#109 - How long do you struggle to make a relationship work and when do you let go?
I have observed couples that will spend years trying to make a relationship work. Often they try to keep something alive that they should just let die off.
Either a relationship is great or it isn’t. All your “Must Haves” are there or they aren’t. You can fight to hang on to a relationship because it is mostly good, maybe even mostly great. In the end, if the entire relationship is not great, if your mate doesn’t have all that you need (or you don’t have all that you partner needs) in a relationship, one of two things will happen.
1) You will stick with a relationship that is less than extraordinary or
2) The relationship will fail and you will have wasted a lot of time and energy.
Does this sound harsh? I hope so! All too often we try to sugar coat our unhappiness, dissatisfaction and relationship struggles. We want to give it every chance to survive! We don’t want to take a realistic look at the relationship to see if it is hurting us. We spend countless hours trying to justify working on issues and trying to align core values. The bottom line is that if your core values don’t align to begin with, it doesn’t make any difference how hard you try to conform to your partner’s needs and vise versa, the relationship will never be good, much less extraordinary.
The belief systems we each develop play a huge role in the relationships we choose. Most people date from a perspective of scarcity. For example; All the good women/men are already married. My city is listed as one of the top ten worst for dating. I’m not good enough, pretty enough, tall enough, smart enough, etc. While some of these can be characterized as potential self-esteem issues, they all have one thing in common. Scarcity. Either there is a lack of good people to date or I lack some characteristic that makes me datable. When you focus on scarcity, that is exactly what you will get. There will be a lack of good people to date and you will not have or develop the characteristics that make you datable.
However, when you shift your thinking to that of abundance, you will start to find plenty of great people to date and you will recognize your great qualities that make you datable and desirable. And, when you are honest with yourself, you will also recognize the features you want to change or improve in yourself to make you even more datable and desirable. This paradigm shift is not necessarily an easy task and can be time consuming. It starts by making a conscious effort to recognize the negative effects thoughts of scarcity have on your life and removing the negative from your life. There are volumes and volumes of information on making these life changing shifts so I will let you do your due diligence and find what works best for you.
As I have said numerous times in my blogs, time is precious. There is little reason to try to force a relationship to work because of whatever lies you want to tell yourself. Shift your paradigm to that of abundance and start to see all the possibilities for strong healthy relationships in your life.