Maybe both people want the relationship to be better, but even with equal effort the ride isn’t smooth & the discomfort is palpable.

Why does this kind of torment happen more often than we’d expect? Whether it be a friendship, a love relationship, a family member relationship, or a work relationship – sometimes both people want it to work out. Both truly want to get along and have a loving connection, but there seems to be tension and negativity resulting from most of the interactions.

Take for example, a new friend. This person has a lot in common with you and at first, you seem to have a connection that has potential for some fun times as friends in the future. Yet, after hanging out with the new friend a few times you notice when you come away from the interactions you feel bothered by something that was either said, or felt. Maybe you can’t quite seem to identify what it was exactly, it could be a nuanced communication, but something felt off. As time goes on, this pattern is a constant, there’s no denying it – it just doesn’t for you with this person.

In the example above, the conscious mind is starting to look for a reason why this person, who you felt excited about meeting at first, has suddenly become a source of uneasy energy and is suddenly occupying the space in your mind that wants to know, “Why doesn’t this feel right?”

First, there is a reason, but you don’t have to figure it out. There are many things in life that happen for a reason, but the human mind is limited and so is time, we’re better off taking note, listening to the message, and moving on. Our experience in a human reality is meant to have a large component of mystery and mysticism. It’s one of the “fun” things about being human, and it’s unique. Our heart centers should stay open for the best life experience possible & when energies clash, it can throw the balance of heart and mind into a frazzled state.

The best option is to let go. As oversimplified as it sounds, letting go of our need to have a reaction and analyze it when we can’t relate to someone else, or we just don’t enjoy their company, is sweet freedom. In short, letting go is sweet freedom. Not overthinking it is sweet freedom. Staying loving and with an open heart while noticing “red flags” or while realizing the vibe feels off with this person, is sweet freedom. We don’t have to take a clash of energies personally. Read that again.

We don’t have to take a clash of energies personally.

If it drives you crazy not to know exactly -WHY – you can’t have the relationship you want with another person, there is an easy out. Certain people in your life are “teachers”. There is a helpful and necessary life lesson in the act of desire and attachment, then learning to let go, trust, detach and flow with your life and your life’s energy. Our energy gets stuck when we attach to a desire and stagnate in the mental obsession of wanting something that we don’t already have.

This is way more prominent when it comes to being in love with someone who you can’t have a healthy relationship with. It’s the situation that really pulls at the heart and occupies so much space in the mind. This is because LOVE is what every living being on this planet craves and moves toward. Love is the highest, most free and exhilarating feeling possible in this reality. It is deeply frustrating when two people love one another but can’t make the relationship work.

Relationships on our journey, in our story of life, appear and disappear. The most critical, such as a parent-child relationship will end when one passes over. Many of the friendship and love relationships pass through our lives for a period of time and then circumstances change. All of us are going to the same place at the end of our personal story. Most of us will have various kinds of relationships and phases throughout our story. These are all opportunities to learn and grow. This is where faith and spirituality can play a big role.

Knowing that everything that is unfolding for you in life is happening for your highest good and as an opportunity for you to experience the fabulous mystery of life, is faith. You don’t have to be religious to have faith. Having faith in all moments, especially the emotionally painful ones, can be challenging. We don’t owe it to anyone else to have faith that everything that is happening is happening for our highest good. We will only benefit ourselves by knowing this. It’s an inner knowing.

Instead of asking “why?” ask “how can I see the good in this?”

It’s so emotionally difficult to feel good when grief sets in. Grief will visit when a relationship sours, especially when it was one that was important in your life. The end of love relationships and immediate family member relationships hit hardest. Unreciprocated love is extremely difficult. It’s easy to get stuck in anger and resentment if we can’t find the good in the experience of relating, or trying to, and then detaching because relating to the other causes negativity for both.

I remember, and will never forget, a relationship I had the summer of 2013 where it was like love at first sight for both of us. Within 5 weeks there was a retirement plan and wedding bands on order. The relationship ended after only 8 weeks. It was important and impactful. It was such a painful experience that I did not even try to have another relationship until almost a decade later. It ended because I had found out that my true love, or so it seemed, had told many lies about his past. After being found out, he then tried to find something about me, anything, to turn against me. This is emotional abuse.

The painful experience seemed, for a long time, to be full of anger, resentment, disbelief, disillusionment, and hopelessness. Where was the good in this? Yet, the truth was that the lesson I learned was the best lesson I have ever been forced to learn. I was repeating a pattern. It was not going to stop repeating until I experienced enough emotional pain, the negative consequence of ignoring my own patterns, that I was able to break the pattern by seeing what it was. My pattern was wanting to be saved from my life by someone else.

