Steps To Receiving Successful Relationships

By Kelly Tobey

If relationship is only considered successful once it has lived up to a preconceived ideal about what relationship “should” be like, it is a set up for the relationship to never be good enough.  This is because its present state is continually being compared to some ideal that it does not live up to. This can set up undesirable stress, created by focusing on what is not working rather than focusing on what is working.

For the purposes of this article I will define a successful relationship as one that is in the process of expanding towards more fulfillment. Any relationship that is in forward motion can be seen as successful. So to determine a relationship’s health, look at whether there is potential for forward movement, or if it is stuck in a cycle of stagnation or deterioration.

The following is a list of tools that can support a relationship in its movement towards more fulfillment. Yet just reading the steps will make little difference in your life. Action is required. I will suggest that if you understand and fully live out several of these steps you will take huge strides forward in your relationship life. If you understand and fully live out all of these steps you will have an amazing relationship life that continues to expand with love and appreciation. 

If you comprehend their value you may want to seek out support for the integrating of these steps.

  1. Give your dedication to following heartfelt intuition priority over any commitments you have made that do not have their foundation built on input from your heartfelt intuition.
  1. Check to see if you have fully chosen your partner. To fully choose someone empowers yourself and them. If you have not chosen them yet, can you now? If both parties are just settling for the relationship there is no foundation for passion. If one has chosen and the other has not, it can breed insecurity for the one not chosen and a lack of willingness to really face any relational difficulties in the person who is just settling (because part of them never fully shows up).
  1. Release any expectations you have placed on your partner or on yourself.
  1. Let go of any tendency to compare your relationship with what you think you see in other people’s relationships. Seeing yours as “less than” can lead you into disrespecting your partner and yourself. Seeing yours as “better than” can lead you into disrespecting others. Your relationship is unique and is not meant to be the same as someone else’s.
  1. Make love a priority over holding on to being right.
  1. Face arising issues fully. If temptations to leave the relationship surface, go back to your heartfelt intuition for guidance. Get clear. Are you fully in, or fully out? Being conflicted between the two will drain your energy and weaken your ability to face the issue.
  1. Do not make a decision to end a relationship while in the middle of conflict. Wait until you are centered in your heart again and then ask what is most appropriate for you. Your intuition will know if a problem has arisen in order to be faced and worked through, or if it has arisen to create an opportunity for you to make a heartfelt boundary. Your fear and distress will not know the answer. Decide from a loving place, not a fearful one.
  1. Open to receiving what is best for you. Do not let a belief in unworthiness hold you back.
  1. Honor heart inspired boundaries. Yours and your partners.
  1. Be accountable. Whatever you are making your partner wrong for is really your issue to deal with. Own your part in everything.
  1. Bless your partner frequently with your gratitude. Anytime you are stuck, or in the middle of an argument, the last thing you may want to do is express gratitude, but if done sincerely, it will shift the dynamic, remind you that you are both on the same team, and create room for solutions.
  1. Make time for uninterrupted listening and uninterrupted speaking.
  1. Give yourself full permission to feel all of your feelings.
  1. Follow through on your heart-inspired dedications. Build trust in yourself.
  1. Ask (but do not demand) for trustworthiness from yourself and your partner, but do not blindly depend on it. We humans have wounds that lead to us making mistakes sometimes. We cannot always be counted on.
  1. Make time for playfulness.
  1. Risk sharing your shadow fears. Do not keep secrets. Hiding parts of yourself from your partner will leave you doubting your lovability. If you are fully exposed and still loved the doubt leaves.
  1. Give what you want to get. Receive what you are trying to give. When you give, do it for the satisfaction of it. If you give in order to earn something in return (even if it is appreciation you are trying to get) you turn your gift into a debt along with all of a debt’s inherent baggage.
  1. Surround yourself with supportive friends who will not take sides if conflict arises in your relationship, but rather will love and wish the best for both you and your partner.
  1. Trust the process of your relationship. If you have dedicated to the relationship from a heart inspired intuitive knowing, trust that whatever comes up for you to deal with is part of the process of you learning to receive even more love.
  1. Release any attachments to having the relationship fit a certain form. Open to the creative uniqueness of your personal relationship with your partner.
  1. If you have guidelines for what you want in relationship, clearly express them to your partner. Do not expect them to know of, or agree with, your hidden agenda.
