Working on your relationship(s) without trampling on the other person’s authentic self

I had a realisation today. I have never wanted to change a man I’ve been seeing into something or someone I’d love more. This means that I never criticise or state my opinion on who they are or how they carry themselves, I don’t try to influence the way they dress or the way they behave or anything of the sort. This may make them feel lost and uncertain of my needs and wants and what I appreciate about a guy. However, there is a danger in trying to assert your opinion too much, and that is that if you insist on someone changing for you, you may alter push their authentic self into a submission and hiding, creating an obstruction in the way that they present themselves. Their authentic self won’t change, it simply goes into hiding, and that creates inauthentic state and unhappiness as a result.

Authentic self is a sum of qualities that you wish you could call your own qualities. WISH. They are not necessarily a part of you YET but your recognition that you wish they were a part of you is pointing out to you what your authentic self would be like. The closer you get to that person, the closer of your authentic expression you are, and it’s also always expanding. You can always find more qualities that you want to attach to yourself like a magnet. You are a magnet of qualities you wish were yours.

Your authentic self is tattered by demands by others who tell you who you SHOULD wish to be. For as long as you have a need to fulfil their needs of you first, you are likely to gather all sort of junk into your being, and that is being inauthentic – a fake. No matter how young soul you are, you can always live authentically, although the younger your soul is, the more difficult it is; it is difficult to define who you are when the older souls put so much pressure on you to “be better”. Developing oneself is very much a process of trying on clothes: “Do I like the way I feel/look in this?” If you don’t, don’t attach that quality to yourself. If it feels good, keep it. Others can suggest qualities to you like a stylist: “I think you’d look great in that!” or, as it would be in terms of life coaching: “I think you would be very good at… / I think you would enjoy…” A good life coach or a life partner never insists one size fits all, but they look at you as an individual and seek an alternative way for you to be in, one that their vast life experience has allowed them to see more clearly than you do. (Or the other way around.)

When we try to make a relationship work by changing a person into something we’d love more, we go about it in the wrong order. This is not about you, it’s about them. If you love someone, you don’t want to change them, you want to liberate them. “I see the beautiful person you are, and I want you to be aware of how beautiful you are, and be proud of who you are.” Sometimes, however, you do need to help the other one be more… Well, exciting, I suppose. More elegant, more refined. That is when you have to remember one thing: You can suggest alterations, but you CANNOT demand them. You have to go about it from this mindset: “What I want from my partner is X. Now, does that person have the capability or wish to be that person or not?” If they don’t, you change partners and find someone who fits your description, and if you think you are not good enough for that person, then you have to start working on your own issues, not your current partner. If you both want to make the relationship work, always remember that your wishes are only suggestions: “What I need from a man is X. Now you have to decide whether or not you want to be that man.” Some things they feel pressured and manipulated to change, but you can’t help that, sometimes people pretend to change for you even if they truly don’t want to, but those with a more developed sense of self will be able to make an independent decision and go: “You know what? I don’t want to be a person who works hard at an office for a promotion. That’s just not me.” But there are men who would go: “Honey, that’s what I always wanted to do, but I thought you would feel neglected so I decided to go for the low-demand job instead!” Whenever you suggest something that is from the other person’s ideal base, their authentic wish, they light up at the thought: “You’d allow me to do that? You’d want me to be that?” They are RELIEVED, not pressured. “You’d actually want me to do the one thing I always wanted but felt like I shouldn’t want something so great!” When you try to push someone into an inauthentic state in order to please you, they go quiet, pensive, the light goes out of their eyes, sadness falls on them, and if they now say: “Ok. If you want me to.” You know you have managed to cause a trauma. For as long as they shout at you and tell you they’re not gonna do it, their authentic self is protecting them from being tempered with.

The authentic state is whatever a person wishes to be. It’s a choice of how they want to live their lives, what they enjoy. Your authentic being is defined by what you enjoy (and hold important). Sometimes you enjoy upholding strict morals, sometimes you don’t, sometimes you hate loving stuff and other situations you enjoy hating stuff – all of these are answers to your authentic self, and it consists both of your “negative” and positive traits. To live from your authentic self, you have to accept the dark with the light, unless you enjoy the light so much that the dark becomes unnecessary.  You enjoying something evil or dark is not a sign of being unenlightened, but on the contrary a sign of acceptance of one’s authentic soul.

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