Being good at relationships doesn’t mean that you will hang onto every relationship you’ve ever had (read: “never give up on anyone”), allowing them to drag you down, but it means you can manage any situation with relative ease without needlessly hurting too many people as you go along; including leaving people. Relationships are about finding a balance between several opposites, and trying to understand what other people are doing and why, and to the best of your ability, find an appropriate role for people you want to or have to keep in your life. Understanding, however, doesn’t mean that you will forgive each other, quite the opposite. Sometimes when you understand what the other person was doing all along, the last thing you want to do is to remain friends with them, particularly when you see their point; they have every right to feel that way, and  you have a right to fee another way. If the way they think is ingrained in them, as in, that is the way they are, there is no point to try and make the relationship work, if everything that you are together is somehow toxic to the other.

Spoiler alert: If you want to keep thinking that your coaches are infallible God-like creatures, please read no further. If you want to know what attitudes and ideas color what I teach, read on:

Sometimes the most inflamed relationships are worth rescuing, while, on the other hand, some fairly mild arguments might be a strike of death to another relationship. OFTEN the more inflamed things are, the more it means there is some true emotions in there, and THAT may be a good thing… May be. Most often it is, but not always, for instance when the hurt comes from a failure to meet an external expectation: “Because you are my mother, you were supposed to love me for who I am, unconditionally!” The fact is, not even mothers can always love their children the way the fairytale books tell them to, but luckily most often they do. What is also important to know, that depending on our thinking pattern the Normal Person*/the Savants*, the way we love each other will be the exact opposite to the way the other loves us, and although both ways have merit, neither makes the other type happy.

My relationship with my mum (everyone is sick of hearing about it)

For me, personally, my relationship with my mother has been terrifyingly bad ever since I started to form an independent personality. From my mother’s perspective, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I am simply being difficult when I bring up my issues. I love my mother dearly, and that is why her dismissal of everything that I am and care about hurts so bad. I am a good person. In fact, a lot of people would use positive superlatives to describe me, but to my mother, I am a nuisance. I am an attention-hungry, narcissistic, arrogant child who always has to make a big fuss about things that don’t matter, and who is simply refusing to do things the same way as everyone else, causing embarrassment to the entire family.

For the last few years, I’ve periodically tried to close the gap between us, I’ve tried to explain to her, as gently as I possibly can, that what caused our differences, so we could talk about it, get on the same page, agree to disagree or come to a mutual understanding that what I am doing and the way I am thinking is OK at least, even if she would not think it’s awesome, but she keeps rejecting me in the most brutal of ways, seeing no reason why I should be upset about anything she has ever said. I’ve approached her:

Mum, I know you don’t really like me or love me, can’t we just accept that and let go of it? Can’t you just accept that I am not what you want and just let me be? Like, the ship has sailed. I became what I am and now there’s not much you can do to change that. I’m 40. I am happy with what I am. I LIKE me. This is what I have chosen for myself…

“Well, we have always loved you more than your brother.”

YES. She said that. Translation: “We have had to send you more money than to your brother because he’s always been more self-reliant.” At least I hope to God that is what she meant.

The rest of the conversation didn’t go any better.

Another time I offered to her, what I thought was an offer no mother could refuse. I wrote to her: “Mum, I feel like you’re always worried about me. I think that a lot of the worry comes from the fact that you don’t feel like you can ask me anything because I am reserved and private. What if I promised you, that I will answer ANY QUESTION that you have, as honestly as I can, to put your mind at ease about things, so you don’t have to fear the unknown.”

Her response: “What the hell is this about now?!”

I’m like… WOW. She GOT OFFENDED. That is when I gave up for the first time. I didn’t speak to her for months.

I made a few attempts to close the gap since when I visited home in Finland, still not talking to her, making all the arrangements with dad, which was unusual. I got there, not having seen her for two years, in a weeks time I shouted at her, screamed at her – that brought the best result; I was in her kitchen, screaming like a banshee, pointing my finger at her, swearing… I have never behaved like that in my life and I don’t want to ever again, but I did that simply to see if that would have an affect, after all, what did I have to lose if I reverted to the mental state of a teen aged monkey? We went at it for 3 days, and finally, she was ready to talk to me. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. We even hugged before I left.

Then, we went back to normal. To her, all these fights are just “venting”. She can ignore anything I say because it is the screaming (=bonding/intimacy/release of anger) that matters. Her ignoring who I am, throwing insensitive comments in a normal conversation, being her normal self, detached and cold, and I thought… you know what… I can’t lower the bar any lower than what I already have, the only thing left is to tell her that she was right, I was wrong, she’s an angel, a perfect being who has never done a thing wrong in her life and I am the one with issues. I’ll deal with this on the spirit level, I don’t need to get upset every time I hear from my own mother, so I blocked the email address, and her phone number, and only talk to my dad now.

Could I have done more? Yes. I could have moved back to Finland to fix this relationship, but I have a life to live, and I am in no intention of sacrificing it to my mother. Unfortunately, I don’t know if the Universe will demand it before I am off the hook… But the only reason why I would approach that again is for purely selfish reasons, I need that connection gone. What is worse, I get NO support from the rest of the family, who simply want me to stop rocking the boat, and the only thing I COULD do is to go there and scream at everyone until they know I am being serious, and that is simply so beneath me I can’t tell you how insulting it is that they can’t hear me speak with a normal talking tone. (As you can tell, I am still absolutely sore about this.)

As a coach, I do not want to be a hypocrite. I also don’t want to tell you I am perfect. But I do want to tell you perfect relationships exist, and they don’t need to be to people you already know. There’s plenty of people in the world, and it pays to remain hopeful.