  1. Discuss what relationship means to you and ask what it means to your partner. Your partner came from a different set of circumstances than you. It is likely you will have differences to get clear about.
  1. Do not try to control. Make your partners freedom to follow their integrity just as important as your own.
  1. Invite all your relational interactions to be filled with integrity and love.
  1. Look for and acknowledge the essence in your partner and yourself.
  1. When disagreements turn into power struggles or into fights, it is a distraction from accessing a deeper underlying emotional feeling. Having the courage to drop into the emotion opens a doorway to re-connection with yourself and with your partner.
  1. Do not shame yourself or your partner when you make mistakes. Guilt is a form of self-hatred and of self-indulgence. No one benefits from feeling guilty. Guilt shields you from the pain of awareness. The way out: accept responsibility for your actions. Learn from them and move forward. Forgive yourself. Apologize where needed. Rededicate to loving action or non-action.
  1. Give from a place of true service not from sacrifice or compromise. Being true to your core-self is being true to your relationship. Your partner cannot be deeply fulfilled as a result of your inappropriate sacrifice.
  1. Face and heal your history so you have more energy to bring to the present relationship.
  1. If you have a belief in Spirit invite in its support for the relationship.
  1. Be aware that in many loving relationships people start fighting when they get intimate. The conflict is actually the result of the love wanting to push you through the wall of separation that your ego has constructed. Remember that conflict represents an opportunity to heal an old pattern and learn to be more loving.
  1.  You do not have to try to hold on to your relationship. If it is meant for you, you can receive it.  Possessiveness is a form of doubt. We cling to what we think we have because we doubt we are worthy of it. If we knew our own worth, we would know there is no need to cling.
  1. When your partner speaks to you and you feel yourself not wanting to hear it, try letting it in. You do not have to agree that they are right. Just take the risk of listening as if they could possibly be speaking some truth and then see what happens.
  1. Be aware that just because your partner does not love you the way you want them to, it does not mean they are not loving you with all they have.
  1. If you feel inspired to do things that activate your partner’s joy, do it without attachment to results. A damaging assumption you can make about a love relationship is that you and your partner are supposed to make each other happy. This assumption makes no more sense than if you thought you could exercise for your lover to keep him or her physically fit. Each of you is responsible for your own happiness. And if you are anything like every other human on the planet you will not be happy all the time, so please do not get fixated on whether or not you are both happy all the time.
  1. Pushing at our partner to change into what we want them to become is typically counterproductive. When we are grounded in the recognition of our lovability, it is our natural process to make expansive changes that reflect the gifts of our core essence. Ironically this process of change slows down if the love of primary people in our lives is presented as conditional on us changing. The message is that we are not lovable as we are. This can activate a collapsing of our energy and/or a defensive stance that attempts to prove our lovability. On the other hand, when we know we are already lovable as we are, our energy is expanded and we can more easily relax into making those enhancing changes that naturally want to unfold.
  1. Within your times of physical contact include times of non-sexual touch. This allows for the body to relax into physical nurturing as in contrast to the body always building sexual energy once touching starts.
  1. When you truly feel sexual, offer it freely. Do not degrade your sexuality into a bargaining tool. If your partner says no to your sexual offer, do not assume they are saying no to you. They may just be saying no to their own sexuality at the moment.
  1. Speak freely with your partner about your thoughts, questions, and feelings around sexuality. Fear or discomforts are not valid reasons for withholding. Risk creating more freedom through openness.
  1. Do not make your partner your source of worth. Approval is uplifting when given freely, but if it is demanded in an attempt to feed an approval addiction the sincerity can be questioned, leaving the approval unsatisfying.
  1. Be cautious about attempting to be your partner’s “therapist”. Yes you may clearly see their blind spots (just as they can see yours) but any agenda you carry about them seeing those blind spots turns you into a poor therapist. If issues arise that you cannot resolve by yourselves, do not bury them; bring in a skilled, supportive third party to guide you through. False pride keeps couples isolated in attempting to deal with problems on their own. If you were told that good relationships should be able to handle all relationship issues on their own, you were given misleading advice. Relationships do not come without issues. Seeking help is the sign of wisdom and of a healthy relationship.
  1. The only person you can truly change in a relationship is yourself. It is not your partner’s job to change to please you. Do not waste time and energy trying to “fix” your partner. If they want your support or guidance in initiating change they can let you know. In the meantime focus on self-change.

 

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