As with so many things, progress on your own path enriches your relationship. Ongoing practice that helps you gain insight into yourself, and furthers your awareness of your own issues, needs and desires, is a strong support for a healthy peaceful relationship.
Intimacy is a critical element for successful, peaceful relationships. To share intimacy in a relationship you must be present with each other. You cannot share love if you are not there.
“Be Here Now!” How elusive this often is. We can all benefit from finding ways to stay in the actual here and now. Most of the practices that we outline for a peaceful and successful relationship are predicated on being present, both with yourself and with your partner.
Your relationship can, over time, take a back seat to life’s busyness: shopping, cleaning, childcare, parent care, friend care, health care, finance care... Relationships need to be experienced in the present. To have a partnership filled with living peace, it is necessary to share peace together as a tangible reality.
Ensuring that core values match is an important part of establishing a new relationship. Whether you are aware of yours or not, they underlie all your behavior. They are the principles you live by. These are not intellectual constructs, but rather deeply felt truths that arise from your inner being.
Our togetherness isn’t fueled by needs – neither of us is looking for the other to fill holes in our lives or our being. This kind of connection enables each of us as individuals to develop and prosper, and at the same time, feeds that energy right back into our relationship.
Unconditional acceptance of your partner is a baseline for a peaceful relationship. Being treated with total acceptance calls forth a markedly different response in all of us. When you know that you won’t be attacked or criticized, an amazing feeling of true peace and calm settles within you.
Our experience is that by exploring how we feel about a problem we’re not only telling each other what is of meaning to us, but we understand our own voice better as well. This happens because of the safe arena of communication created by our joint understanding of the “we”.
Learn to recognize your partner as an entirely different and unique individual. They don’t think, say or do things exactly the way you do. These differences aren’t a threat because they arise from the same core values. You are being offered alternate ways of seeing, doing and feeling.
In a relationship, a mutual solution is a resolution that works for both people. It is something that is created together by the contributions of two different viewpoints. It is not something that either can come up with alone because each person brings different knowledge, views and insights.
Active listening is paying attention to what the other person is saying without preparing a response. In practice, responses and ideas come up as the other person is speaking and it can be a considerable effort to both hold on to those thoughts and keep following the speaker.
We used to talk about conflict-free relationships, but now, instead of thinking in terms of what it is not, we see it as a quality of peace. In the world, it arises directly from peace between people, and we promote it both through the idea and the direct experience.
Total honesty: why it’s good, difficult, and what’s needed for it to be possible. It arises from working on yourself. You have to know yourself in order to share that with your partner. Resolving conflicts isn’t about changing the other person, but rather looking at what your resistance is about.
The balance between planning and going with the flow can be a problem in a relationship. One person is free and easy, and wants to accept the last-minute offer of a weekend at a cabin; the other had a household project planned. There’s a solution that works for both people.
Neither of us enjoys arguments. It’s not avoidance, it’s that we choose not to act that way. Our desire to share what is happening with each other and to be sure there are no confusions, or any distancing caused by things unspoken, is paramount. It leads to an argument-free relationship.
Touch is an important part of all relationships but can get overlooked. Animals huddle together and groom each other. The messages are of caring and comfort. So it is for humans, too, and if we stop speaking that language, we lose an important way of expressing concern for each other.
It is critical to the success of a peaceful loving relationship to find mutuality, and to create from that place of connection. It can be quite simple to do, especially when it becomes a habit. Make agreements and verbalize them to each other; refer to them aloud periodically.
In any relationship, there can be a feeling of being on the same side that is quite delicious. Whatever it is, become attuned to that feeling, because if it vanishes, that’s a warning signal that you may be swerving into the path of a full-blown argument.
Today, we are sharing about a very basic component of a peaceful loving relationship, and one that can have surprising consequences and ramifications. Commitment. Here, we each describe our personal experience of commitment and the surprising benefits it creates.
It’s the early days of winter and yet it feels like a fresh start. Lots of changes have occurred, and there’s a sense of new opportunities. Come out of these events with renewed hope and a commitment to keep sharing burdens and rejoicing in victories together!