My lesson was that I can only save myself by going inside of myself and healing whatever needs to be healed. I did want to know why why why why why the fuck did this kind of thing keep happening to me? Why was I being deceived so much in just about any area of my life by trusting people I shouldn’t trust? It felt terrible. It shook my faith to the core. And in that moment, I knew, what I still know to this day – I only had one choice. Move on. Keep going.

I had to move forward with my life. I have always worked and had hobbies on the side. I could not let my life be destroyed by this. I would not even consider ending my life, so the only choice was to get over this. I wrote in a journal and filled up 3 journals in a week with writing it out. The good in this came in pieces. Some lessons are lightening bolt lessons that happen over a short period of time but that can process out over a decade or two as far as the results.

I had a pretty big lesson to learn. I’d been studying my own spirituality, my faith and things like quantum physics to a lighter degree and Buddhism to a deeper degree to try to figure out the human reality. Overall, I’m an existentialist, and with that, I’m spiritual by default. It’s an opportunity for a life of big growth if we want it, and I definitely did and still do. There was no way I was moving into any kind of personal empowerment or toward any kind of spiritual enlightenment with the idea of being dependent on a man, or codependent with a man who had mental and emotional imbalances.

Being spiritual is often a very lonely path. And even for people who are not one bit spiritual, we still all seek love and get disappointed at rejection. As each one of us finds and expresses our own individuality and empowerment along our life’s path, some people will veer off on another path and some will meet us at the crossroads of ours and travel with us for awhile. This doesn’t always mean it’s a lifelong journey together, and once in a while it can mean that. Yet, having faith means knowing that even the relationships that end unexpectedly, and perhaps not under the best circumstances, were there to teach us something of value.

In my own empowerment, I know that I have a tendency to be naive, codependent and curious about the vibration of covert narcissists. This is because they are inviting and exciting, they know how to manipulate the naive. Empaths are often attracted to them because they can see the flaw but they’re still empathetic to the kind of trauma a narcissist must have gone through in early childhood to be scarred in this way. These people are often beautiful and completely lovable. Until they take advantage of you, exploit you, or don’t get exactly what they want from you. Then they become unreachable. Often these kinds of people cut you off and talk about you behind your back. They justify their behavior by making sure everyone in their life hears their side of the story – which is that you are the crazy, toxic person in the equation.

So in my past, and even to some degree in my recent past, I repeated a pattern of what I call the Shadow Rescuer. It’s an Archetype, or a personality type where you want to save every wounded bird. And it seeps into personal relationships. The more wounded the person, the better, they would need and appreciate the help. It feels good to help people. Yet, falling for someone’s act because they want to use you for their own means, even if it is just to feel loved and secure, is not going to be healthy or helpful for anyone. I had to learn that this was not a good archetype, it is a shadow trait.

It is possible to move past it by being in the moment of now and keeping awareness of the bigger picture.

Any time we have given what we think is our all to a relationship and it either fizzles or explodes into an unexpected ending, we tend to think about it a lot and return to various ideas about what went wrong. It’s almost instinctual. Yet, there’s another angle that can help us to move past the past and get into a bigger sense of our true path in life.

If we really consider that we are basically creating a one-time movie. We will never again in the history of mankind, play this particular character again. We have control over the story we are writing. We have control over the narrative for sure. And we have to navigate through production issues such as technology issues, issues with other actors and actresses, and issues that arise from natural causes like illness, natural disasters and death.

With all that in mind, is it any wonder we have various situations with various characters in our movie? It would be a dull plot if each movie were the same and everything worked perfectly in life at all times for each living being. We are drawn to stories of lost love, reinventing oneself, and unfortunately we are drawn to stories that involve violence like war. Because so many people are conducting their own movies, we really see a variety of types and possibilities. Where you prefer a light hearted romantic comedy, someone else may prefer a violent drama such as a war movie or a movie filled with gang members being chased by the law.

When your romantic comedy crosses into the cops and robbers version you may cross paths with an undercover police officer while you’re out one night. You may be attracted and think they’re funny. They’re literally playing a character, because they are undercover on a private investigation. Maybe there is somewhat of a connection and you develop a friendship where you can see each other between errands on days off and there’s an element of mystery making it so exciting for you. Then, after getting your hopes up, you find out they’re really unable to be the person they first presented as. You’re disappointed and mad. As you think back, you notice red flags you didn’t see before.

Your view of the person may become that they’re deceptive and evil. Or you may just regret getting your hopes up. Yet, not every person you meet is going to be on the same frequency of thought or ideas for the life they’re creating. Some people really enjoy a violent drama. Some enjoy drama while others really do prefer quiet time alone at home. Both could be amazing people with a lot to offer in a relationship with the right fit – but if the frequency, or the channel, or the page and book they are on is completely different and uncomfortable for the other, a relationship won’t work right.

