Are you repeating endless cycles with the same people in your life? Or do you let go of one person, only for a new person to show up in your life who has you in the same repeating situation? I said it many times before in this blog, we repeat cycles because we haven’t learned from the previous one, and we cannot change the outcome until the lesson is learned.
Women often get into relationships with the goal of keeping the relationship forever. Thus we get into situations where we focus on trying hard to relate, bond, squeeze commitment out of them, and when they are not beneficial to us, we throw ourselves into fighting even harder for situations that don’t even work. Many of us believe that the goal is the relationship. But you’re wrong. The goal of any situation or relationship is for you to learn about yourself, and find balance through the situation. The objective is never to keep people forever. It may be that in these endless cycles, what you really need to learn is self-respect, self-awareness, heal codependency, learn to allow people to be imperfect, and understand that it is not their job to serve your needs. Maybe the goal of this ordeal is for you to realize what is missing in your life and that can only come from you. Maybe you need to complete yourself without seeking the approval of others. You might need to learn to stop chasing, and understand that the impulse to chase is within you, and not about the other person at all. Maybe it is time to do some shadow work, which is actually very daunting and very painful, but without that work, you cannot progress to more advanced relationships.
I always thought that women are over-focused on preserving relationships, and not focused enough on the lesson within. Every time I was motivated by finding a relationship, seeking understanding from the other person, trying to make it last, I was simply enduring something that should not have been endured. In hindsight, I lacked the self-respect to walk away. And walking away is one of the biggest, most powerful lessons in life. Why do we have to go through a dozen painful cycles with people to figure out that walking away is about self-preservation, respect, and often the most honorable thing to do.
There may be other reasons to repeat cycles. I used to be attracted to narcissists. For years I kept whining that I am not meeting good men, but was I good? Not at all. That emotional roller-coaster seeking thrill I got from the excitement of playing with a narcissist was all mine. The problem was me, but I never addressed it because I was not able to access that part of me that needed the instability and emotional turmoil in my life. That was the purpose of dating narcissists for 20 years, and experiencing a childhood with two narcissistic parents. The goal was NEVER to figure out how to preserve relationships with toxic people, the goal was to find release, to find peace, which just happened to be always within me. As long as I kept trying to fix these unfulfilling relationships and hang onto them, I was ignoring my own power to create my own balance, to heal my codependency, to create respect for myself.
So these endless cycles that keep repeating are just lessons failed. We often think that we won when we figured out how to keep a person in our lives just a bit longer. But we are fooling ourselves. By keeping them longer we just become deluded into thinking that relationships are about winning people over, and making situations last. Have you ever tried to win a narcissist over? How beneficial was that to you? You may have gotten a temporary high in getting an extension on your connection, but what value did this underdeveloped human bring to your life?
Actually, there is value to having toxic people in our lives, but it is never the relationship itself. It is the harsh lessons, the blows to out self-esteem, the devaluation, the toxic control and manipulation, this is the curriculum we all have to pass with flying colors to find our own power and self-esteem. I recently realized that the value I got from having toxic people in my life was in the lesson itself. The reason I find it so easy to detach and turn off a narcissist is because I have years of experience battling them. I learned that instead of fighting them and feed them my attention, all I have to do is cut the supply off. The reason I now have very high self-esteem is because I learned how to use the bricks thrown at me to build my own empire. That is pure power. But had I stayed in these relationships, I would be a victim instead of a success story. The first lesson I learned was to walk away. Yes, it was difficult at first, now I do with ease.
I see people as avatars. They are in my life to help me identify what needs to be healed, what my triggers are, where my weakness lie. Often these weaknesses are emotional or psychological. And sometimes it is not about running away. Often it is about staying present in a painful situation until it makes me explode with anxiety so that I can figure out, where in the depths of my darkest self, lies that trauma that I have been ignoring. Do I need to keep this person? Not past the point of the lesson learned. Do you ever notice that once a lesson is perfectly learned, there is no longer a need for that situation or that person? They served their purpose, I thank the little monster who caused so much chaos in my life, because I found balance in that turmoil and found power within myself.
Rather than insist that people stay in your life forever and ever, or insist that they provide for you whatever is missing within you, maybe what you really need is a deeper understanding of why you keep chasing them in the first place, or why you keep staying stuck in exactly the same situations. Be it relationships with friends, family members or lovers, or financial situations we use to self-destruct, the lesson is always about YOU, that inner shadowy you that you are going to have to access one way or another. Sometimes those deep painful crashes are opportunities for you to see yourself exactly as you are. It is only when we are in deep pain, that some people actually feel, or are willing to look inside. Darkness is scary, I get it. But unless you are willing to explore that unbearable dark side, you will never get over your fear of being in the dark. And that was the whole point of crashing.
