Empowered Relationship: Part 1
Walking on Eggshells? How to get off the eggshells and start dancing!

Walking On Eggshells?

You’ve heard me say over and again, “Every relationship is founded on one…the one with your self.”

What makes the relationship dance so fascinating, and challenging, is the process of understanding and clarifying the relationship with your self in the midst of your relationship with another.

Two fundamental archetypal urges drive the human experience in seeming opposition at once:

1. The urge to merge (realize inherent oneness)
2. The urge to individuate (express the unique creative tone of one’s soul design)

It is in relationship that these apparently conflicting urges each seek to realize fulfillment together, at once.  It is the confluence of these two urges that brings us both joy and conflict.  On one hand, there are times you can’t seem to get enough of your partner, you couldn’t possibly be too close.  On the other hand, you may find yourself groping in the dark to get away, trying to get a grip on yourself asking, “Who am I without you?”, feeling as though you don’t know what being an individual feels like anymore.

The alternate title to this post could be “The Art of Being Yourself”. The humor in this is unavoidable.  After all, who ELSE would you be than your self?  Well, since you provoked me to ask that very excellent question, let’s dive in here.  As you may already be aware, you learned at a very early age, which behaviors attract what you considered to be the most favorable attention.   In fact, it is very likely you also learned which behaviors would avoid unfavorable attention.

These learned (and imprinted)  behaviors are part of your Instinctual Survival Zone, your hardwired repertoire of survival strategies. These are behaviors that occur with the least amount of conscious awareness, if any–before your Core Awakening Journey, that is. Therefore, it can be quite challenging to feel safe while authentically responding to your intimate partner, boss or even a friend.  The underlying concern will always have something to do with trusting that you will be accepted and loved, or liked and wanted–that you are of value.

So you tiptoe around as if walking on eggshells, trying not to make a disturbance that would cause an upset; trying to manage the other person’s feelings toward you with placating behaviors.  Remarkably, upsets will ultimately happen because your expectation and fear has to attract those experiences and, in the meantime, resentment and distance builds.

Ultimately you may have come to learn that a relationship founded on adaptation rather than authenticity will either be short-lived or doomed to chronic dissatisfaction.  Oops.

Maybe you’re not the eggshell walker. Maybe you’re the one someone feels unsafe or intimidated to be themselves around.  Same dynamic, opposite end of the stick.  You may feel you have to assert who you are in order to hold yourself intact.  It may feel threatening when someone is treading on edges that make you feel uncomfortable or challenge your trust, so you consciously, or unconsciously, dominate the space in order to maintain a sense of control and to feel safe.

As enlightened as we may be and as much as we may love the one we’re with, these dynamics ultimately come into play in one form or another.  They’re not wrong and neither are you.  It’s all part of the evolutionary spiral of growing to know ourselves from wider and broader perspectives…in Love.