Facilitating Your Partner's Freedom: A Guide to Nurturing Autonomy in Relationships
Freedom is such an important word for me and so should it be for everyone too. It should be a word that prompts a desperation in us to achieve some sense of freedom, at least in this lifetime. Yet I encounter so many people struggling to find a glimmer of what the word means.
To unpack this in a more accessible manner, freedom encompasses emotional freedom, psychological freedom, relational freedom, physical freedom, financial freedom and spiritual freedom. These all form part of the baseline we need to master in order to reach a higher order of feeling free within the worlds we are creating for ourselves.
Yes, this is a lifelong process and we too need to find the joy in surrendering to the pain in life because with all pleasure there is an equal amount of pain.
When single, we strive for freedom but with the mindset of doing anything we feel we need to do to hopefully nourish our soul. When in a couple, we often have the tendency of moving into a co-dependant style relationship where we fight to be seen and heard rather than taking the time to truly understand our relational style and then develop a new manner of relating that is healthy for the individual and the couple.
One such area that definitely needs work is the importance of facilitating your partners freedom. Take a moment to think about this. Would it not make sense that your partner would be the happiest person in a relationship if they felt free and they knew that you were the one instrumental in creating the space for that freedom?
Logic would say yes, but the ego or our shadow side would say no. There would be a direct conflict between the two because it seems that stepping into the conscious adult is a difficult process for many of us. The disrobing of our emotional turmoil we've carried for so many years has fed into our narrative and outlook on life so why would we want to at all cost facilitate someone else's freedom when I do not feel free within myself?
A simple answer is that through relating and through relationship we can experience a great amount of healing. We can truly use the process of being with another as the platform to understand who we are. Where our limitations are, and then grow through those limitations and become someone very different. It is through the relationship that we will experience sides to us that we never thought reachable and it is through relationship that we become at home with ourselves.
Two wounded souls coming together to explore the world inside and outside with the sole aim of being at peace and quieting any inner torment. Holding space for one another and for oneself. Learning how to self soothe and when needed help the other soothe themselves. Recognising the flaws in how we relate and truly become authentic with one another. Truly learn to harmonise with the energetic state of the other and learn how to navigate these moments with a pure and loving conscience. One that will add to facilitating yours and your partners freedom.
There are many teachers that suggest we should not expect anything from our partner, but the ability to work through expectation and ultimately reach a point of non-expectation is part of a beautiful process involved in exactly this. We do not come together free, we come together with many belief systems that have informed our lives and now we are expected to completely surrender to the other in trusting that they will aid us in feeling free. Its counter intuitive in many ways hence why we have to start at a baseline and introduce the expectation that they will at some point be the primary person to aid in my freedom and visa versa. Part of that baseline is providing the space for both of you to be heard and seen and harmonise in one another's voices to become one fluid and in tune melody.
This is all practice in the game of love. There needs to be one ultimate mindset going into a relationship and that is being an active agent in working on oneself in trying to understand, adapt, shift, grow, discuss, be present, and find the most healthy of space for you and your partner to grow together.
Via Con Dios