Relationships that don’t flow smoothly don’t have to end badly. They also don’t have to be looked at like they’re a huge mistake or a big waste of time. Sure, sometimes things do end badly. Usually when that happens both people tend to move forward with a bit of a grudge. Yet it is very possible to move forward from a bad ending with no grudge, no resentment and also no regret. Because you didn’t know they were on a different frequency until you realized it. It doesn’t matter if you wanted to see the best in the other person and missed signals that told you it would not be a good fit for you. If it’s not a good fit for you, be glad to have moved on without it.

When we consider what we really want, if it is a romantic comedy, then we make a romantic joke out of it and move forward into the vibration of all that we want to have and create in the frequency of romanticism and comedic laughter. There are so many things that can be done to make life romantic and funny. Or maybe we are the serious type where our work is a priority. In that case, we create an intense drama based on the life of a professional seeking to balance family with work and personal success.

When we brand our style, we should own it.

There’s always room for change and change is encouraged. Personal growth requires it. At the same time, when we land in our most empowered moments, we will be operating out of our own unique style and we will do best when we are very true to our own truth.

This took me a while to learn as I’m the type to blurt out the truth. Or I’d blurt out the truth about what was on my mind – which was worse. As a child, I’d be slapped across the face for this kind of thing. As an adult, I learned all kinds of ways to try to hide my thoughts, feelings and opinions. Until I started to try to have my own band, and my own businesses. As time went on and I was experimenting with hobbies and side projects, I failed so many times because of the habit of hiding my thoughts, feelings and opinions to be a peacemaker or to keep things balanced.

Yes, it took me decades to embrace the idea that even with my own quirks and flaws, my blunt honesty is a rare characteristic that is either appreciated as it is paired with compassion, or it is loathed if it is paired with apathy. At any time that I tried to present differently, I ended up in trouble later on down the line. In other words, I learned it was best to be transparent with as much grace and diplomacy as possible, knowing that how it is received is that part I can’t control. Being truly who I am, has saved me the process of having long term relationships with people who are not suited for my current vibration and larger vision.

I had to accept that no matter what, some people were not going to like me as a business owner, as a single woman who has cats, as an artist or musician, or anything else that can be thought of. I may be too short for some, too loud for others, too quiet for others still. The point of this is to discover the sweet freedom of being able to say, “Who cares?”

Really, who cares? Who is asking the question? And who is answering?

For all of us, when we have a vision for what our existence in this lifetime looks like at its best and most free version of ourselves, there’s no one to answer to. We make rules and impose the rules on ourselves. We rate ourselves and others. But we can always reflect on what we would be thinking about if we knew we were going to pass away next week or next month. What do we want to be thinking about at the end of our life?

Once we are brought back into the moment again, living each moment like it could be our last, we can then open up again to the bigger picture and not focus on the weight of the past or the worry of the future. We can give ourselves permission to be fully ourselves. When we truly embrace this, the masks come off and people who love us have always seen us in our own style. We are most beautiful in our own style. If we are genuine, even a harsh style can be very endearing. At the same time, we have to understand that if someone reacts with negativity to us and wants us to change to make them feel ok – then so be it, we will need to disappoint them to stay true to ourselves.

Again, the ending doesn’t have to be bad.

Even if you’re resigning from a job you’ve had for a long time and you’ve hated your boss the whole time as well – ending your employment will be better for you if you make the choice to do it in grace and have a positive departure. Avoiding bad endings and embracing grace and tolerance is a better vibration to close a door with. You’ll want to feel good inside of yourself. There’s no one to answer to. If we feel a sense of regret or resentment, that’s fine, but if we onto hold that and make it be a forever thing, it will hold us back. The idea is to move forward.

Moving forward is much easier when the ending of a relationship is uneventful. It can be neither super great with an all out goodbye party, nor super bad with a clearing out on short notice and slinging insults while heading for the door and even worse, after the door has been closed. Being able to make peace when long term relationships have to end, and after realizing the relationship lacked a lot of things we wanted, is a more honorable way to move forward into the next endeavor. Remember, you’re doing life this way for your own peace and calm.

In order create the movie you want to play out before you in your last moments, you’ll want to keep creating the grander scenes, the exciting stuff, and not stagnate in the past or recreate the same scenes over and over again. You’ll want to keep building on a strong foundation, being more wise and creative as you gain years of experience, navigating through your story and integrating the stories of others into various chapters of your movie. You’ll appreciate most of the endings that you have come to accept must happen, being peaceful.

Hopefully you can find some peace in knowing that the majority of relationships we have in a lifetime are temporary, but all leave an impression and there are some really important ones that leave a lasting impression. Find the good and move forward. The best is yet to come.