The Rings of Relating by Barbara Brewster

Excerpt from 

Love Or Growth – Why Not Both? A Woman’s Dilemma

10 August, Bend, Oregon

Here with Bev, sequestered in her charming, woodsy cabin. It’s such a superlative time of sharing, probing, questioning, helping each other to dig deep within ourselves and unearth the insightful treasures.

 All day the dialogue zings like Chinese ping pong balls, ebbs, flows, darts down side roads such as diets and computers, swings back to course along major channels like Sid, Robert, and relationships. As we process ourselves, the structure of our Reinventing Relationships workshop emerges.

The question we both have is, “What is it in myself that keeps me from sharing the truth of who I am?”

I say, “My expectations. I remember how in the past, Sid was unhappy, hurt, and disappointed. I expect he will respond that way again.”

  “So, what if he does?”

   “I fear being responsible for his pain. I fear his disapproval.”

 “Ah, fear,” echoes Bev, “fear of no longer being seen as ‘The nice girl.’ A person who inflicts pain is not nice and therefore not likeable. Being seen as not nice is tantamount to being unlikable–unlovable.”  

 We ask, what have we learned from our partnerships with men?

 “That it doesn’t work,” says Bev, “if I deny my instincts. That I must trust that my instincts are valid and I must honour them. I can say to my partner, ‘This is what I need to do/be in order to honour my truth. Can you join me in making that happen?’ If yes, then we both try this way for a period of time. If no, then we have the answer as to whether or not we stay together.”

I nod, “I’m clear that there is no relationship with Sid or anyone unless I honour my truth and needs. Even if they seem at odds with loving someone, to ignore or deny myself is death.”

Bev looks at me with her characteristic clear-eyed gaze. “Why is it so hard to honour our needs in relating?”

 I sigh deeply, “Because honouring my needs and truth looks like selfishness. According to my husbands.”

 “So, the question becomes,” says Bev, “do I behave ‘selfishly’–self-nurturingly – at the expense of love?”

“That’s what’s been tearing me apart. If I don’t, I dishonour myself. But what if I follow my star, my heart, my truth, only to find out that it was no more than an inability to bend, open and give myself wholeheartedly to another? Will I wake up one day empty in my aloneness, feeling I’ve made a terrible mistake?”

 “There are no guideposts. We’re having to totally trust our inner awareness, and it’s hard not to go into self-doubt.”

 “What I wish is to be able to meet Sid’s needs without losing myself. That would be win-win. If I meet Sid’s needs and try to fit into his projections of how a relationship should be by losing myself, it’s lose-lose.”

Remember this: there is only one sacred promise – and that is to tell and live your truth. All other promises are forfeitures of freedom, and that can never be sacred. For freedom is Who You Are. If you forfeit freedom, you forfeit your Self. And that is not a sacrament, that is blasphemy.

Neale Donald Walsch: Conversations With God; Book Three

 The other question Bev and I ask each other is: How do you see relationships?

  I say, “I see a healthy relationship as being in constant evolution. It is not a static substance sunk into some prescribed structure and expected to remain that way forever. There is no cut and dried, no black and white, no permanent picture. We create our own model of a relationship. We have never finished creating that.  It’s an ongoing process.”

 “Maybe,” suggests Bev, “to be in a dynamic relationship is to be a pioneer, to accept the call to continually press beyond the borders of our comfort zones and of the expected.”

 “Yes!” I agree, “It’s to keep pushing through our barriers and boundaries of how we have been conditioned that relationship should be.”

 “That’s what it feels like to me,” says Bev, tapping her chest. “Because I keep growing, I naturally have to push out the rings of relating into ever wider circles, to explore the unknown territory and learn to live in a state of flux, of nothing set.”

 “To grow in relationship,” I conclude, “we have to accept relating as a dynamic, ever-expanding process in which we cannot fall back on set forms, rules or expectations. To be alive is to constantly reinvent the style and form in which I relate to myself, to others, to God.”

I’ve longed for this stimulating interplay of ideas with someone. I come alive working toward a goal with a collaborator who shares similar feelings and questions. I relish hatching these seminars out of our own experience. Bev is a master listener, allowing me to talk and keep going deeper without her tossing in interruptive observations. I bring articulation and an off-the-wall, extroverted style. We play off of each other. Working as a team is the same magic as singing in harmony with a partner.

I pick up Bev’s Rumi book, Open Secret, and here is exactly what we’ve concluded about relationships:

The restless changing is a sign of health; fireriness,  fermenting, and magnetic movement, all indications of love’s action.

Is my restlessness my self’s indication of love’s action? The stages of my life act as midwives to their next form. The longing for and the activity of transformation begets further transformation. A growing plant that is not replanted in a bigger pot becomes pot-bound, where it either remains perpetually stagnant or dies.

 Change is a fundamental right of all creatures. Indeed, it is more than a ‘right,’ for a ‘right’ is that which is given. ‘Change’ is that which IS. Change IS. That which is change, you are. You cannot be given this. You ARE this. Now, since you ARE ‘change’ – and since change is the only thing constant about you – you cannot truthfully promise to always be the same.

           Neale Donald Walsch: Conversations With God; Book Three

LOVE OR GROWTH; WHY NOT BOTH? A Woman’s Dilemma — by Barbara Brewster

Queensland-based Inspirational Author/Presenter, Passionate Student of Life, Spontaneity Addict, Patch Adams Clown, Barbara Brewster’s account of striving to live her burgeoning spiritual and personal truth within the context of an established relationship is the ‘Raw account of a modern western woman’s journey.’ 

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“A powerful motivator and an inspirational tool for women who stand on the edge of major change … Encourages the reader to make the jump, gently and with deep connection to Spirit and one’s intuition … A great read and hard to put down.”

—  Robin Clayfield, Author: ‘Gifts for Wild Women’