HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS: WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

By Elizabeth Reninger

Healthy relationships are an important component of a balanced, nourishing, and overall healthy lifestyle. So what makes a relationship — particularly of the intimate sort — healthy? Let’s explore …

TIPS FROM A TRUE RELATIONSHIP GURU

Whether or not you’re a fan of Eckhart Tolle, his playful insights into one-sided love relationships have much to offer, in terms of cultivating an attitude and understanding supportive of a healthy marriage or another form of a long-term relationship. With his characteristic wisdom and wit, Eckhart addresses the questions: when is “falling in love” more like “falling into ignorance”? And what makes a marriage or other intimate partnership a truly healthy expression of both wisdom and love?

INFATUATION WITH AN IMAGE

Oftentimes (though not always) our yearning for a romantic partner comes from a sense of lack. We feel unfulfilled, incomplete, not yet whole — and so we seek a lover or spouse to remedy this nagging sense of lack: to make us feel whole and complete. We convince ourselves that the solution to our feelings of lack or loneliness lies in another person — and that this other person is the true source of lasting happiness and fulfillment.

When we meet someone with whom we have a nice “chemistry,” we begin to imagine them as the one who is going to complete us. And, simultaneously, they begin to imagine us as being the one who is going to complete them, make them whole. So are we actually in love with one another — or simply becoming infatuated with an image: with our imagined idea of having found the solution to our feelings of lack?

AFTER THE HONEYMOON

As we get to know one another, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain our original image of them. Their human foibles and imperfections cause us to doubt whether they really do have the capacity to provide the deep and lasting happiness and fulfillment for which we so genuinely yearn. We wonder: can this person really complete me? The sense of lack and insecurity creeps back into our experience.

As the rosy glow of the honeymoon period begins to fade, we may find our initial adoration being interrupted by moments of boredom, indifference, hostility, aggression, or withdrawal. At times, it might even feel as though the love has turned into hate. This can leave us feeling disappointed, frustrated and a bit confused — because how can “true love” have hate as its flip-side?

Is this a sign that the partnership or marriage is “on the rocks”? Or is it a golden opportunity to get to know our spouse — and ourselves — much more deeply?

WHAT IS TRUE LOVE?

The lesson to be learned is that true love can never be found externally — in a person, place, or thing existing outside of ourselves. That’s the bad news. The good news is that true love is who we are, essentially. True love is who we are already! In the very core of our being, we are always and already whole and complete. We are true love — and we can experience this directly.

Yoga, meditation, and mindfulness training are tools for discovering the true love that lies at the core of our being: the “still silent voice” of infinite peace and joy, which is the fulfillment we most deeply desire.

Once we realize that “true love” is flowing already in and as the core of our being, then our capacity for loving-kindness, friendliness, appreciation, playfulness, passion, mutual respect, and true intimacy (i.e. all the components of a healthy marriage) naturally returns and can be skillfully cultivated. We’ve replaced our projected image of the other with true communion, and we’ve replaced our insecure neediness with genuine curiosity and confidence.

And now the true celebration can begin …

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