One of the secrets to healing the divide in any relationship lies in your willingness to see the other person as “different” instead of the enemy and someone (or some thing) to fight against.
The desire to be right, to make someone else wrong and even to want to “make someone else pay” for how we perceive we’ve been wronged is so seductive and can seem so “normal.”
It arises inside us often unconsciously and without warning.
If you want a close, connected, loving relationship, you have to heal the divide between you and the other people in your life and find a way to reconnect.
Just because someone is different from you, has a different way of seeing things as you or has different opinions about how life is (or should be) doesn’t mean you have to prove you are right and they are wrong.
Healing the divide is not only for a better relationship with another person, it’s creating a better relationship with YOU.
You don’t have to keep carrying around suffering that someone isn’t who you want them to be.
Suffering can be a choice.
Here’s a story about the possibility of healing a relationship divide…
Phillip was constantly angry with his mother who had left him and his brother when they were young to move across the country to California.
She was in his life now but constantly disappointed him by not following through with what she said she would do.
They would hang up on each other and he would swear he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.
Time and time again, he found himself sucked back into believing she was different only to be disappointed.
While there’s no easy answer in a situation like this, he does have a choice whether to keep his suffering alive or not.
He can heal the divide between the two of them and within himself if he doesn’t hold onto the belief that his mother should be different from who she is.
Now this doesn’t mean that he takes any abuse from her but it does mean that he doesn’t hold onto a painful past and bring expectations into the present moment.
When he lets go of the expectation and disappointment that she be a certain way and he can’t be happy unless she is…
They can have a kinder, more loving relationship.
Healing the divide begins with a willingness see differences as a way to find a connection.
Healing the divide begins with recognizing the “shoulds” that come up and allowing them to evaporate.
It begins with love for yourself and the other person.
Sure people disappoint us because they aren’t who we want them to be.
But when we hang onto this disappointment, we rob ourselves of the love that is possible and always there inside.