We live in the time of tremendous changes that shape how we take care of our health: from going to a doctor once a year to joining countless types of fitness, yoga, and food programs. We are moving from the 9 to 5 job status that lasts until retirement, to freelance and entrepreneurship. And with this career change often comes geographic and cultural changes.
With all of these changes in our careers and health, we still put so much pressure on having our relationships unchanged; the same as previous generations. And we expect and it is expected from us to know what to do with our love life without any guidance, whilst it’s normal to have a personal trainer or business coach.
Women now have economic power, which means that the dynamic between men and women is changing, and this largely affects setting up roles in a relationship. It used to be clear and obvious who was putting food on the table and who was cleaning the house. Now we have to negotiate everything. We are moving away from not having any freedom to now having unlimited options and having to make decisions for everything. And we can only make so many decisions each day.
Steve Jobs’ wardrobe was very simple so he did not have to decide on what he was going to wear, and so that he had the mental capacity to make much more important decisions. We are moving away from the obligational and transactional roles in the relationship; from the “I do this for you and you do this for me” mindset, to service, and sharing, and co-creation. We used to look for a good provider or home maker, and now we are looking for a soulmate/twin flame; a partner aligned with our soul.
We are moving away from marriage, which was purely an economical agreement to produce children and protect material assets, to getting together for the purpose of growth, exploration, and self actualization.
We are moving away from having sex only for reproduction purposes to having sex for pleasure. We are moving away from control over women’s sexuality and men’s control of the blood line to women now having the opportunity to own their sexual power. Men now have to build their confidence in face of this change.
We are moving away from living in communities, where a sense of belonging was given and where we’ve built trust over time due to the safety of knowing the same people for years. We are moving towards constant changes, relocation, and access to people all over the world where we have to build connection and trust by courage and by taking risks.
We are moving away from getting together with someone who is from similar background, culture, and social status as us to mix and match with those outside our familiar beliefs and behaviors, which leads to us having to understand those differences.
We are moving away from having whole villages to fulfill our various emotional needs to expecting one person, or to be that one person, to fulfill all of said needs. There was never before such a need to learn connection/relationship skills as there is now. And, as there are certain skills to have a successful business, there are also skills in which we can learn to create powerful love for our time.
We are moving from being introduced to new people through friends, or social groups to having access to thousands of new friends through dating apps and websites, where we can easily swipe left or right to declare whether or not we’re interested.
We are moving toward a more global economy with companies like Uber, and with companies that offer food delivery straight to our doors. From having the attention and care on our immediate community, we are now more interested in the matters of the world. We pay less and less attention on each other, and instead have more of a hunger for attention, love, connection, and belonging. And if we don’t learn new, healthy new ways of fulfilling and sharing ourselves – we will end up lonely, with compulsive behaviors and addictions.
With relationships in general, we are moving from achievement (getting the parter for social status) to fulfillment (how to be with a partner it in a satisfying, nourishing way). We are becoming more conscious and mindful that we bring this into our love lives and that this is the new way in which we have relationships in this new millennium. This is a huge shift! We live in a time of immense transformation, which we don’t always realize when we beat ourselves up for our so-called failures in our love life.
So, in this time of the huge transformation, I’d like to share 3 tips on how to love consciously, and on how to bring mindfulness into your love life:
1. Let go of pressure. Be easy on yourself and your partner, or potential partner. There is no such thing as relationship failure. Looking at most successful business people, who might have 10 businesses before they have a profitable business, those 9 so-called failed business projects were all a part of the journey to teach them what they need to know about business, which in turn allowed them to go on and achieve their amazing success.
I believe that every one of us will have 3 to 4 relationships in our lifetime, sometimes with the same person. All of them so valued and important for us to discover unconditional, powerful love. As I mentioned before, we live in a time of tremendous social change. Let go of the pressure of “the one” or of being “the one.” Put the oxygen mask on yourself first. The sense of belonging and our emotional needs were automatically handled for us when we lived in communities, and we did not realize that we had those needs. With relocations and constant changes, we now understand that we need emotional connection as much as we need money. We can’t survive without it. And the better quality of connection/relationships, the better quality of life we will have. Compulsive behaviors and addictions is often a result of the epidemic of loneliness, and of people not knowing how to create and cultivate connection.
2. Have the courage to trust. According to a survey I created that 600 women took, I found that the number one problem in relationships is trust issues. But we don’t have trust issues, we have a courage issues. In the past, trust was built and cultivated by knowing someone over time, by shared values, by shared activities, and it was based on safety and certainty.
Today, in the face of constant changes and uncertainty, trust is based on courage and on the ability to be vulnerable and to fail. It’s the same as when we notice disruption and innovation entering our economy’s market. The same things happens with the relationship model, where new, outside-of-the-box relationships shake up the status quo.
Now, there is a trick to decide who to trust and what to trust. The more we trust our intuition and inner guidance, the more Source will show us the next step. We are all made to be loved-this is our nature. And by trusting it we allow love to manifest in our life in a way that is aligned with who we are.
3. Learn to receive love. The only way we can give love is when we receive love. In nature, giving and receiving is like taking a breath- taking a breath in and giving a breath out. I see many people wanting to give love, but interestingly enough, there are not as many people who are able to receive love. Most people know how to consume love, and have preferences on how love should look like. To be able to receive love requires presence, attention, and mindfulness.
Giving love is easier; it means we can still stay in control. Receiving love is vulnerable and it requires surrender. Most readers here will know that letting go and surrendering to our inner power/god/universe is powerful, but what if we can do that with another person? Of course we have to start with ourselves and receive our own self-love. But only loving oneself doesn’t work. We can love as much as we want and when there is no receiver, we will experience rejection. It’s like when we want to be heard, but there is no one who will listen.
Most people would say that what they want in a loving relationship is to be heard and seen, to be received, and they want their love to be received. Love others by receiving their love, and watch how they change.
Second, when it comes to receiving love we can receive it when it comes, but we can’t put it into our pocket for later. We can’t be prepared and we may not be ready to receive it when it comes. Success, expensive clothing, makeup, and six packs have nothing to do with love. You can receive love with or without a six pack.
Learn to receive love when you are not yet perfect. Receive different favors of love-sometimes it will be pleasurable, and sometimes it will be with less comfortable emotions, such as anger, frustration, and criticism. Learn to receive others’ expressions, while keep your healthy boundaries- it’s not about letting yourself be bullied.
To be able to listen and receive, we need to slow down.The majority of couple fights is not based on any real issue, but on not being able to recognize fullness of connection, and not being able to stop, get space, or feel yearning again. Connection and love are energies-we can receive and digest as much as we can take in. The same behaviour as with food. Because energy is invisible, we have not yet realized our hunger for it and we have not yet realized the fullness of the nourishing connection and the lack of the so-called “junk’ connection.
Good quality love will make us feel amazing, and a poor quality of connection will make us feel sick. The same way as when we are switching from junk food to whole foods. We are now entering the age when we want deep emotional connection, transcendental union, and to become one.
To be able to get there, we have to go through all other emotions. There is a lot to heal between men and women. To be able to come back to the union between masculine and feminine, we need to learn to listen to each other, and receive each other as who we are. We are so lucky to live now, in the time of fascinating changes-changes in how we do relationships. When the old way doesn’t work anymore, not only do want more but we want better. By bringing mindfulness to food, how we move our bodies, and by bringing purpose and service to our work, we bring consciousness to our relationships, to our love life, and to how we connect with each other. This is very very exciting! As now, we can have nourishing and fulfilling connections, relationships, and love lives totally aligned with who we are and all of our needs.