Do you long for the freedom to just be who you are?\u00a0 To live without worries of rejection and judgment?\u00a0 Listen to what your relationship is telling you!<\/p>\n
We all present to the world the parts of us that we like, don\u2019t we?\u00a0 The parts that are good and compassionate, kind, generous, moral, ethical, conscientious, confident, etc.\u00a0 People that we see on a limited basis see what we want<\/em><\/strong> them to see and they like us.\u00a0 All is well . . . until<\/em><\/strong> we get into a close, intimate or romantic relationship with someone. When we spend more and more time with another person we naturally reveal more and it becomes harder and harder to prevent them from seeing what is called our \u2018shadow side\u2019.<\/p>\n Our shadow side contains the parts of us we try to keep hidden . . . lazy, manipulative, self-serving, oblivious, angry, critical, vindictive, lustful, self-loathing, shallow, secretive, etc.\u00a0 We keep them hidden so well that even we<\/em><\/strong> are barely conscious of these aspects of ourselves!\u00a0 Left to our own devices, our shadow side would never come into full view for us so that we can work to be a better person.\u00a0 In fact, I believe that it is only<\/em><\/strong> by having that shadow side reflected by the people closest to us that it is finally revealed to us.\u00a0 This is why we need relationships!\u00a0 We need to be able see a whole picture of ourselves, not just the crisp, shiny, all-together side that we want to believe we are.<\/p>\n If we are able to see what is shown to us, we can learn to accept these traits as<\/em> part of us<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 If we have enough emotional maturity, then we can work to improve ourselves or learn to compensate in healthier ways.\u00a0\u00a0This allows us, <\/em><\/strong>eventually,<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to accept ourselves as a whole.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 When we accept ourselves as we are, but are willing to improve, that is when we can be authentic and real with everyone around us.\u00a0 That is how we become who we were meant to be!\u00a0 We are no longer afraid of intimacy because we know and understand ourselves just as we are and we embrace it.\u00a0 When we accept and love ourselves as the wonderful, fallible human beings that we are, there is nothing we are afraid of looking at within ourselves.\u00a0 We are set free from our shame and we no longer need to hide!<\/p>\n So our relationships are really doing us a favor by revealing the parts of us that we don\u2019t want to admit to!\u00a0 They are actually giving us a gift of intimacy with the most important person we will ever have intimacy with \u2013 ourselves!\u00a0 It is, however, incredibly hard to filter out how much of what our partner is telling us is really their oversensitivity to something vs. what are the areas that we need to work on.\u00a0 I encourage you, however, to keep a humble spirit, focus on what is being revealed about you<\/em><\/strong>, and keep trying.\u00a0 It will come and it may just set you free!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you long for the freedom to just be who you are?\u00a0 To live without worries of rejection and judgment?\u00a0 Listen to what your relationship is telling you! We all present to the world the parts of us that we like, don\u2019t we?\u00a0 The parts that are good and compassionate, kind, generous, moral, ethical, conscientious, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[402,536,824,825,589,826,447,827,534,828,829],"class_list":["post-3622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","tag-codependency","tag-conflict-in-marriage","tag-counterdependency","tag-how-do-i-save-my-marriage","tag-how-to-have-a-happy-life","tag-intimacy-with-self","tag-marriage-counseling","tag-self-actualization","tag-self-differentiation","tag-what-do-i-need-a-relationship-for","tag-whats-important-in-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4249,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/4249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}