Freedom in Relationship~

Every couple should set each other free.~
Which just means … tell the truth about what’s really going on.

Share what’s working and what’s not, and without obligating your partner to do anything about it.

Obligation is bondage. Obligation is why relationships stagnate, or worse: causes them to implode in a fiery fight of chaos and vitriol. Ensuring an ill-fitting obligation gets met often requires some measure of force, whether passive aggression or outright violence.

Telling our personal truth instead sets everyone free.

It sets us both free to stay if we’re genuinely called to stay, and it gives us the freedom to leave if our deepest truth is to dance elsewhere.

I’m not suggesting couples shouldn’t hunker down and do the work it takes to create a genuinely thriving intimate relationship.

I’m only suggesting that we let our partners off the hook.

Perhaps the most destructive element in a relationship is the expectation that my partner will behave different than she genuinely wants to.

In the past, when my relationships were struggling to fly, it’s almost certainly because expectations were weighing down the vessel. Either mine or hers, and usually both.

It’s perfectly appropriate – healthy, even – to make requests for what we want.
But it’s futile to obligate our partners to do what they do not authentically want to do: touch us more, touch us less, do things different, see things different, think differently, want different things than they actually want, eat differently, spend their free time differently.

I get it, though. We’re scared we won’t get our needs met, so we obligate the other person to show up and make it happen. In the process, we enslave a good person. Everyone loses, even when you get what you want.

The best gift I can ever give a partner is my happiness that doesn’t depend on her behaviour.

When I make my partner responsible for my happiness, I’m saddling her with an obligation to be a certain way for my well-being.

I’ve never met a woman who seemed to enjoy wearing a saddle. I sure don’t want to wear one. Even horses don’t like wearing a saddle until they’ve been “broken.”

I don’t want a broken woman.

Consider how deeply your partner can relax – and thus offer you their authentic love – when they know they don’t have to pretend or force themselves to be a certain way just to please you.~

~Bryan Reeves
http://bit.ly/relationship-magic