Understanding desire and yearning in relationships
Desires for a relationship come from deep within us. They aren’t desires for a specific person so much as a need for expression and experience of connection and feeling that we can have with another person. Those desires include the emotion of love, physical affection and sexual satisfaction. It is by satisfying our desires that we experience pleasure. An intimate partner is a fabulous way to satisfy these desires, but not the only way. The strength of these desires can be so strong when they are not met that they fee like yearning, or even painful aches. The mind often seeks out relationship interactions to relieve us of these aches.
In a conscious aware relationship it is not just important to be present with our emotions and our desires. We also need to manage the stories, expectations, and illusions in the mind that can create so much misunderstanding. In this audio I outline some of the desires we have for relationships, and how the mind is programmed to create answers about satisfying those desires. Of course the mind’s solution may not be the best one possible. It can only choose the best one it sees within its limited paradigm of experience and beliefs. This can lead to some unhappy and painful experiences in our relationships.
Understanding relationships includes awareness of our physical and emotional desires, as well as the mental constructs and expectations our mind creates. Our mind often interprets that a partner, soul mate, or some special match will be the answer to our needs. This is an exaggerated responsibility to place on our partner for our happiness and leads to emotional drama and reactions.
Our yearning is satisfied by the expression of our love, not by receiving it from someone else. It is the mind that makes assumptions about how our deep feelings will be satisfied and those assumptions, learned from an emotionally dramatic society, are usually wrong. In a truly conscious and aware relationship you will have to manage the beliefs and expectations in the mind to enjoy happiness all the time.
You can listen to the second part of Love Relationships here