Myths that ruin relationships

LIFE

I am in the most amazing relationship of my life. This is partly because I walked out of my door one day to be in nature, following a nudge to be outside, and an inner urge to walk.

And walking down the street and back, I met Carol, whom within several months revealed herself to be the love of my life.

We are together because we are deeply committed to a life of meaning and love.

And because we agree and realize that you can’t have love without being present.

And because we want to live in a bigger context of higher truth (which we call God, but you don’t need to) and service.

And because we realized, even though we’d found the impossible “miracle” love our lives, there was work to do.

And we do it.

Daily.

You can, too.

3 Myths That Ruin Relationships

One reason Carol and I “work” on our relationship each day is that without doing something to keep love alive, it tends to get pushed aside or grow stale or go beyond stale-- to sour.

Even though we each found a partner far beyond our wildest dreams (as I say, Carol met 18 of my 15 criteria, and those 15 were off the charts), and have incredible compatibility and joy and growth together, we have found ways to ruin our relationship.

Which the “games” of this book—it really isn’t “work”—have been invented and/or honed to forestall.

In face, our first “date” which we didn’t know was a date, started as an hour and a half lunch to discuss a book I was writing on relationships. This book was the culmination of forty years of studying and practicing mindfulness techniques, communications game, and the amazing opportunity I had in the late 90’s to work with the amazing Byron Katie, perhaps the happiest woman in the world.

This book had many games close to what you’ll get in here. We communicated via those games well enough so that the hour and a half turned into twelve hours and we were sure we’d struck it rich with the one we’d been almost afraid to admit could be there for us.

And even with the glory of our merging, and the relief that there was someone out their beyond our wildest dreams, we still found ourselves messing things up.

The book needed some fixing. Because, even with three hundred pages of great practices, we were still occasionally going astray.

How?

We did that in the normal human way, by believing three false myths that ruin many a relationship.

Here are three myths that ruin relationships:

Myth One: If it’s not perfect, it sucks.

Or: You can’t occasionally hate the one you love.

Or: You can’t have bad moments

Myth Two: It’s all the other person’s part,

Or: I love you just the way you are, now change.

Or: If you’d just change, then I could be happy.

Myth Three: There’s no way out of this mess.

So avoid, go numb, be tortured, have an affair, leave, wait it out.

And myth in this book isn’t one of those myth’s to guide your life by, like the Myth of Trouble/ Learning/ and Redemption.

These three myths are of the fraudulent thinking sort that lead you away from the life you are meant to live, that derail you from the happiness you are meant to experience, that make impossible the more fun and sexier and deep and spiritual relationship that you really want.

Myth #3 is false. There are many ways out.

I’m offering seven.

Seven Ways Out

Liking and Loving

Being present

Movement with Awareness and Brain Plasticity

Contrasting complaining to reality

Humor with complaints

Complaints transformed to a goal, especially a “we” goal

Touch

These ways all lead you back to your real self, from which you can love better, live easier and more productively, and be happier.

All but touch can be used with huge benefit in any relationship in your life.

All are fun, a shift from how life is usually lived.

What are we waiting for?