You may wish to bring more love into your relationships, perhaps relate more tenderly with your partner, or you both, as a couple, may desire to enhance your romantic bond and openness to intimacy by improving your connection overall and finding that special spark again. Did you know you can use mindfulness and meditation to help develop healthier and more fulfilling loving relationships?
Your Relationships and Expectations
If you ever take time to step back and look at your life in widescreen mode and at the bigger picture, most of our worries and daily disputes occur within the framework of our relationships.
We are forever interacting and relating with many different people across a range of contrasting layers of intimacy, but at the same time, we are always left with the impression we need to deal with unsatisfied expectations associated with these connections. These could be working with an underperforming colleague at the office, a child who is not focusing on their schoolwork, a teenager who is rebelling against your parental authority, an obnoxious next-door neighbour, a toxic boss, a romantic partner who doesn't seem to understand your needs or desire, or any other type of interaction with people that induces a stress trigger in you.
What this means is we often expect that other people should be in synchronisation with how we foresee and experience life events and situations and whether we consciously or subconsciously assume they will always see things from our perspective and will willingly help make us feel complete. What spoils this vision for us is that life and the real world don't work this way. The greater a person raises their expectations, the more detached and unfulfilled they tend to feel.
Taking that into consideration, how can we go about realistically developing healthier, more satisfying, and more fulfilling relationships? The answer here lies in introducing yourself to what is known as being conscious and complete in the present moment and gifting yourself space and time to be more awake to your projections, wants, demands, and expectations. It is here that mindfulness and meditation can help with getting you back in sync with your true integrity and natural goodness. To put it another way, who you really are as a person.
Is It Love, Or Is It Your Projection?
Falling in love is a terrific example of how the process of projection works on us. Think back to a time when you met a person and you madly fell in love with them because they were simply remarkable, charming, and gorgeous and the perfect culmination of everything you could ever want in a partner. How long did this feeling last for you?
If we base our expectations of love, romance, sex, and relationships on advertisements, music, and Hollywood TV shows and movies – and this is quite difficult to avoid in the modern world – it acts to bolster an embellished, romanticised, and idealised version of what romantic love is but one that doesn't realistically or practically work for anyone. All this constant bombardment of how things ought to be imprinted on our subconscious mind to mould and manipulate our expectations of what romantic relationships should be like and what we end up projecting onto them.
Yet often when you take time to listen to people and they eagerly state how they have everything they need to be happy and content in life….but their relationships aren't very satisfying, or they aren't fulfilled as much from their partner anymore. Their expectations have gone unmet. Often, they will conclude their partner is no longer the person they fell in love with, and the spark is no longer there.
According to scientific studies, our view of the object of love is altered while we are in love - which is clinically defined as a transient state of mind. Increased neurochemical reactions occur in our bodies, and we get hooked on the delightful feelings they produce. We are addicted to the feeling of being in love, of being loved, being desired, and being appreciated.
We project our feelings onto the object of our desires and conceive the source of these sentiments as the other person. We feel amorous and pleasurable feelings and cling to them because of our continuous curiosity about the projections we have created. These projections and feelings, on the other hand, are produced by our minds.
Undoubtedly, when the attachment process is overlooked, it sows the seeds of future arguments and clashes, unmet expectations, and annoyances. To describe it another way, they are the expressions of fundamental discontent in relationships.
Use Mindfulness and Meditation for More Love and Better Relationships
We will have the space we require to connect with our own selves, our sources of contentment, and our inner abundance if we can learn to let go of these ideals. The practice of mindfulness and meditation can show you how.
The Benefits of Mindfulness and Meditation in Relationships
When we practice meditation, we learn not to latch onto the concepts that emerge in our minds, including the thoughts, images, memories, sensations, and emotions that influence how we experience life and the world. We can perceive situations more accurately and precisely if and when our true selves can be discovered.
We understand there is plenty of room by not clasping to our misperceptions about people, and by being able to acknowledge and let go of them. We now have the time and space to connect with our inner wisdom and compassion. This results in a more healthy and more genuine ability to love. The irony is that the qualities and virtues we seek out in others are already within us. It is the outward projection that brings about co-dependency, discontent, and unhappiness in relationships.
We don't need others to make us complete since we are already complete as we are. This is the indisputable treasure of our infinite soul. We can connect with others more deeply and realistically when we are whole. We can let go of expectations, holding, perceptions, and dependency and welcome authentic openness and gratitude instead.
Mindfulness and meditation are a simple yet effective combination of techniques for improving our ability to do so.
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The information contained above is provided for entertainment purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice on your personal situation and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. The Writer and Shoshin Therapies disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
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