Why is it that couples break up? Because they’re unhappy together. Well, you might be thinking, “great point Aron, and how insightful is this that I should even bother with this post?”
The incorrect assumption is that your partner is supposed to make you happy and then you’ll both live happily ever after. It works great in the movies but unfortunately, that’s as far as it goes. In real life, its a completely different story.
Now I’m not blaming anyone who gets divorced or breaks up in any relationship. But what I am suggesting here is that there might be fewer break-ups if we would realize where our happiness is truly coming from.
Happiness is coming from inside you
So, if your happiness is not coming from your partner, your friend or your co-worker or boss, where is it coming from? It’s coming from inside of you.
To be really specific – happiness and sadness and all feelings come from to us from Mind via thought in the moment. It’s kind of a technical definition but feelings come to us from Mind via thought in the moment.
What that means is that feelings don’t come to us from our marriage or from divorce or other people or different situations. And I can tell you honestly that I’ve been married and I’ve been really sad and I’ve been married and I’ve been really happy. And that is in the same marriage to the same person.
I know people who have been divorced and have been really sad about their divorce and those same people have been divorced and really happy about the divorce. I’ve been among certain people and been happy with them and I’ve been with those same people and been sad with them. And I’ve been in certain situations and been really sad about them and I’ve been in those same situations and been really happy with them. The common denominator here is that the circumstances or people were the same but the thoughts and hence feelings were different.
People and situations are not the cause of our happiness and sadness
All of this is telling us that people and situations are not what really causes happiness and sadness. And if you think about it, this all has huge implications for your relationships.
Your partner can’t make you happy only you can.
If the people you’re in relationships with aren’t the source of your happiness and if they aren’t the source of your sadness, that’s got some huge implications. And one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from this is that you are the one who can make yourself happy or unhappy. Your partner can’t make you happy only you can.
Another lesson to learn is that I get upset because of me, not because of you and I get happy because of me and not because of you.
Feelings are always coming 100% of the time from inside of us
So, all of your psychological experiences come from Mind which gives energy to your thought and hence you experiences happiness or sadness. These experiences don’t come from outside of you and certainly not from your partner. Feelings are always coming 100% of the time from inside of us which includes happiness and sadness and everything else in between.
You might then want to ask, “if my partner is not making me sad and it’s me that’s making me sad, how do I stop myself from being sad?” But if you’re asking yourself this question then you’re kind of missing the point. The point here is not that you’re making yourself sad and how do you stop it. The point is to stop blaming your partner for your sadness and stop blaming your partner for your happiness because it’s not coming from your partner.
Your anger and sadness are not coming from your partner
Before you can even deal with the fact that you are sad, is to recognize that it’s not your partner that is making you sad. It’s not your partner’s fault when you get angry, even when they did something you don’t like. Your anger is actually not their fault. All the sadness, the hurt and the guilt you’re feeling isn’t your partner’s fault.
You need to take responsibility
Firstly, you must take responsibility to realize that your sadness is an inside job and has nothing to do with your partner. This is a very humbling thing to accept and acknowledge.
Once you’ve taken responsibility you’ll find yourself being able to be more respectful to others even when you disagree with them because you now know that your feelings are truthfully coming from yourself and not from ‘out there.’
You might ask, “how am I going to implement this? You don’t know my family. You don’t know what I have to live with day to day?” But these questions arise when you’re living an illusion because you think that you are scared and mad at the other person. But that is not the case. Fear just like happiness doesn’t come from the outside, it comes because of what we think is going on the outside. When you believe that your feelings are coming from the other person, it’s very difficult to come from a very loving and confident space within yourself.
Your happiness is not dependent on how they are going to react
However, when you know that the birth of all your feelings come from inside of you, not from out there, then there is nothing to be afraid of, except for the imaginary scenario that you are creating in your mind. Now all of a sudden it becomes really easy to know how to relate to them from a space of love, understanding, and confidence. This is because your happiness and wellbeing arent dependent on how they’re going to react to what you say but it depends on what you’re thinking in that moment on the inside of yourself.
When you speak from this space it’s like having a light shining from within yourself. You have this deep understanding of where your feelings are really coming from. In this state of mind, you automatically move into a deeper sense of being and live from a space of this inner security. It’s a bit hard to put into words but an extremely powerful space to live and be in. You’ll understand this more when you experience it rather than when you just read it in words.
You can’t change your partner but you can change your relationship.
