I hate it when my partner doesn’t do exactly what I want him to do, all the time, in every situation. The fact that he has a will of his own can be very annoying to me.
As absurd as this sounds, I mean it. And this is the thing about romantic relationships - they are conditional arrangements. We want our partner to behave the way we want so we can feel good. If they don’t act the way we want, then we won’t feel good and then we’re not happy. Then we start to think maybe the relationship just isn’t working.
From this perspective, it may not be. But Infinite Intelligence has another idea. Infinite Intelligence (or Spirit, or the Divine, or God, or whatever you want to call it) wants to use our relationship for its own purposes, which is nothing less than our full and complete self-actualization.
One of my favorite teachers, Marianne Williamson, talks about this idea from the perspective of A Course in Miracles, which says that relationships are assignments and that we are brought into contact with the perfect person for us to have the “maximal opportunity for soul growth.”
Unfortunately, soul growth tends to be a lot less fun than if my guy would just do whatever I want him to.
But as Marianne says, “In romantic relationships, the growth opportunity lies in the fact that sometimes people, after two weeks, two months, have the audacity to be human, to not be perfect, to not live their lives to fulfill every picture we have as to how they should behave.”
Which, in my opinion, is a bit of a bummer.
But this reality needs to be accepted as a starting point. The purpose of relationships is not to make us happy, it's to grow. This is a radical reframe, and one you may not accept.
And this is not to say that we should be in relationships that are causing us constant suffering and misery, or relationships that are abusive. It's also not to say that feeling happy shouldn't be a significant side effect of being in a love relationship.
But rather that we come to understand intimate relationships as a spiritual workshop of sorts. We come together because we feel all those happy, shiny feels, but that's only what gets us through the door. Once we're there, the real work starts. Our shadows show up.
We are now offered a different opportunity. We get to work on actualizing our highest selves, the self that is aligned with unconditional love, the self that is perfectly okay with our partner exactly as they are.
Not easy stuff. I am reminded of this firsthand, every day. My imperfect ego self and my higher self fight this one out on the regular.
But I love the question Marianne so poignantly poses to her audience, which is this: If what we’re looking for is an enlightened master who makes no mistakes, and we are fortunate enough to find this rare human, would this person want to date us?
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