Today, relationships are shifting. Everyone seems to be complaining about online dating, digital communication, the low quality of people we meet. But, why do you participate? I hear a thousand women complaining about dating apps, yet they are all on them, as if there is no option to disconnect. Perhaps there is a desperate need within people that they are not meeting for themselves. Ask yourself why you are willing to experience the emotional abyss of online dating? Why are you willing to dive into the toxic pool of human sludge in the first place? If you have the discernment to understand these people are not healthy, why are you interacting? The answer is in you changing yourself to no longer need that experience. So many people cannot resist to dive in. It is tempting to blame the apps, but these compulsions are all theirs.
People believe they are seeking relationships, but what they are really seeking is emotional fulfillment, to fill the voids that are actually within them, to combat loneliness, to learn to relate, to develop discernment, to evolve, to raise their standards, to enforce their boundaries, to identify their own addictions, to face their own shadow, to look in the mirror. I believe that people are mirrors to who we truly are. I was dating narcissists because I had to learn that they mirror back to me my own willingness to accept selfishness, dishonesty, and low character traits- they were a reflection of my own low self-esteem. Once I figured this out about myself, I was able to raise my standards so high, that today people have to qualify to be in my life.
The purpose of dating is not to find people to keep in our lives forever. The purpose of all relationships is to find our true selves. Other people are simply characters who teach us who we are now and to identify our own negative traits, traumas and wounds so that we can heal them.
Have you ever noticed that when you stop dating, people enter your life as friends and coworkers to teach you exactly the same lessons you were learning while you were dating? That’s because the lessons never stop, and as you level up, your threshold of pain is higher. You have to learn to slay tougher demons to continuously strengthen yourself.
Years ago when I divorced, I realized that I have a lot to learn about dating. I had been out of the game for over a decade, and everything was new to me. The smartest decision I ever made was not to date for keeps. I knew that I had a lot to learn about myself, I was trying to find my own power. The men I dated were simply characters in my video game whom I had to master before I could rise to the next level. The first few years were very painful. I met some low quality people simply because I had absolutely no discernment at all. I thought that anyone “nice” deserved my attention. I studied people, but I mostly I studied my own weaknesses, my own triggers, my own ego, so that I could identify my own toxic patterns. Other people’s toxic patterns mean nothing, You are wasting your time if you are focused on what is wrong with other people. You can simply chose not to be with them. But my own toxic patters were worth their weight in gold once I was able to dig them up and understood what to do with them.
I don’t believe that we come into this world to find a person to keep forever. That’s just your own codependency talking. One person cannot possibly teach us what we need to learn. Imagine a college curriculum with only one chapter, of what value would that degree be worth to you? This is why I don’t believe in The One, so I never tried to find one. Can you see how much pain and suffering women create for themselves insisting that there is only one person in this word for them? And when a dozen men show up to teach them lessons they failed over and over again, we believe there is something wrong with us- that monster was not the one. What did I do wrong?
Today we have access to greater knowledge than ever before, because we no longer need to bind ourselves with a marriage contract to just one person. Don’t you see how much more you know about men, dating and life than your mother and grandmother? They only had one teacher, and no one to compare him to. Most women today have access to a lifetime of emotional, career and romantic experiences, and we need to be grateful for that, not disappointed with the vast options. How could a human being learn and evolve within a limited range of experience like just one marriage or just one person to love? Can you learn more living inside the marriage bubble or outside? The first thing I realized during my first year of divorce is that my life was exponentially richer and more full of experience outside the marriage. I never would have evolved or truly gotten in touch with myself in the limited role I played as a wife.
Relationships are a school. They sharpen our interpersonal skills, through pain and turbulence, relationships force us to go within. That inner identity is your soul that came here to learn, and we can only learn by experiencing ourselves though situations with other people. Eventually, every relationship becomes turbulent. Your goal is not to endure turbulence, it is to find stability for yourself. Every connection will eventually end. The goal is not to figure out how to make it last longer, it is how to emotionally process loss and find power in endings. Learn how to flow with life, how to slay demons, how to strengthen all your weaknesses, how to mange your own ego. Learn how to feel pain and know what to do with it. You are a powerhouse of energy, and your job is to continuously raise your own consciousness, and you will never find awareness staring into the eyes of other people.