by Konstandina Poly
If you are anything like me, your fear of someone seeing your vulnerabilities is blocking you from creating the relationship that you desire.
The last seven years I have been practicing the art of being real and human in a more fulfilling and magical way than I have ever been able to conceive before.
This has led me to experiencing oneness, deep connection and passionate support in an ever evolving relationship.
So, let us dig deeper into how this practice came about:
I know it is not easy to overcome the tendency to want to appear and be perfect. In fact, expressing my vulnerability in relationships was a huge blockage I had in relating with my ex about 7 years ago.
At the time he was so mysterious and handsome in my eyes.
His job was seen as very interesting by this society and his high status english accent invoked a feeling of power. His secretive attitude was like a fog coming from a Sherlock Holmes movie.
His emotional avoidance was like the fire that fanned my insecurity’s flames.
As you may be guessing already, I was idealising him.
I was seeing him as if he possessed powers higher than mine. And higher than his own actual powers. I was saying yes to anything he wanted and I was not expressing my feelings, not to scare him away. I showed no vulnerability.
I was always there; available when he wanted, and okay with being alone when he needed time for himself. I was never expressing my concerns, insecurities and fears.
Until it became too much for me to endure. When I told him, he was not willing to create a different dynamic in our relationship.
Now, let us time travel to the morning that I finally expressed myself fully.
I woke up with a feeling of dread in my chest and my belly. It felt like a heavy dark cloud inside me. I felt lonely and disconnected from him. I stared at my phone and counted the days since he last texted. Five days. And the worst part is that it didn’t happen for the first time.
I gathered all my strength and called him. For the first time, I told him what I wanted and what I really felt for him. And he said he had to go and take a break to think about everything.
It was too hurtful to let go of him and the idealised relationship I had created in my mind. But it was worth it.
The journey of even more self awareness and self love that started afterwards was difficult, too. But it was also worth it.
I felt the magic ecstasy of love for my memories of pain and joy. I felt acceptance for my hurt and my wholeness. My memories of this relationship became the vehicle that transported me to the time and place that I needed to re-live as an observer in order to set myself free.
Back to here and now, in my current relationship I am more myself than I have been in any of my previous relationships. I share and communicate with my love all my insecurities, anxieties and sadness. I have liberated myself from seeking perfection and power. And what I found is love and magic.
Practicing Magic in Relationships:
I want to show you one of the practices I developed to transform vulnerabilities into love and magic in relationships.
The idea behind this is that loving your humanity means that you embrace it with all its creativity and destruction.
Embracing the issues, the hurtful comments and the wrongdoings of the other is like enjoying the beauty of a rose without obsessing or becoming overly careful about not getting hurt by its thorns.
In fact it is more like seeing the beauty in the thorns, too. And then realising that touching the thorns is not as hurtful as we were afraid it would be.
Now, let me guide you through a visualisation to understand how it feels to embrace the darker side of our human nature:
Take a few deep breaths and relax. Notice the air as it is coming in and out from your nostrils. Breath deeply into your belly, notice how your belly is rising and falling like the waves of the ocean. Rising and falling, rising and falling.
Now imagine your self being at a place where you feel very relaxed and comfortable. Feel in your body the relaxation you have when you are there. Smell the air, feel the ground and notice your surroundings. And now slowly walk on an interesting path that appears in front of you.
This path leads you to an area where you are surrounded by roses, you are in the middle of a circle of roses. As you look around, you see beautiful iridescent red, pink, orange, white and purple roses. You can smell their heart-opening perfume. And from the middle of the rose circle you are observing a rose tree forming. It has a thick brown trunk and on its top a rose with a human face appears.
The human faced rose prompts you to imagine all the past and current lovers that have hurt you taking its form.
First, it guides you into memories where you felt comfortable and happy to be around them. Perhaps these emotions are towards their creative, loving, caring, intersting or passionate aspects. You will know what feels good about them. If none of these feel relevant to this person, something else may come up. You will know what their rose flower is for you.
Then the rose asks you to remember specific incidents or qualities of these lovers that hurt you. These are their thorns; their difficulties, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. These are their destructive aspects. Open up your heart and imagine hugging them while you are telling them:
I accept you, I forgive you and I am sending you love.
There may be someone whose words or actions feel too intense to embrace them with a hug. Or someone whose personality feels too scary to bring too close. In cases like these, we can sit further away from them and send them love and forgiveness from a safe distance that we know we do not have to ever cross.
If sending love and forgiveness is premature in a relationship, acceptance will be good enough at this time. If acceptance is met with intense resistance, acceptance of the resistance can take its place.
The essence of this practice is that each one of our past lovers and ourselves have thorns and we are all still okay and beautiful. We are all just humans. Destruction is part of creativity, thorns are part of roses, and weaknesses are part of being human.
The more I am aware of myself and my lover as human beings with strengths and vulnerabilities the more I am able to connect with him in a deep, exciting, long-lasting and fulfilling way.
I know you can also magically transform your too-human aspects into lovable elements. And I know you can co-create a relationship where both of you will accept and love each other’s vulnerability.
About the Author:
Konstandina Poly. is a Psychologist, Relationship Counsellor and Dating Coach. She also works as a Mindfulness, Magical and Shamanic Meditations Facilitator. She holds a BA in Psychology and a Postgraduare Diploma in Counselling Psychology. Konstandina has been in the mind and spirit healing field for the last 16 years. You can connect with her on facebook, visit her website www.konstantflow.com, or email her on konstandina.poly@hotmail.com to book your initial consultation and to sign up for her inspiring newsletter.
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