those things and he isn’t. You both might be or possible neither. But what is certain beyond the theatrics and recriminations is that your partner will unerringly and usually unconsciously awaken all the old hurts in you that you need healing, time after time after time until it is healed.
The relationship will continuously bring it to your attention, and then it is up to you to do the work on yourself to heal it. That takes persistence, honesty, diligence and hard work. It requires more than reading books and practicing gratitude and living in the moment. You will likely need a regular spiritual practice to cultivate and reconnect you to your essential lovability. You may want to incorporate asanas, pranayama, massage, counseling, exercise, a cleansing diet, journaling, finding an artistic outlet, and using affirmations to engage the full range of healing so that you can establish a new sense of self and lovability inside you. When that shifts, it will invariably change the way you relate to men.
Love,
Deepak

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