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Title: Safe Relationship Spaces
Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
E-mail: [email protected]
Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul
Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com
Word Count: 1529
Category: Relationships
SAFE RELATIONSHIP SPACES
By Margaret Paul Ph.D.
I have been counseling individuals, couples, families and business partners for the past 35 years and have numerous published books on the subject of relationships and relationship communication. Most of the couples I work with, even those in deep trouble when starting counseling with me, resolve their difficulties because they learn to create safe relationship spaces through a process called Inner Bonding (see how to download a free Inner Bonding course at the end of this article).
In the depths of our souls we all yearn for love and connection with others. That yearning reflects a basic, even biological, human need. Infants, for example, thrive physically only when they feel deeply loved and cherished. As adults, we experience wrenching, soul-level loneliness when we don’t have love and meaningful connection in our lives, yet all too frequently we don’t have these things. Not cuckoldblog with our parents or siblings, not with a mate, not even with a best friend.
We all intuitively know that the highest experience in life is the sharing of love. However, we often confuse the idea of sharing love with the idea of getting love. We try to get love when we feel empty inside and can share love only when we learn to first fill ourselves with love. We cannot share that which we do not have within. The wounded part of us seeks constantly to get love and avoid pain, resulting in an inability to share love. Until we each accept the full responsibility of becoming strong enough to love, we will not be able to share love. This means creating inner safety by learning how to love ourselves and take responsibility for our own feelings, so that we are not constantly trying to get love.
Most people have deep fears of rejection and abandonment, as well as of domination and engulfment. These fears stem from childhood experiences and from defining our worth externally through others’ approval, rather than internally through spiritual eyes of truth. We will be unable to share our love to the fullest extent until we heal these fears of loss of other and of loss of self. We will be unable to create the safe relationship space in which to share love, and a safe world in which to live, until we learn how to create safety within.