Enlightened Romantic Relationships (Part 2)

(Q) I’m very loving, very attentive, very caring. I make myself emotionally available to my partner. I attend to him. I’m a good listener. I tell him what my needs are. I do all of this and more. And I do it consistently. You just don’t know my partner. If you did, I don’t think you would say that he doesn’t need to do anything. He needs to do a lot of things to help make this relationship work. I’m doing all the giving. What would you say to me, to that?

(A) Codependency is not enlightened. Being a victim is not enlightened. Being a martyr is not enlightened either…not when we are talking about romantic relationships at least, which we are. How do I know? I suffered, once upon a time from each of these perhaps ego-based maladies. My partners suffered from my being those things, even more. You are lucky your partner has not left you yet. Perhaps he is holding out hope that you will one day finally see the light and stop being what some might call codependent (I am trying to stop my use of that and many other labels), stop being a victim and stop being a martyr and that you will finally become a partner who can meet him where he is at rather than being a schoolteacher always scolding him for what you perceive as his deficits.

Perhaps he is waiting for you to become a partner to him the person and not a partner to your idea of who he should be. Let me be even more blunt here. I can do that in this case because you are describing how I was in romantic relationships for many years and you are a good friend who I can be direct with and with the awareness you are grounded enough not to take it personally. Perhaps he is waiting for you to grow up so that he can finally be in a relationship with an adult. His patience may ultimately be the salvation of your relationship. If not, your holier than thou attitude will certainly lead to its demise. And if/when it does end, all of your friends will ask you, “How did you stay with that a-hole for so long?” Unfortunately, they will be directing their query to the wrong partner.

I believe, in great measure, you are indeed the vast majority of those things you say you are, that you possess many of those wonderful qualities. You however, lost me when you said “he needs to do a lot of things…..” If you had said instead something along the lines of-- “How can I be these things in a way where he can more easily receive them?”-- you would not have gotten that little sermonette from me. My response would have been very different. Once your litany morphed into a Janet Jackson song (What have you done for me lately?), it was literally, all she wrote.

My advice, leave those sentiments to the top 40 charts. Enlightened relationships usually require the direct opposite of the messages contained in your average pop “love song” or any other kind of pop song for that matter. Again, enlightenment is an inner process not an outer one. That includes the habit of always looking for things outside us that need to be changed. The only important changes for you, for me and for everyone, come from within.

Share |