When Love Learns to Make Room

When you really love people, compromising will come up. The mind can attach to someone through a pattern, but that is not the heart. THAT concept is another blog entirely.

Earth School is all about duality. Polarity. In fact, when we have such amazing chemistry with someone, they are usually different from us. This is awesome in the beginning, but later, if you do not understand and know yourself, those differences can become fights, power and control dynamics, fear can come up, and ultimately loneliness, because you end up by yourself.

This is not what we want.

We are hardwired for connection and belonging. We may put up a defense and say, “I do not need or want anyone.” But sometimes that is our ego, pain and wounds talking, not our heart.

When you have someone who really matters to you, the risk is that they can ultimately hurt you because yes, you are vulnerable. But on the flip side, you might get exactly what you want, which is love.

Maybe this is what healthy compromise really is: how two imperfect people make room for each other without abandoning themselves.

When you really love someone, you care enough to work at it. You care enough to work on yourself. You compromise. You try to be flexible. You get angry. You act like a hot mess. You try to understand where the other person is coming from and where you are coming from. These are just a few of the things that contribute to relationships, whether they are friends, family or lovers.

Changing oneself is a full-time job.

It takes time. It takes self-awareness, both inner and outer. It takes looking at things you don’t want to look at and taking responsibility for them. It is saying you’re sorry and knowing why you are sorry. It is not pointing out when you are right just to make a point and prove that you are.

This does not mean the other person is not at fault for things, nor does it mean they do not have their own issues. It means you take and voice responsibility for your own as you see them, regardless of what the other person does or does not do.

It may mean that you are growing and the other person is not, and this may cause issues or no longer work for you. It does not mean you have an excuse to punish, belittle, be passive-aggressive or do underhanded things to that person. It also does not mean you automatically give up either. This will be entirely up to you to figure out within your personal situation. Everyone is different. There are different dynamics in everything.

It may be that the relationship has to end.

Love cannot always hold things together in the real world, and that is sad sometimes, but it is OK. Relationships take work, or they really are not relationships.

Some on the outside will judge and condemn your choices, but in reality, it is up to you to make decisions. It is your life.

I say things to people and then it is up to them to either look at it or not. I also have been learning to ask before I offer something in my personal life and to always take it back into myself first. They may just be reflecting something to me that I am learning to see or change within myself.

When you know your triggers, patterns and wounds, you can work from a proactive place and not a reactive or defensive one.

It is like Mary Poppins says, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

In this case, the sugar might actually be love, patience, compassion, tolerance and grace.

Thank God for those.

Because sometimes the medicine is painful.

It hurts. It does not make sense. You want to not look at it. We all have things within us that may not be very pretty and may need to be worked on or addressed. This is where real change can occur. Not by just saying, “I want to be happy,” or “I want to not be angry.” It is where you become your own medicine.

The people we love can show us those things, sometimes simply because they matter enough to get close enough to touch them.

And this is where I think compromise is misunderstood.

Compromise does not mean abandoning yourself so someone else can be comfortable. It does not mean tolerating abuse, betraying your values or constantly being the one who bends. Watch where people say, “I should not have to change. You should accept me as I am.” This can be true, but in drawing that hard line to keep your sense of being right, authority, superiority or power, you might look around and have no one beside you. You get to choose compromise. This is true reciprocity in relationships.

Maybe healthy compromise is two people making room for each other. Sometimes I move toward you, sometimes you move toward me, and sometimes we both have to move. Sometimes we realize there is nowhere healthy for either of us to move except away from each other. If we have to leave, could we do that without destroying each other?

That takes awareness too.

Good thing we have love to help heal what needs healing, compassion for what is still growing, and hopefully enough grace for ourselves and each other while we figure it out.

That will show you where love is really at if you make room for it.