Grow Together In Your Relationships!

When relationships end, we often hear about how the two people involved “grew apart” from each other. I wonder if that’s really true. It seems to me that many people in serious relationships never allow themselves to “grow together.” It’s mind-boggling to me that people can be in committed relationships and yet  never communicate honestly with their significant other. What’s even more mind-boggling is the fact that this seems to be more the norm than not.

Many people commit to each other on a surface level. They do fun things together, share similar friendships and talk about fluff until they feel comfortable enough to get physical. Before you know it they’re married—often because the sex was great—and they’re having kids. But deep down, they don’t even really know each other at all. They’ve never allowed themselves to be vulnerable to the point of truly unleashing who they are, what they need, what they want, what they’re deepest hurts and joys are, what they truly believe or just how empty their souls often are.

The saddest part is that even though they have chosen to enter into a committed and supposedly truly intimate relationship with each other, they don’t feel like they can honestly express themselves or ask for what they truly need. So, feeling stuck, one or both partners begin to look outside their relationship to find fulfillment. One of them hooks-up with a man or woman that they work with, the other with an old friend who reenters their life. They each connect with someone outside their marriage because they are able to talk freely with this person. As they grow comfortable opening up to these outside partners, their conversation becomes more intimate, more spiritual and eventually it becomes sexual.

The next thing we know, the original couple has “grown-apart” and they are filing for divorce. Did they really “grow apart,” or did they never really “grow together” from the get-go?

If you are in a committed relationship and your needs are not being met, ask yourself “who’s to blame?” Your life is what you make it. If you are not communicating with your partner, if you are not allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough with him/her to talk honestly about the relationship and to ask for what you want, need and expect, then you have failed yourself. We can’t blame our partner when we are refusing to honor ourselves by being truthful with them about our needs for intimacy and growth.

And if we aren’t being truthful, we need to ask ourselves “why?” Why is it that we aren’t able to be fully honest and emotionally naked before our partner? Do we believe deep down that we aren’t worthy of having our needs met? Are we afraid of being laughed at or scorned for asking to have our needs met? Are we afraid of abandonment if we let our real selves and our real needs out of our Pandora’s box? Most likely the answer to these questions is “yes” for many of us.

We are trapped in our fears and thus unable to expand and grow into our relationships with those we say we love. It’s time to cut the crap. To let go of the fear and to take the necessary risks of revealing our true selves and true needs so that the relationship can grow or honestly dissolve. Any time we take a risk, we face positive or negative outcomes. The relationship may grow or it may end. Either way, however, will be a growth process for us because we will no longer be stuck in a limbo of our own making. If we don’t move forward in the current relationship and it ends, we will not be losers. We will have new-found tools that can help us find and build a new relationship with someone who’s better suited to us. We will know better than to make the mistake of hiding our real selves and our real needs ever again. There is someone out there who is meant to meet our needs and vice-versa. But we have to be REAL to meet that person.

Take some time to stop and think about how important your own personal growth is. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you expand as a person. You grow in new spiritual, mental and emotional directions. You become REAL. You are then prepared to “grow together” with someone. And when you find that someone who’s also willing to “grow together” with you, there will be no “growing apart.”