The fairy tale ideal of romance is firmly established in collective consciousness.
Hollywood has taken this and put it on the big screen.
In 2020 this is hard to get away from.
The most dangerous aspect of this kind of fantasy is expressed in the simple phrase,
I need you.
What's so dangerous about this?
Well,
A need is something we can't do without,
Something we won't be okay without.
There's a lot of confusion about what exactly constitutes a need,
With the line between needs and wants becoming ever more blurry in our consumer culture.
Do we need a partner?
Really?
Will we die if we don't have one?
Well,
Hollywood and the wider media has become incredibly skilled at convincing us that this might be the case.
Imagine this as a movie synopsis.
John didn't ask to fall in love,
He did anyway,
But does she feel the same?
It doesn't matter too much to John because he's okay with whatever happens.
It doesn't exactly sound like an emotional rollercoaster,
Does it?
And an emotional rollercoaster is fine as long as we know we're being taken for a ride.
Trouble arises when people mistake fiction for fact and considering how many of us are subject to The Little Mermaid before we're five years old,
We're basically doomed.
Any of you psychologists out there will likely have one particular term in mind when viewing that Hollywood portrayal of love,
Codependency.
Codependence is not healthy.
A codependent relationship is one in which both partners are looking to one another to fulfill certain of their needs and they won't feel okay if these needs are not met.
But why even enter into a relationship unless you need something,
You might ask.
Well,
Why go for a walk if you're already fit?
There's another kind of relationship that's possible,
One which is healthy,
Stable and deeply fulfilling precisely because it doesn't have to be.
I'm talking about the interdependent relationship.
In an interdependent relationship,
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
John doesn't need Jane,
Jane doesn't need John,
And that's a large part of why they're attracted to one another.
The two of them already figured out how to take care of their own needs before they met one another and that means that they're each free to simply add value to one another's lives as opposed to attempting to repair one another.
Sound good?
It is.
I know.
I'm in an interdependent relationship and vital to the forming of this relationship was the work that my partner and I did on ourselves before we met.
When we did meet,
We knew what we wanted and we knew that we were looking across the table at it.
We valued it,
Cultivated it and now we cherish it.
I need nothing from my partner and she needs nothing from me and so we're able to give to one another generously,
Free of obligation.
It's an upward spiral of giving and appreciating made possible by the fact that we first became content on our own and then found one another.
Please make me feel okay is a very different sales pitch to hey let's make each other's lives even better.
So if you're someone who clicked this talk because you're not happy on your own,
Good news!
You're in the perfect place to begin doing the kind of practice that prepared me for entering into an interdependent relationship.
Mindfulness practice.
Just notice what's arising in the mind each moment that you remember more and more often and old patterns of need will be outshone by deeper and deeper recognition of the fact that in the natural state everything is okay as it is.
Don't worry if some of the things that you see are confusing at first.
Come back here and listen to more of these talks.
If there's some particular issue to which I've not spoken reach out to me.
If I came to be free of needs you can too and there lies the secret to a kind of interpersonal relationship which is far far more rewarding than anything that can be portrayed in the movies.
