Working On Your Relationship?

It’s common for us to be asked to support people who are working on their relationship. We appreciate that they’re attending to their relationship and that they trust us to support them.

However, it recently occurred to us that perhaps people don’t have to “work on their relationship.” 

We have often suggested that being in relationship is natural - and yet not normal. 

It just recently occurred to us that people not only don’t have to work on their relationships, but that people actually have to work at not being related.

It was in the middle of a breakdown, while we were at odds, that it became very evident that we had to work at staying at odds, at staying out of relationship. Everything “inside” us argued for letting go of our (op)positions, but we were determined to continue to hold onto them. As we did so, we became aware that it took a lot of effort, a lot of work, to hold on. 

And so we let go. It was effortless. It took nothing to let go. And our apologies were also effortless -- and natural -- as they put us back in relationship. That’s when it dawned on us how much work it takes to stay upset with each other - how much effort it takes to be on “automatic” and stay on it.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t be upset with each other from time to time, but it’s over “in no time” unless we work at maintaining the upset and the “distance” between us.

Check it out. See if it doesn’t take effort to maintain separateness, while simply letting go produces the natural =- and effortless -= experience of being related.

We may or may not be “ONE,” but we are naturally related. It may be time to recognize and acknowledge it.

Paul & Carol