We bring so much of our childhood energy, past energy, to our relationships.

The subconscious stuff. The unknowing darkness. The little wounds. The big wounds. What we adapted from our parents. What we lived and how that formed our beliefs.

All those messy unhealed parts of ourselves, that will at some point display themselves in our relationships. Especially when we have not worked on them, don’t understand them, buried them, and lack the self-awareness to acknowledge that they are issues.

If we don’t address our childhood traumas (we all have them), our romantic relationships will. If we don’t address our wounds and beliefs, we will attract that same energy to us in a partner. The energy that fills our voids, at that time. This is not the healthy energy of a lifetime partner.

We seek comfort. This comfort we so desperately desire is to either fill painful voids within us or to simply stop us from being alone. Too many people fear being alone. When we continually seek comfort, our aim is to avoid risk. Risk holds the potential of pain, hurt, fear, and we are scared of those feelings. Because of this, the risk becomes anxiety-inducing and we don’t like this.

The issue is this causes us to stay in a place of neutrality because we constantly seek comfort, we get into a behavioural state, and we develop an aversion to risk, therefore making decisions and taking actions to prevent both pain and ultimately pleasure.

We aren’t really happy, but we aren’t really unhappy either. We’re just comfortable enough to not make changes. Is this living life or purely existing?

We work hard to keep this comfort, which in reality is a sad concept, when there’s potentially so much more to discover. We don’t grow in there. We wither. Then we compromise. Of course compromising is part of a healthy partnership, but not when we compromise to stay safe in that comfort. This sort of compromise is driven by the fear of what we want to avoid. Not by actually what we want. And the cycle of neutrality continues.

What are we so afraid of?

We are afraid of what’s on the other side of that comfort. We are afraid of feeling anxious, feeling fear, feeling pain, getting hurt. We are afraid of family pressure, societal judgement, financial implications, being judged, looking bad, hurting another, being alone. We are afraid to see our truth and be honest.

And all the while we continue to hurt ourselves. Little by little, we lose who we are.

But sooner or later if you ignore and suppress your truth—your inner voice—the universe will find a way to drag you back to it. We can’t avoid it, we can’t run from it—it will become louder and louder and you will become too unhappy to deny it.

Perhaps depression or anxiety occurs, you have addiction issues, there’s infidelity, you drink more, or physical illness sets in. You simply find ways to escape your feelings and again you try to push them away. Self-medicate them away. Search for validation. Searching, always searching for something. Whatever the noise, you need to stop and listen.

When we lose ourselves, we lose our authenticity. Everything is strategic. We engage the world from the outside in. We assess everything and come up with a plan for what it would take to avoid what we want to avoid, how we get what we want to get, and then we adjust ourselves as necessary.

We put our mask on and play our part, regardless of what’s inside of us. If we are honest and authentic, we are engaging with life from the inside out. We are being genuine and straightforward. We are bringing our truth into the world—our truth into our relationships.

Sadly, it is not possible to constantly be strategic and to be happy and have real relationships at the same time.

Consequences. There are always consequences. Being strategic and staying in your comfort, fearful of the risks, has the consequence of you never fulfilling your potential, your dreams, never knowing if there is more out there—a greater love, a passionate life. Never growing into the person you could be.

Living authentically and speaking your truth has the consequence of being judged, you feeling the fear of living outside your comfort zone, of being alone—but learning lessons and growing will bring you a sense of peace.

Being in a relationship is a beautiful thing. Being in the wrong relationship is toxic. Why weren’t we taught that we don’t need a relationship to live a good life? Why weren’t we taught that being happy comes from inside of us, and if we find that, we attract the right energy to ourselves? Why weren’t we taught that knowing who we are first is crucial to finding the right person? Why weren’t we taught that our belief system is front and centre of our relationships?

We aren’t taught these things because the truth is that our teachers did not know either. We learn things, see things, hear things as kids—some we vow to bring into our own relationships and others we vow to never repeat.

Here’s the thing, regardless of the conscious choice we make, we do bring these things into our relationships unconsciously. Our beliefs are formed and our behaviour is a direct result of those beliefs.

The child that watched her parents constantly argue vowed to never be like that. She would never argue in front of others and she would never argue in front of her children. And she didn’t. What she did instead was walk around on eggshells. She became a people pleaser. She never used her voice. She avoided all confrontation. She had no boundaries. She kept the peace at all costs.

She withered. And it ultimately caused her great pain.

See, we all carry the unhealed parts of ourselves into relationships—we just don’t consciously know that we do.

We have a choice. We can choose to dance with our shadows and understand who we really are and where we came from. Or we can ignore the truth of our soul. We can continue to live in the comfort of neutrality, or we can take a risk and see if that’s what we really want.

It’s not about blame; it’s about growth, and it can be f*cking hard to face.

We may not have understood these things before, but now that we do, we have that choice. A choice of truth or a choice of strategy. A choice of comfort or a choice of the unknown. We have the choice to follow our soul.

I would rather be alone than with someone who doesn’t set my soul on fire.

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