Why Are Relationships So Frustrating?

Can you see that everything in your reality appears to you as one of two categories? Either you think of it as yourself (or belonging to you) because you have control over it, or you think of it as part of your external environment, because it is not under your control. A "relationship" is where these two categories meet. A relationship is formed when you interact with the external environment, and you have some influence, but most of it is outside your control. That's what makes the relationship experience interesting and exciting (but sometimes also frustrating). Other people are just a specific instance of your external environment, but a special one, because of all the things in your world; they are the most like you. Therefore, your interactions with other people also have a special significance to you.

Maybe you are looking to other people for acceptance; that is to say, you want to be accepted by them. You might say to yourself, "Why should I change so that other people will accept me? I am what I am. They should learn to deal with me as I am." You have a strong desire to find someone who can accept you just as you are: totally, completely, and fully. At the same time, you also want to achieve full self-acceptance, to feel totally comfortable and "at home" being yourself. But you continually struggle with the challenge of accepting others as they are. Right now, some people in your life are exhibiting qualities that you don't want to deal with. They may pass judgment on you, criticize, nag, complain, or fail to give you enough respect and consideration. In short, they just don't do what you want them to do. Am I wrong about these things?

The essential challenge for you is to recognize that being accepted by others, accepting yourself, and accepting others are not three different things, they are in reality the same thing, because acceptance is a state of mind regarding the way you interact with your environment. Acceptance doesn't come from outside of you, it comes from within you. It is your willingness to just allow things (and people) to be as they are. Think about water flowing around rocks in a stream. Sometimes the water flows gently around whatever obstacle it encounters and continues downstream unhindered. This is your mind in a state of acceptance. Sometimes the water hits the rocks forcefully and churns back on itself, creating a frantic whirlpool that goes nowhere. This is your mind in a state of non-acceptance. While being accepted by others is not something you can directly control (and you only frustrate yourself by trying), accepting others and accepting yourself are your free choice. Once you choose the path of acceptance, you are then also free to perceive your environment as being accepting of you, because you are no longer demanding anything in particular from it.

My motivation in writing this is to help you clarify your thinking and stay on a productive path. Realize that you will keep meeting the same problems in different relationships until you figure out that the frustration is itself presenting the learning experience you need. You could turn right now and ask yourself, "What is the real cause of the things that frustrate me? What am I trying to change that is outside of my control? What can I learn about myself from these experiences?" I would love to hear you reflect on your feelings, respond to those questions and unlock the personal growth that comes from doing so.

What You Are Is What You Get

There is a bible verse that people like to paraphrase that basically says whatever you sow, you also reap. The concept here is that your actions have consequences, and you will have to face those consequences in the future. It seems somewhat similar to idea of karma, which appears in various Eastern religious and spiritual practices.

Over time, I've come to take the fundamental principle of this as "what you are is what you get". I understand it to mean that whatever thinking is going inside you also becomes your way of being affected by things outside you, and in actuality, it's all an extension of you. In my last post, I wrote about learning not to judge, and how if we can learn to accept our own feelings without resistance, then we are also learning to accept the feelings of others without judgment. Therefore, our relationships with others will become different, just because we've changed something inside ourselves.

Another example linked with judging is that being judgmental creates self-consciousness. Why is this so? Because if you are constantly judging other people, you will assume that they too are constantly judging you, and you will try to imagine what their judgments of you are like. Then, you react to those imagined judgments by trying to manage your "image", that is to say, by worrying about how others see you. And if you stop judging others, what happens? You forget to worry that they might be judging you. In fact, the whole concept of judging begins to disappear from your mind, and the result is that you will have much less self-consciousness about how others perceive you.

All of the "insides" and "outsides" have similar linkages. If you're a deceitful person, you will start to wonder if others are deceiving you too, and you will grow suspicious and have trouble trusting anyone. So, if you want to build trust with others and feel like you can rely on them, work on becoming a completely honest person. If you never really listen to anyone else at work, but just look for opportunities to promote your own ideas and plans, you will begin to feel like no one is taking you seriously. Why? Because to convince other people of the merit of your ideas, you need to form ideas that fit with their understanding of what's going on. If you don't listen to them talk about what they think is happening and why, you can't refine your ideas in appropriate ways nor be persuasive in explaining why your ideas will succeed. In other words, if you want to be listened to and taken seriously, you will want to learn to listen to and take others seriously.

Really everything that irritates or frustrates us about others or about our situation is a clue to something we need to pay attention to inside ourselves. Once we figure out how to address our own thoughts and actions from the inside, then the outside problems will heal themselves.

Have you ever changed something in yourself and found that your reality changed as well?

Nothing Else

I’ve had three really intense spiritual experiences in my life, each of which left me profoundly changed at the core of my being. The last one happened about three years ago. It was an ordinary day and I was leaving work. I was driving out of the parking lot, and I passed one of my coworkers walking to her car. I smiled and waved at her as I normally do with people I pass on the way out. About 30 feet or so behind her was another woman whom I did not recognize at all. However, I began smiling and waving at her too. At first, a look of utter bewilderment crossed her face. I knew she was thinking, “Do I know this woman? Why on earth would she be waving at me?” but I went on smiling and waving anyway. Then, she broke into a beautiful radiant smile, and I knew that she understood that we didn’t know each other at all, but it just didn’t matter. Suddenly, this overwhelming feeling of knowing beyond any doubt, that the universe is filled with love—knowing that, in reality, nothing else ever has been nor ever will be, enveloped me. Behind this woman’s look of confusion, behind her radiant smile, was a deep longing to be recognized and loved. It’s a deep longing in me too, and in all of us. It’s an aching need that is, at once, the desire to be loved, the capacity to give love, and love itself. It relentlessly urges us to reach out to one another, deeply yearning to connect at the level of our vulnerability and our imperfection, trying urgently to show each other the truth that just can’t be told.

It’s too easy to get caught up in the presentation of ourselves. “Am I acceptable? How do they see me? What does it mean when someone waves at me? What does she want? How should I react? Will I look like a fool?” But truly, love is simple, love is obvious, love doesn’t expect anything, love understands your confusion, love patiently waits for you to drop your self-doubts, and let it in. Nothing and no one you seek out can ever convince you that you are loved, until you are willing to see it for yourself. Only one thing hides behind a radiant smile or a look of utter bewilderment. You are love.

Can you see it?