For a long time I have been feeling I did not really choose to be in a relationship but more felt I ought to be in one because everything around me (magazines, media, movies, family, friends etc.) were telling me, that that was what you want to do as a young woman.
I did throw myself into it, literally, and would be at times quite proactive in finding a boyfriend. These relationships were very innocent and loving at the start. But later I got this feeling that there was always something missing in them.
In the years passing and me growing up into a young adult, this need to be in a relationship with a man had grown stronger and stronger and I often felt out of control, just a puppet who could only think of being in a relationship with a man!
To add to that, I would be devastated as well when the relationship was over. Ask my mum, I would be crying on the kitchen floor one time, I remember. Being so desperate and out of control was not something I liked to feel but I did not know a way out.
A couple of years later I started to attend workshops and courses held by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. He presented a lot on relationships and especially the importance of loving yourself before looking for love from someone else. I now know this to be true and this supported me to see a way out of my neediness.
From there I decided to have a period in my life without looking for or being in a relationship with a man.
I have been single by choice for a couple of years and it has supported me enormously to build a loving relationship with myself. I have grown a deeper level of understanding for how I feel and see things and also a confidence in myself that has allowed me to make loving choices for myself.
So that is a bit of my history, but how did I start a relationship built on love?
I have been deeply inspired by the Women in Livingness Magazine’s first edition on the subject of Breast care. There is a section by Karin Becker: ‘Dating with Karin’ where she asks the reader to consider: “What kind of relationship do I really want to have in my life? And, am I willing to come to the table and bring my part to really make this happen?”
I realised after reading this that I never ever asked myself what kind of relationship I wanted in my life. This felt very important to realise.
Without knowing and deeply asking myself what kind of relationship I wanted to be in, I was at the mercy of all that the world told me in the way of movies and magazines but also by the reflection of many people in relationships around me.
At that moment I felt I wanted to be in a relationship to build love with someone equally as committed to this as I was. Someone who adored me and would hold me with respect, care and love for the beautiful woman I am. In that moment I also claimed to not accept anything less than this as I could feel that if I didn’t, I would keep the option there to be in a relationship less than this.
It is not about results or happy endings, but a week after this realisation I got the opportunity to start a beautiful relationship, which was about love and building a true relationship together, which I took and it has been an amazing unfoldment over the last year plus a bit.
In this relationship, because it has been for both of us about love and our connection from the start, I have been asked to deepen my relationship with myself even further. When there would be something uncomfortable coming up like feeling hurt or feeling I had been a bit needy, I found that in the end it was never about my partner but always about my relationship with myself. The littlest bits of lack of love for myself were sort of magnified by the relationship.
So I have found being in a relationship is not a point of ‘Ah, I am there, now life is perfect, all is good and I can sit down now’. No, it is a next step of deepening the forever relationship with myself and therefore with my partner and ultimately with everyone I meet.
It is learning to understand myself and my partner, always making it about love first, not about being right or not, and about growing together, supporting each other to be more of the amazing people we naturally are.
Recently we felt to get married, which we did! I feel this is just the beginning of an amazing life of forever deepening and growing together, in my relationship with myself and all others – because that is the purpose of relationships in the end.
By Lieke Campbell, Dentistry Student, aged 25, Ghent, Belgium
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