Creating Conscious Relationships Of Equality
by Melanie Tonia Evans

Our society is moving towards equal conscious relationships, relationships of equality, also called Spiritual Partnerships, or partnerships between equals.

There is a growing need for females and males to discover ways to commune with intimacy, trust and respect. This can only be achieved by individuals engaging in conscious relationships with healthy Emotional Intelligence.

Men and women want to feel safe. By understanding honest emotional communication, our society has the ability to stop the ‘mind games’ and connect to each other from the heart to heal dysfunctional love.

It’s self-defeating not to be real and honest about our feelings with other people and especially our love partners. We come from a society view which endorses ‘me versus you’ behaviour when suffering emotional pain. The last thing our ego wants to do is let someone else know what we are really feeling so immediately we jump into employing defence mechanisms which don’t serve us or our relationships.  We end up with dysfunctional relationships.

I’m Too Scared to Let You Know You’ve Hurt Me

Maybe our ego doesn’t want the other person to have the satisfaction of knowing we’re hurting or perhaps our ego is scared of someone not liking us because of what we say. Maybe we’re terrified that if we are honest and vulnerable we’ll be betrayed and abandoned. Many co-dependents are very weak in this area – simply because they have very little skill in identifying and responding to their own feelings.

Moving Beyond ‘Tit for Tat’

If you’ve felt let down by a partner you may choose to get angry and refuse to let this person see your vulnerabilities. Maybe you ‘needed them’ and rather than be supportive you perceived they let you down. Immediately the little ego gremlin says, ‘Don’t let them know you’re vulnerable. Have a go instead’. Immediately you feel like projecting your anger or maybe you store up ‘nasty points’ and decide next time they need you –- to hell with them – you’ll leave them in the lurch.

None of this behaviour reflects you being real and honest about how you feel.

With a statement such as, "I felt really upset and disappointed when you didn’t [whatever]. I needed you for support" the partner would have to be totally heartless not to take this on and try to respond in a more supportive way next time. The most important thing is that by honouring our feelings and speaking our truth, we’re more likely to receive support and consideration in our life.

Feeling ‘Hurt’ Is a Normal Part of Life

It would be incredibly naïve to think there’s never going to be a time in love when we don’t feel emotionally hurt. No one’s perfect and it’s ridiculous to assume our partner should be. There could also be areas where your values systems aren’t a direct match. But for goodness sake, why do hurt people immediately jump over the partition in the court and start hurling missiles from the other side?

Avoiding Real-ness Creates Distance

Surely we’re trying to create togetherness and respect, NOT separation and pain. Even the silent treatment is denying the need to be emotionally honest, and no one wants to be around a dark and moody person who has no intention of honestly explaining how they feel. How can this "you’ll pay for the way I’m feeling and you had better fix my mood for me" behaviour ever create a relationship of trust and intimacy?

Wouldn’t the world and every relationship be much better if everyone could drop the fear of being emotionally honest? Fear-based defence tactics are not love. They’re fear. They represent one-upmanship and destructive game-playing tools.

I remember a discussion I had with a friend years ago about expressing emotional honesty (vulnerability) and her comment was, "I’ll only start doing it if he does!"

Incredible! Everyone is so terrified of being vulnerable because they think someone else will take them apart! So much of our world is back to front and upside down. We think being real makes us exposed, yet the overwhelming truth is by not being real we are totally susceptible to pain, personal attack and misery.

Emotional Honesty Sets Us Free

Why didn’t people really teach us the meaning of ‘The truth sets us free?’ This means that speaking the truth about how we emotionally feel grants us the freedom of true self-love, love from others and happiness.

I’m thoroughly convinced defensive communication destroys relationships. If you’re real (vulnerable), you’re truly empowered and truly safe. No one can disempower you, manipulate you or compromise your boundaries. You’re responding from a place of self-honour rather than reacting from a victim viewpoint. Victims take hostages. They create drama and fights – and they absolutely create their own ongoing pain.

When you’re the fear-based, aggressive and defensive victim, you’re totally vulnerable to someone else’s actions and beliefs about you. By communicating emotional honesty you’re in a place where you'll attract realness, truth, respect and honesty. Try it! Have the courage to come out from behind your fears and be real. I promise you’ll be totally blown away with the results.

We’ve all been trying to hide our emotions from each other when we all know emotions exist! After all, we all feel them. Did we really think we were the only ones to feel emotional pain? It’s incredibly frightening to realise just how childish our society is and how emotionally uneducated we’ve been!

Men and women all want the same thing! We all want to stop the separation, stop the ‘enemy tactics’ and connect in honest and safe ways. Emotional integrity and realness is the greatest gift that we can bring to our love relationships. None of us can be loving and loved in relationships without this vital foundation.

Reflections on Equal Partnership

• Whatever vulnerability (feelings) you hide will keep creating the scenarios you fear.
  
  
• Expressing your authentic feelings will give you authentic results.
  
  
• Your expressed feelings equate to standing in your power.
  
  
• If you are real – no one can take you down.
  
  
• The truth will always set you free.
  
  
• Get out of your head battles and speak the truth from your heart.

Copyright © 2007 Melanie Tonia Evans. All Rights Reserved.

This article is an excerpt from the book,
"Breaking The Chains of Painful Love".