Being human seems to include thinking others can make us happy…until you realize it’s not really their job. However, until we find and shift our own stuck places, relationships will continue to be our focus, our potential source of joy.

Close relationships provide the perfect opportunity for our stuck places to show up. As we get closer to another person, we open our old psychological defences in the presence of that love. We allow ourselves to be more vulnerable, more available to discover our painful stuck places.

Your significant other, be they partner, spouse, live-in lover or husband/wife, is often given unlimited access to your innermost being in the early days of the relationship. Love does that…it dissolves boundaries around the most sensitive areas so that you can deeply experience connection. As time passes and life happens, you cannot stay in that initial stage of openness. Life continues and those defences that helped you survive fall back into place creating separation again. And we blame our significant other, when it’s our stuck place that is so very painful.

Children are amazing windows into our stuck places. Our love for these innocent little beings dissolves the boundaries and joy flows. And then, one of those little people helps us find a stuck place and the walls begin to come up again. A situation that reminds you of a childhood experience can bring a surprisingly strong or even unwanted reaction. When you can’t say no as a parent or stop yelling at your children, you have found stuck places.

Close friends can deepen the areas of our life where we relax and find a place of refuge from the rest of the world. Friendships can also be intimate – it doesn’t have to be romantic to feel a closeness with another person. We open to friends in surprising ways, allowing them to uncover stuck places as differences threaten to create separation and we use an old defense to protect ourselves from unwanted emotional experiences.

In relationship with others, we find the nurturing to grow and explore as well as the differences that tend to shut us down. These stuck places, or emotional entanglements, are available for transformation. Are you willing to explore something new?

Header Image courtesy of Pixabay/Jill111