All of our relationships in our lives are for our learning, whether we stay in them or let them go.
When do we know when it’s time to let one go? This is a very simple answer: when the person in the relationship is in resistance to looking at themselves, expressing how they feel, and doing their inner work.
First, if someone isn’t doing internal exploration, they will project their fears onto you and make it your fault. If they are resistant to doing any work to own their own stuff, it will sit in the relationship and rot! If they haven’t had some type of therapy to be able to look at their shadow side/inner child/ego, you will be in no-man’s land.
Secondly, if they are doing internal exploration and they get triggered, they need to work through the process and share their feelings about the upset with you. If they aren’t working with someone, the chance of them being able to do this on their own, is pretty slim.
If a person you are in relationship with isn’t doing their spiritual and psychological work and you are, and they don’t want to, it’s time to leave the relationship. A couples counseling retreat might help your partner see the need for work like this, but if he is unwilling to explore such options again, it’s time to leave the relationship.
Now, primary relationships are a bit different from friendships. You may be able to have a friendship with someone who is not doing the work if you keep it at a surface level. That means not sharing your process with them and just letting the friendship be a place to have fun, liking go to the movies, working out, etc. With a primary relationship, most of us doing this type of work will ultimately want a deeper relationship with our primary partnership.
This type of journey isn’t for everyone!
It doesn’t make your partner wrong if they don’t want to do this process. It just means you are very different in your core beliefs and it will be impossible to have a deep, connected relationship with them. You could have a relationship where you have a companion to do fun things with and not be alone, but you will never know what he is really feeling, therefore you will never really know him making true intimacy virtually impossible.
If your partner says no to the couples counseling retreat, maybe it’s time for you to come to a personal retreat, to really look at yourself, and unhook from needing your partner to go deeper.
