A partner relationship is also a spiritual path. It’s a journey to learn to empower each other to transform and grow, to accepting the reflection in each other as an opportunity to get to know who we really are.
Being in a relationship requires work. It doesn’t mean you have to force things or swim against the current. But it’s definitely not just like laying down in the water and floating.
One of the challenges I find more interesting about a relationship is what I call the symbiotic effect: There is two individuals that come together with different habits, different memories and scars, different patterns and conditionings, different stories, experiences and belief systems. Sometimes those differences are big sometimes not. Those differences need to learn to dance together, through the waltz of compassion and gratitude, so one can neutralize the noises of judgement and control. Those two individuals get together and all their energies and behaviors start to mix, and each of them starts to find itself diluting into the other, so a battle for not loosing the individual self takes place. The thing is that there is no recipe, there is no one way of making things work out. Each couple finds its own way, its own secret. What I can say about what I have experienced, is that there is no way our individual self will not be influenced by the other. The relationship becomes a symbiotic path, like the birds when they fly together in a “V shape”, whatever one of them does, affects the speed and direction of the rest, and they simply follow each other because it makes the flight easier. Actually, what is even more interesting is that the leader is not always the same, they shift places. Some birds choose naturally the right and others naturally the left, and so the flight is always efficient. In a relationship, this type of organization and support happen, making both parts deeply interconnected. But sometimes the symbiosis intertwine its parts so deeply that it becomes like two rivers intersected which join together in one and become unable to return to the original rivers they were before. So what happens when one realizes its own self has changed without a conscious decision? Many things might happen! We might blame the other, or get defensive, feel lost, guilty or victim... but at some point one might take responsibility and find one true individual self inside. There are many ways of finding oneself back, each relationship is unique and will find its own flow to figure things out. There is only one requirement: one must be willing to do the work and trust, no matter what the results will be. Doesn’t it sound like Abhyasa and Vairagya?