106. It’s never your partner’s fault if you’re suffering in your relationship

When a relationship has problems the other person is never the cause. I know that may sound crazy but stick with me a minute. First of all, I’m not asking you to believe me. Instead I’d ask you to look at your own direct experience. How do you know when you’re having a problem in a relationship?... you’re suffering. You’re hurting in some way. Your partner may be hurting too, in which case you’ve both got a problem. But the relationship as such can’t have a problem because relationship is just a word, not an entity. It’s just a thought.

So you know you’ve got a problem when you’re hurting. It’s not a relationship problem, it’s a “you” problem. You may also feel that the problem is caused by your partner. If he hadn’t said what he did or if she hadn’t done what she did, you wouldn’t be hurting. But is that true?

Let’s look at it this way. If your partner said the same words to someone else that are hurting you would they necessarily be hurting? No. So it’s not the words that are causing your hurt, it’s your interpretation of what those words mean to you that cause your suffering. In other words, whenever we’re hurting emotionally it’s all about us and has nothing to do with the other person. Yes, they may trigger thoughts in us, but the thoughts are the cause of our pain, not the trigger. Two people could hear a person say the same sentence and one may think it was funny while the other thinks it was sarcastic. Is either person right? No, not really. The actual reality is that some words were said. The judgment or interpretation was added by the listeners.

It’s always that way about everything in life. We project onto it what we believe and then live as though our belief is true. Often it isn’t. Some years ago I had a friend who dated regularly but didn’t really enjoy it. She often said, “It’s brutal out there.” That was her judgment. For me dating was always an interesting adventure. It didn’t seem brutal at all. Different interpretations of basically the same experience.

If you think your partner shouldn’t have behaved in the way she did you’re immediately suffering because you’re resisting what is, just as if you thought it shouldn’t be raining when it is. Whenever you resist reality you lose and you suffer. “What is” doesn’t care what you think. On the other hand, if you see that your partner just behaved the way she did, and you don’t add a judgment to that, there’s nothing to be hurt about. After all, don’t you have the right to behave the way you want to? Doesn’t she also? You don’t have to make her wrong or try to force her to change. All you really need to do is find someone else to be with if you can’t accept what she does.

Your partner is never your problem. Partners have no power to get into our minds and emotions and create pain-thoughts. Only we have that power. Life is the way it is. Flowers bloom when they’re supposed to. It rains when it’s supposed to. Your partner does what he’s supposed to and so do you. I don’t mean “supposed to” in a moral sense, just in a “what is” sense. What is, is. There are no mistakes. It’s all the wonderful mystery of the Beloved manifesting exactly as it’s meant to manifest. Seeing that, you can relax and take life with ease, relishing the wonder and glory of it all, just as it is. Have fun!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer