If you’re reading this, I imagine you are exploring your relationship challenges, desires, and frustrations. Perhaps you’re in a relationship struggling with a familiar pattern. Or maybe a new challenge or conflict has arisen and you’re not sure how to navigate it. Or perhaps you’re taking a break from dating and desiring a different kind of relationship. 

Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here. Because, whether you’re in a relationship or single, you can approach your relationship challenges in a completely different way that can take the frustration out of relating.

First, it’s important to understand how you’ve been taught by society to approach relationships. In this time period of humanity, you’ve grown up in a conditioning field of “finding the right partner” and getting married being an important aspect of “proving your worth as a human.” This is taught by parents, school, family, and Hollywood. “Finding your person” has become a sign to society that you’re “normal” and acceptable. And so there’s often a lot of pressure felt, either consciously or unconsciously, to find your Soul mate. 

Now, add on top of that all the ways you were taught to suppress yourself as a child, to reign it in, fall into line, and follow the logical path instead of your Heart. You’ve learned to take action that will earn approval by society and you’ve learned that following your heart and Truth isn’t safe. So, this adds to the subconscious pressure to find a relationship where you feel loved, accepted, and approved in ways you’ve forgotten how to love, accept, and approve yourself. 

This results in an approximated Life leading to approximated relationships. 

And so then, you end up repeating conflicts, compromising in ways that don’t feel good, and repeating patterns that have you wondering, “What’s wrong with me?! How do I keep attracting __________ ?”

Well, nothing is wrong with you. 

And you can’t shift into healthier and more loving relationship dynamics by trying to “fix” yourself or treat the symptoms. Because you’re not broken! 

You’ve just learned to subconsciously seek someone to love you in the ways you don’t love yourself. BUT, this doesn’t work. Because this isn’t how the universe works. 

Where you judge yourself, you’ll judge your partner. Or they’ll judge you.

Where you don’t love parts of yourself, you won’t love those parts of your partner, they won’t love those parts of you, or they’ll love you but you won’t be able to receive their love. 

Where you have suppressed emotions, you’ll attract a partner that will trigger you in ways to help you release your emotions, to help you release and lighten, as long as you don’t blame them for it!

They are reflecting perfectly what’s happening in your inner world. And you can either choose to look at the reflection or choose to numb from it. 

This is because relationships aren’t designed to make you happy. They’re designed to help you build stability in yourself and your own happiness. 

They’re designed to shine a light on the areas you don’t love in yourself. They’re designed to help you feel what you haven’t felt. They’re designed to help you remember your wholeness. 

So that, from that wholeness, you’ll experience a joy and love of life and self that does not require partnership. 

THEN, your relationships will begin to reflect THAT joy and love and happiness. 

So, instead of trying to treat the symptoms, it’s important to get curious about what the conflict and challenges are pointing to within you. And to align your inner world to the relationship you desire.

This means really being willing to face your part in the conflict and challenges. It means being willing to uncover the protection patterns that has you blaming, lashing out at, and projecting onto your partner as the problem. It means being willing to face the parts of you that are hurt and are therefore unintentionally hurting others. 

And then to understand that these parts of you are scared and are trying to protect themselves. Whether the pattern is jealousy, insecurity, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone, fear of intimacy, there’s nothing wrong. There’s only a part of you that needs more love. And yes, ideally, your partner will be able to love that part of you. But they might not be able to due to their own wounding. They may have the capacity to see this and try. They may not.

But, you can’t control them. You can only control you. YOU can choose to love that part of you. And when you do, so will they. Or if they still can’t, YOU will have shifted your inner world to a place where that relationship is no longer aligned. And someone else will be able to. 

And if you’re single, you can focus on the patterns that have been showing up in your relationships up until this point and get curious about what they’ve been reflecting to you. 

So, as you can see, it doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong relationship if you’re currently dating someone and there’s a lot of conflict. You can do this exploration in a relationship or outside of a relationship. And only you know which you need right now. More on that later… 

What’s important now is to… 

Stop the Search and turn off the Relationship Radar

If you’re like me, then part of living in this era with all this pressure around partnership is having a “Relationship Radar”.

I would automatically analyze people I was meeting to see if they met the criteria for a potential partner. It was often automatic and unconscious, happening without intention. I was always on the lookout, wondering where I would meet them. And so, I was objectifying people, making them an object that had to meet certain requirements almost right out of the gate instead of an equal human to get to know. 

I was constantly searching, deeply desiring to be in partnership, to be loved in a way I’d never been loved before, and to be accepted and seen. I was looking for someone to fill in some gaps within me. 

And I often entered into relationships in this way and often attracted others who were trying to have me fill in some gaps for them, as our relationships are ALWAYS mirroring something for us. 

And so they would start off very fiery and intense, with future planning and future proclamations happening in the first 2-4 weeks only to fizzle out and die in dramatic fashion around the 4-6 month mark. This was when we started to have to navigate each others’ deep childhood wounding. My part in my relationships not working out was that I was very afraid of being abandoned and my confidence would turn into insecurity as the relationship went on. As I got closer to someone, I would be more afraid of losing them. And because I didn’t fully love myself, I was subconsciously worried they would see through the confident facade that I had put up. And so I overcompensated and pushed many away. 

This kept me safe from the deeper intimacy with them…. but more importantly from the deeper intimacy with myself. From actually sitting with and being with the pain and wounding from my childhood that led to these protection patterns and sabotaging mechanisms. 

So I stopped searching and shut down the relationship radar. 

And I started focusing on deeply understanding and loving the parts of me I’d ignored for so long, hoping someone else would do the work of loving them for me. 

And something very powerful happened, my next partner was the first partner that deeply loved these parts of me in ways other partners couldn’t. She stayed by my side when others would be pushed away. Because I loved myself more, she reflected that to me through her love. It was very special. And she also showed me how to love myself even more through that process. 

And this is what I’ve seen throughout my dating journey. With each breakup, as I look back and determine what didn’t feel aligned in a relationship and refine what it is I desire, my next partner would almost exactly match my new refined desire. 

Yet, because I still was focused outward on what I wanted my partner to make me feel, how I wanted the relationship to feel, what kinds of values and desires I’d love for her to have, etc. and NOT focused on loving myself, I would end up with more aligned partners but with the same challenging dynamics. 

In this relationship, my most recent, this changed. The challenges were different. The love was different. The connection was different. Because I’d done some work to love myself, I attracted someone who mirrored that love. 

Yet I realized that I still had work to do on my own. 

I was not ready for a relationship. I was still unraveling my fears of abandonment. And, as such, I introduced multiple challenges in the relationship, often creating confusion because I was unclear of what I wanted. I was also very messy with setting boundaries as I was learning how to navigate a relationship with this newfound self-love. I used to just do whatever my partner wanted and orient my life around their desires, which eventually blew up in my face. I did that because I subconsciously believed I had to in order to keep them around. 

Now, I was practicing how to be in relationship and not over-compromise in such a way. But it was messy. I would sometimes blame my partner for boundaries I wasn’t able to set and clarity I didn’t have. And I would become angry when my needs triggered her wounding, instead of being able to be compassionate. Like I said, a whole new realm of challenges. 

And I could have done this work in relationship with her. 

I could have stopped the search while in relationship. I could have stopped searching for her to be the one to change and mold to make me feel better. And I could have found my way to feel better and worked on this with her. She was willing. So I could have… 

… theoretically. 

Yet I realized I really needed to be in my own space and energy to get really clear on what I wanted from this new self-loving space because it wasn’t fair to either of us to be so uncertain. And I was struggling to do that while in the field of the relatoinship with her. 

I knew deep down that I needed to be single. That part of this journey for me was fully grounding into a new reality of choosing myself and orienting around myself and my business, where previously I would orient around others (other businesses, friends, communities, etc.). Of building this foundation strong within myself before dating. It wasn’t logical. My mind often didn’t want to “give up” because she is amazing. But my body knew. 

My body knew I wasn’t ready to date when we started dating but the love was strong. And so, I learned the distinction between love and logistics. That the love can be very real. But the timing and values and needs and desires can not be a match. This was very hard and took a lot of courage and intention and focus to make this choice. As my mind deeply resisted. 

But how I knew this, through the confusion and stubbornness and fears of my mind, was through following my Sacral Response, my Inner Authority of my Human Design chart. 

Over the years, I’ve learned how to listen to my body, my deep inner knowing, through my Human Design chart. More on this below.

So the invitation for you… 

… is to stop the search. 

To shut off the relationship radar. 

And to let your relationships be the reflections that they are for you. The teachers. And to search for what they’re mirroring within you:

• What part of self that needs more love
• What part of self that needs to cry tears long suppressed
• What part of self that needs to release anger long suppressed (and to do this in a healthy way, not directed at anyone)
• What part of self you may be judging 

And to start aligning your internal world through self-love to the partner of your dreams. That may end up being the person you’re with. It may end up being someone you’ve previously dated. It may end up being someone new. 

But it will be the relationship you truly desire AND it will be magnetized to you. With you being on a strong foundation of self-love, the compromises you’ll need to make in this relationship will feel easy and light and joyful because the Alignment will be so strong that they won’t feel like compromises. They’ll feel like additions.

When you choose to align your inner world to the love, joy, and fun you want to feel in relationship… and begin to feel that more and more and more regardless of what anyone is doing in your reality, then your relationship will mirror that love, joy, and fun. 

If you keep searching without aligning, you’ll keep ending up in the same relationship pattern. 

A Tool for Alignment

Earlier, I mentioned the Human Design System. This is an amazing system that maps how energy uniquely moves through your body and how you’re uniquely designed to hear and listen to the wisdom of your body. 

I created a free, personalized, report to introduce you to the system and give you actionable steps to take to begin trusting yourself again. This is a BIG piece of self-love. Remembering how to follow what you know to be true vs. the logic of your mind or of anyone else’s. 

I hope you download the report, take 15 minutes to read it, and begin to explore bringing it into your life. I designed it as a true beginner’s guide, giving you context and enough information to implement right away, vs. the other free guides out there or the guides you have to pay for. 

I hope you enjoy! 

If this post resonated with you, I invite you to join the “Human Design Applied” Facebook Group where you’ll find support and inspiration to embody your Human Design, align to your truth, and trust yourself like never before!