Accepting relationships for what they are, not what you wanted to make them

I think this will sound familiar to a lot of you. You realized that you married your best friend. Someone with whom you felt comfortable and close, and who was easy to get along with, and who felt easy after all the drama and turmoil of being pulled in all different directions by your True Emotion Mirrors . You simply wanted to connect with someone and you married the best wrong person you could marry. I did that.

Sure, I could try and fix this and make it into something it is not. We could, without a shadow of a doubt, we could live a very happy life together if we wanted to. We could have fun because we think the same way, we could make a good relationship into a better one, but, at the end of the day, we are not right for each other – not perfect. Not in the sense that your True Emotion Mirror is perfect for you.

What I want out of relationships, personally, is very passionate. I want to drown in passion. I want it to fill all my senses, and as much as I love my ex-husband, he is a different sort. He laughs at the things I find interesting, sexy, and exciting, and I don’t mind, he is what he is, and I am what I am. I don’t want to change for him, and I don’t want him to change for me, I like him way too much the way that he is to start forcing him into a mold I’d be happier with. The world would miss out on an amazing person if I tried to fit him into my scene, and… Frankly, vice versa.

A relationship coach for the separation and finding new people

What I really want to do as a coach is to help people get AWAY from the wrong relationships and move towards healthier and more abundant relationships. I believe it is an absolute fallacy to believe you can turn any relationship around, or that you should even bother trying. I feel there is a lot of guilt involved with that kind of a decision, a lot of disbelief from the Normal Person* thinking part of our friends and family, who believe the ultimate virtue is to hang onto all relationships and “never give up on anyone“. I want to educate people to tell them, that “never giving up on someone” shouldn’t come at the expense of that other person that is being pulled back in and their happiness, causing them to be forced to change who they are in order for the relationship to continue. It is not fair to demand the person who wants to end the relationship to change so that the relationship could continue, is it? If someone needs to change it is the people who want to salvage the relationship, obviously. The person leaving should have every right to do so because they respect the people they are leaving enough to NOT try and force them into becoming something they don’t want to be. So many times in True Emotion Mirror circles I sense that attitude: “He doesn’t want a relationship with me, he has a problem and needs to change.” No. No, he doesn’t have a problem, nor does he need to change. He’s not the one begging for a relationship. (What if all people did that, they just left when someone doesn’t want to be with them? Well, everyone would be with their True Emotion Mirrors  because they don’t have to change for each other and they both want nothing more than be together. Simple. Everyone would be happier for it.)

the Normal Person* tend to have the kind of attitude that they fart rainbows, and that is the main reason for all relationship problems out there. Their way of thinking is not harmful in itself, but the fact they do not necessarily ask others whether or not they are OK about being tied to them for the rest of their lives poses a HUGE problem. Their love is often similar to the traditional idea of owning a dog: You get a dog, you show it discipline; you tell the dog exactly how to fit in and play nice and everything is going smoothly. The only thing; the dog wasn’t asked if he wants to be a part of this unit or not, but it’s the only reality he knows… And personally, I have NOTHING BUT issues with that kind of approach to human relationships – and canine relationships for that matter. I always had a small issue about owning a dog, because I wasn’t sure if he really wanted to be MY dog. I think he did, though, after all, he picked me. I was supposed to take the other one, but could not. Because he did this:

These days, it is more difficult than ever to shake off old package in the form of people. Have you ever tried to delete a person off your contact list? Ghosts of the past keep popping up, sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s so infuriating. “Oh you accidentally deleted a contact from your phone? Oh worry not, here it is!!” Google is totally in the corner of the Normal Person* on that one! If that wasn’t enough, Facebook keeps reminding you of friends of friends you wish you’d never even met. 😀

This just popped up on my Facebook feed, and it couldn’t be more appropriate in the context:

The primary place that your relationSHIP should be taking you is one or all of these destinations; joy, fulfilment, happiness, fun, or growth. If it fails to do that, it is not worth keeping. This is not a zombie apocalypse where we should be happy to just see anyone at all. We can afford to be a bit picky.

And on that note, talk to you later, unless all I am doing here is cause you misery, in which case, I call on you to leave this website at once and never come back.

Solving the most difficult of relationships

And on a final note. When I wrote the first draft of this post, I had another relationship added to this list that I thought was bin-worthy. I didn’t have time to publish this, when after 4 years of agonising over what the hell to do with this person became clear. Let me describe:

I decided to see Tarot for “something easy that I can solve right now” ironically. I got cards that to me spelled out this: “You are denying abundance in a form of your friends.” I thought “Oh no not this again” because I’d been wrecking my brain over this, and if it was anything it wasn’t easy to solve. But. Perhaps something had sifted enough to make it easy, now. The voice, that I call God in my mind (I’ll talk about that another time) asked me: “Where do you want her?” “As far away from me as physically possible,” I answered. “What is she doing there?” He asked. “Oh I don’t know. Something to keep her busy and out of my way…” I won’t go into detail because I don’t want spoilers, but as I said that, the most obvious of solutions started to emerge. It was unconventional, it started as a joke, and it grew into THE PERFECT SOLUTION, not only in regards to her but everyone else alike. The thing is, I have never heard of such a relationship, certainly not in the modern society, and it was just PERFECT. So. In your case. Periodically check if you can see a better place for your difficult people in your life. I think that as our own purpose and place clarifies itself, the most difficult of relationships will fall into place as it happens. The reason they are difficult now is that you don’t have a context for them yet.

So. The heading should read: When is it time to put your friendship on hold until further notice.

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