Just because things are uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t working.

If you feel there is a danger to your safety and well-being then do what you need to do to be safe. However, as we grew up we were immersed in a story that implies that relationships are supposed to be nice and easy and happy.

This message, absorbed in our formative years and perpetuated by much of Hollywood and popular music, has led us to believe that when things are challenging with our partner, that something must be wrong—that something needs to be fixed or changed or mended.

In truth, this understanding of relationships is immature, inaccurate, and mostly unhelpful. Sometimes what is being asked of us is to stay with the discomfort because the challenges of the relationship are really an opportunity to purge, purify, know, and heal ourselves more deeply and completely.

When I am triggered by my partner, it is not really about what she is doing in the moment. In my situation it’s usually because she is behaving in a way that reminds me of my stepmother. It is an opportunity for me to realise how I still have trust issues, that I have an aversion to being controlled, that love will be withdrawn if I don’t behave as I am expected to, and that on some level, I still believe that whatever I do is never good enough.

The fact that my twin flame’s behaviour evokes this within me is a gift. This light is illuminating fear. Fear that is still present within my psyche. When I notice the emotional response in my body, I have a choice to be triggered and blame and project my anger and frustration onto her, or to recognise that the relationship is purging an old wound. Recognise that the pain can be released if I can stay with the feelings, knowing that they are from the past, and that I take responsibility for feeling them fully now. These feelings will be perpetuated until I delete the unconscious beliefs from which they arise from. We see the roots of the feelings, the part of our story where they were seeded, and in the field of our conscious awareness we dissolve and transform them by choosing a different story.

The old belief of I can’t trust women changes to:

I choose to trust the divine feminine energy of life which is also an aspect of my self.

I trust my self and life, for in truth we are one and everything happens for my soul’s evolution; for my highest good.

The old belief of I am being controlled and not able to make choices changes to: 

My life is controlled to a large extent by my soul’s need to evolve.

I can make choices and have some control over my experiences, but ultimately I surrender and trust that everything is happening for my highest good.

The old belief that love will be withdrawn if I’m a “bad boy” is replaced with:

Love is who I am. Though I was taught that love was external and conditional, it is actually the essence of my being and I can access this internally whenever I choose to.

The old belief of whatever I do is never good enough changes to:

I am good enough as I am right now in my beautifully imperfect perfection.

Beneath the layers of personality and trauma of the human condition I am an infinite spark of the divine.

Every time my partner triggers me, I have an opportunity to change the reality I am creating in the now; to rewrite my own story and create a life based on love and truth and peace.

Some days I do better than others. Sometimes I get totally engulfed by waves of painful emotion, and my inner child rants and raves with frustration and anger at the perceived injustice which it is reminded of and catastrophized by echoes of the past.

Other times, I see what is being triggered and I choose to take responsibility for what I am feeling, own it, and remember that I now have full agency over my response. If I am feeling brave, I may even step toward the perceived inflicter of discomfort and embrace her or silently thank her for bringing up the old to be transformed. This is the true work of twin flame conscious relationships. Usually what has happened in the moment is no big deal. It’s just part of two people learning to compromise and accommodate each other’s differences and needs and idiosyncrasies. It’s part of learning unconditional love.

Of course, this level of awareness and being able to catch the opportunity to self-heal takes practise and it is not always easy to turn inward rather than projecting the pain outwardly. It takes a deep, deep commitment to a loving union and requires oodles of patience, perseverance, and resilience. We fall down at times and we pick ourselves back up. We practise our humility and our self-compassion and self-forgiveness. We learn how to be the mother and father to ourselves that perhaps we never had.

Remember that pain and discomfort will arise in any conscious relationship, but is inevitable in a twin flame relationship. This is because the nature of twin flame is that it is a catalyst, a fast track for those souls who chose to come to Earth now in order to pioneer and transform the current paradigm of polarity and separation to one of unity and consciousness. Any work that we do to heal our own inner fragmentation, through the medium of conscious relationship, is also a contribution to the healing of the collective since we are all connected in the realm beyond through what we can perceive with our five senses and that which we can conceive with the egoic mind.

Sometimes we judge that things are not working based on how we have been conditioned to believe that they should be. When things are uncomfortable for me, I notice my egoic mind shouting louder and louder that I should leave my twin, that I should get away from the source of the pain which it thinks is being created by her. But the truth is that the pain is within me and my twin is just catalysing the healing of these parts of myself.

Of course we always have the choice to throw in the towel and leave the relationship. There is nothing wrong with this but we need to remember that whatever we do not resolve in our current relationship will, for the most part, be put on hold and will be reactivated the next time we fall into love with another.

Remember that the value of any relationship is not based on its longevity but the extent to which we grow and learn and transform ourselves through the energy of it. Namaste.