conditions

The act of giving with no intent to receive anything back is the most profound thing we can do. I think the tendency to keep score is so subtle and hides so deeply inside our psyche that it doesn’t come into our awareness until we feel the scales have tipped too far out of balance for us. I think this is the root of many conflicts we have with the people we love. As long as things are groovy, and the other person is following our rules on how they “should act if they love us”, we are good with it. Once they break one of our rules, (which are our own self created definitions for behavior), how easy it is to fall into the trap of looking at the score. Breaking the cycle of this for that is the process of learning to give unconditionally. To give money anonymously, to do something kind for someone and not tell a soul, to say yes when someone asks for a hand without questioning if it will ever come back to you. These are the things we can hold only ourselves accountable for as we proceed through this life we are so blessed to live.

I am so blessed to have a partner who is such a perfect match for me, he loves me and supports me and has allowed me the freedom to grow and change throughout our relationship. I have also witnessed him growing and evolving as well with me. I’ll admit that for him the “rules of relationship” were much less strict than mine early in our relationship. We laugh now when he reminds me of when he learned about my “birthday rule”. I was raised in a very tight family, and birthdays were sacred. That meant a big party for the guest of honor, and all family members joined to celebrate. My sister and I had come up with the “birthday weekend” which then extended into the “birthday week”, during which the birthday person pretty much ruled and got to do whatever they liked- which usually translated in our family into spending time together with the people closest to us.

I remember the first year that James and I were together, and his birthday came along. He planned a big guys trip to the Black Rock Desert, with motorcycles and target shooting and all kinds of guy fun. I was quietly upset the week before as he planned it, but did not say anything to him about why. He intuitively knew something was wrong, but I was stubbornly resistant to telling him how I felt. My “rules” were that if he really cared about me he would want to spend his special day with me. AND that if he really knew me he should know why I was upset. I know that many people fall into these assumptions, that the partner we are with should know what we are thinking. We think that our rules are universal, and that they are absolute. We get into relationships with the belief that this person will not push our limits or make us upset. I was passive aggressive, meaning that I was in denial of being upset with him and treated him with a cool shoulder for an entire week after he returned. He finally broke through the ice and convinced me to talk to him. When I put into words how I felt it was ridiculous to hear myself. It was so selfish and the opposite of love that I was ashamed. I realized how much work I had to do still to learn to give unconditionally, to stop keeping score, and to truly love someone. I have been presented with many more tests throughout our relationship, and each one is a lesson and reminder to me of the way to love. You can read as much as you want about the way to love, but the real teacher is the process of making the decisions in every situation to give, to love, unconditionally.