What do all your past failed relationships have in common?
Is it because our needs were not met? Was the other person not ready to commit? Or was our partner cheating?
To help you think through these questions better, I’d like to share the story of a friend of mine named Mark. His greatest wish was to find his life partner and eventually find luck in his love life.
Mark was a great guy, but the women he dated never stuck around for long. He began to suspect that the women he was attracted to were simply commitment-phobic. He was constantly asking himself, “Why can’t I find love?”
That’s where I met Marie. He was convinced that she was the one. But throughout their relationship, he couldn’t help but worry that she would leave him someday.
After a few months of dating, they decided to go on a romantic vacation together. Seeing that Mark was busy with work, Marie offered to make arrangements and choose her destination. When she revealed her itinerary that she had created, Mark did not like the choices she had made.
He attacked her judgment, claiming that the location she had chosen would have bad weather at that time of year. In response, she defended herself, accusing him of being narrow-minded, arrogant, and self-centered.
Soon after, Marie told Mark that she no longer wanted anything to do with him. At that moment, Mark realized something.
The common denominator in all of his past broken relationships was not the woman he ended up with. It was him.
Because he grew up believing that men were better, he frequently ignored his partner’s choices and acted condescendingly…just like he did to Marie.
More importantly, Mark realized that because he expected his relationships to fail, he was constantly undermining his self-confidence by creating standards based on failure. The more his confidence wavered, the more he tried to boost it by boosting himself by putting his partner down, as usual.
In the 1930s, spiritual teacher Emmett Fox described a process called “spiritual equivalence.” Originally trained as an engineer, he believed that whatever we create must first be imagined in our heads. He posited that to get anything in life, you have to provide a mental equivalent and do it with enough detail to get exactly what you expect. .
We think we want relationships to work out, but most of the time our minds rehash past negative experiences. Willpower alone won’t change this. We must direct our attention, energy, and enthusiasm to the very experience we wish to achieve.
Find your “spiritual equivalent” using a simple three-step process.
1. Use all five senses.
Use all your senses when imagining your perfect future relationship.
Listen to your partner’s voice when they greet you. Smell the air as you stroll the city streets and nature trails together. Share and enjoy delicious meals. Imagine how it feels to touch their skin and have them hug you tightly.
The more details you know, the closer you are to making it a reality.
2. Ask questions.
Questions about our imagined future relationships allow us to know more deeply about the created world.
Are our partners happy with their jobs? Do we get along well with their extended families? Can they get along with us? How do you spend your weekends together? What are their hobbies? Which do we participate in?
There is an adventure in every question, an opportunity to deeply experience the life you are destined to live.
3. Act on your images.
This next step is important.
How would we act if our mental equivalent were possible? How would we behave if we found out we were going home to the kind of partner we had imagined? How will you spend your day? How should you plan your weekend?
Perhaps we would choose to be more generous to the people in our lives. Maybe we’ll skip a step or smile more.
Everything in the world is created twice. Create it in your mind first before it takes physical form.
In Mark’s mind, he envisioned the eventual breakdown of his relationship with Marie even before it happened. He had no intention of changing the outcome by channeling his creative energy into a vision of connection and unity.
Instead, he created a future of loneliness by focusing on the last thing he wanted to happen: the relationship breaking up and being alone again.
Haven’t we all done this? Are you worried that the person you’re with is going to leave you at any moment? What happened to your relationship when you believed that?
In order to change the fate of our relationships, it is important to reconsider how we direct our thoughts.
Are we envisioning a loving partner? Or are you worried that this time, just like last time, you’ll be hard to identify with, hard to connect with, and emotionally withdrawn?
After much self-examination, Mark decided he needed to change the way he approached relationships. He practiced mental imaging. He pictured Marie in his mind as his wife and himself as a loving, respectful and supportive partner.
A year later, I saw that image take shape on the altar of his church. Mark transformed his life through the spiritual practice of creating a spiritual equivalent.
Similarly, we too can change the fate of our relationships and see the bright future we had imagined unfold before our eyes.
mary morrissey is an international speaker and bestselling author. She is the founder and owner of Life Mastery Institute, a premier training center for transformational coaching. Her research has been featured in the Huffington Post, Wiley Online Library, New York Journal, and BJGP (British Journal of General Practice).