Another important thing to realize is that you can’t change your partner but you can change your relationship. What I mean by not being able to change your partner is that when you are so close and attached you can’t really be that objective. I as a coach have facilitated changes in many clients and that’s because I’m not personally attached to that person which allows me to give them a space in which to grow.
It would, however, be very hard even for me to facilitate change people who are very close to home. That attachment and personal gain of them changing for me are what’s in the way. I’m not saying it’s impossible to change family members but as long as you are holding on to an attachment of ‘I’ll be happy when you change,’ it is very difficult to facilitate change from this perspective.
Part of the problem is the belief that you need them to change for you to be okay, for your life to be better. This is what’s going to get in the way of any possible change. The good news is that you don’t need them to change for you to feel better. Because feelings come from thought in the moment and not from your partner’s misbehaviour. Your feelings aren’t coming from the part you’re trying to change in your partner. You won’t feel any better when they change their behaviour. You may think you’ll feel better when they change their behaviour but the truth is you won’t in the long term because that’s not where feelings come from in the first place.
Soon as one excuse leaves, youll find other excuses to blame your partner
As long as you keep finding excuses on why you’re annoyed with your partner, once that excuse is gone, you’ll find plenty of others to blame your frustration on. When, however, you realize that your frustrations are not coming from your partner, they’re coming from your thinking in the moment, you’ll begin to settle down. What usually happens after this is that you lose all that heavy built up thinking you had about an issue, it all drops away and your relationship starts to turn around.
The only way to change your partner
Although you cant directly change your partner by giving them an earful, when, however, you live by the example of what it means to have a clear mind, some of it will rub on to those around you. Have you ever walked into a room where nothing was said but you just feel great or really bad being around a certain person? Its their inner being that you can almost feel and touch. That will happen with you in a positive way when you live from an embodied understanding of a clear mind.
Theres no excuse for abuse but – you accept abuse from others to the extent that you accept abuse from yourself
This, however, doesn’t excuse any abuse in a relationship. Abuse is never okay. But here’s the thing on abuse; you accept abuse from others to the extent that you accept abuse from yourself inside your own mind. Everyone has this inner voice, this inner critic, and often that inner critic can be so harsh that it’s even harsher than a member of your family. This is because you can hear a criticism like “Aron, youre an idiot.” The person says it one time to you and then the inner critic in your mind replays this person saying the insult over and over again. The person insulted me once but I’m reliving it repeatedly because of the inner critic in my mind.
The moment somebody abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you’ll instantly stop them.
When you learn to silence this voice in your head, you’ll no longer accept abuse from others. The moment somebody abuses you more than you abuse yourself in your own mind, you’ll instantly stop them. The moment you stop abusing yourself, you’ll automatically stop the other person from abusing you.
The relationship changes when you change inside yourself
And once the abuse stops, there are a myriad of ways that the relationship could change. You might just walk out on them, you might talk with them and all of a sudden because youre no longer abusing yourself in your own mind, you’ll now be talking to them in an empowered way like you’ve never done before. Or there might be some other way that will come up for you. There are many ways in which an abusive relationship can stop being abusive. The dynamic of the relationship changes when you change inside yourself.
It is possible for a relationship to transform just by one of the partners getting this understanding of how we operate in the world. The more you believe you’re not good enough, the less you’ll value yourself, the harsher you’ll judge yourself, and the more likely you are going to accept abuse from someone else. The good news is that you are just one insight away from completely changing yourself and changing your relationship. The moment you realize that the inner critic and inner thoughts are just imaginary and you are the one creating this, your life will change in ways you can’t even imagine right now.
Life is to short and nothing lasts forever. We want to cherish the relationships we have now by coming from greater love, clarity, and understanding towards everyone we meet.
Summary
- Know where your happiness and sadness come from- they come from inside of you. From Mind, which energizes thought and thereby create your feelings.
- Come from a deep space of love and compassion in yourself and then you’ll naturally be more respectful and know the right words to say on the situation.
- You can’t make your partner change. It’s foolish for you to believe you can. Accept the way your partner is now or leave them but don’t pretend that you can change the way your partner is.
- Although you can’t change your partner but you can change your relationship by changing yourself.
- When you embody the understanding of a clear mind within your being that youre living by example, you can indirectly have an effect on your partner.
- You accept abuse from others to the extent you accept abuse from yourself in your own mind.
- Life is short so you might as well cherish your relationships while they last.
I do hope this post resonates with you. If it does, then you’re really on your way to healthier relationships and a more fulfilling life.
Click on the video below to further consolidate the above.