So many people want to fall madly and passionately in love. But few realize that you can’t really have with others what you don’t already have with yourself. If you don’t have a bag of oranges, you can’t give a bag of oranges away. If you haven’t honed your own experience of love with the “self” that nature and nurture have gifted you with, then what you have with others might not be what you’d hope for.
Over half of marriages break up.
If you are not “self-known,” when you say “I do,” only part of you is saying it.
If you’re an adult, but you have not focused deeply, with intention, into yourself and learned who you really are—out of “choice” rather than “reactivity”—then only part of yourself is saying I do.
Let’s say that, without you knowing it, you are still emotionally run by your family-of-origin woundology. You are living in an adult body, but when you find yourself stuck an emotional corner, your younger reactive self takes over.
If we could quantify this, let’s say you are 50% self-known. You know half of who you are, but the half that you don’t know is running you. It’s not obvious when you are being run by your subterranean half, but that means when you say “I do,” only 50% of you is saying it.
The tricky part is that you have no idea that any of this is happening.
Then six months or one or two years down the road, after the lust/bonding/honeymoon period wanes, you wake up one morning and look at this person lying in the bed next to you with horror. Who are they?
They also said “I do,” but maybe only 65% of them said it. Now the other 35% that you NEVER MET has shown up. Who the heck is this person? How in the world did you end up with them? You get depressed, feel lost, and ponder leaving.
Why? The less you know yourself, the less you can give of yourself to the other. The more easily things can and do go “wrong.” P.S., this can happen with a beloved, a child, a best friend, and even with yourself. That which you don’t know has “got you.” It comes out at the worst of times and disrupts love.
Falling madly, passionately, and amazingly in love starts with loving yourself. Not in a narcissistic or borderline way, but in a self-knowing, gentle, mindful way.
That which you don’t know is an endocrine disruptor. Endocrine disruptors are not only the chemical soup you live in. They are those unconscious parts of yourself that you don’t know (Jung called it the “shadow”) and haven’t spent time figuring out, but that run your emotional depths. They will continue to do so until you figure this out and spend time fixing this root issue.
Root issues aren’t just about physical ailments. They are also what run our emotional terrain. We can live in a toxic emotional soup, too.
Consciousness is the remediation that works!
The more we own our “stuff,” the less our stuff owns us. We are then free to live more out loud and love more successfully.
I wish you lots of contentment, mindfulness, and huge big Os—with yourself or those you share them with. SEXY BRAIN is a love manual. It looks at love from all sides to give you and your loved ones the very best chance to MAKE LOVE STAY!