Befriending the Challenge of Love
A relationship is not an escape, it is a deep form of arrival
5 Star review of my second book Clarity & Connection:
“This is hands down one of the best books I have ever read. It truly fosters growth, compassion, and inner peace. It helps you to reflect deeply, be honest with yourself, and manage difficult situations. Easy to read, and so powerful.” - Jenna
Clarity & Connection has a temporary 37% off on Amazon and is available in bookstores.
Many people want the most beautiful aspects of a relationship: the love, care, joy, and support, but they don’t want any of the challenges that come with loving someone with the entirety of their heart. When you watch movies about love, you often see two people meeting, then they have one real challenge that they struggle to overcome, and with some courage they finally fully commit to each other and decide to be together. The quietly misleading part for all of us watching is that we don’t see what happens after, and our subconscious conditioning slowly adopts the thinking that “happily ever after” is something we should expect from our partnership.
Even if at the conscious level we admit it to ourselves and our friends that we know a relationship continuously has ups and downs, when a challenge actually appears, we don’t like it and we hope it goes away as fast as possible. This makes sense because our survival instinct craves safety and predictability, but the nature of reality is one of continuous and uncontrollable change. Even though disliking hard moments is a default for many of us, life and love will ask us to go beyond our initial patterns if we want to live fulfilling lives.
A lot of people are scared to commit because of the fear that they may be missing out on someone better who they have not yet met, someone who can help them escape their problems and make life easy. Many relationships never begin because too many people crave “easy.”