'If only you weren't so...' Step Towards wholeness!

By Bill Say

Life wants us to become more whole. However, the lessons and cues that we receive are often in forms that we resist or do not recognize as such. Here is one way to embrace life's invitation.

We are often attracted to mates who possess qualities that we apparently lack. However, these same attractors can become irritants over time. Sexiness, independence, power, and vulnerability can begin to look like flirtatiousness, aloofness, domination, or weakness. We also bring our own often opposite tendencies that co-create polarities and polarized conflicts. I am independent, you are needy; I am weak, you are strong (and I resent it!), etc.

We can and sometimes need to fight and protest against the tendencies in the other. And what may be more to the point is that we need to become, in a clear way, what we dislike.

If I am paired with someone who is "needy" whereas I am relatively "independent" I may be repelled by my partner's need. However, if I look more closely I may see that I resist needing. That actually my growth lies in needing more instead of helping to constellate my partner in that role so I don't have to take ownership for my own human wants and relational and emotional needs.

Or I may protest my partner's power and apparent dominance in the relationship. But here again if I look closely I see that I need more power and by bringing in more of my power in a clear way that I can begin to break up the polarity of my role as the less strong one who is dominated by the role of the stronger one.

This, of course, is not necessarily easy work, as the qualities that we are attracted to, and think are not ours, are often marginalized and even repressed or maligned. "Need (power, sexuality, etc.), is bad; that is not who I am." So, we are challenged to go over our own edges in terms of what we are willing to risk behaviorally, feeling-wise, or identitywise.

Yes, tough work. But try. Identify the quality in your partner that you are disturbed by. Play with it sometime, make it yours, and see what may be good about it. You might try on that characteristic like trying on a part in a theater audition. Here we usually need to find the underlying energy or quality of a characteristic that superficially we have every reason to dislike. And then practice, practice, practice! Bring it out, play with it, and see the effect when you begin to bring this very quality into your relationship, into your work, into your most troubling life situations. This most challenging quality is what life is asking you to make yours in some vital way.