Suddenly she got quiet.
Then she got curious.
Her name is Rebecca and she is a smart, funny, intelligent, budding marathon runner and I didn’t mean to make her upset.
I just wanted to show her how she was lying to herself and didn’t even realize it.
I wanted to show her how this could be keeping her from having the love and relationship she truly wants.
Rebecca had just found out in our conversation that I was a relationship and life coach who helps people create the love that they really want.
I also told her about our new book, BIG FAT LOVE: THE BOOK OF POSSIBILITIES.
So, like a lot of people when I first meet them, she asked me about the book, when and how I got started doing this work and what I enjoyed about it.
I told her the story of how Susie and I got started and I asked her if she was in a relationship.
She said she was.
She told me she thought she was going to marry this man and that this was her first real relationship that was serious.
In fact, she said she wanted to be intentional about her relationship and that one of her intentions with any romantic relationship she began was to get married.
Then, a few moments later when I asked her when she was going to get married, she told me she was waiting on her boyfriend to ask her.
That seemed odd to me, so I said that if she was trying to be intentional in this relationship like she had just said, this didn’t sound very intentional to me.
It sounded like she was saying that it was his decision whether they would get married or not–and not hers as well.
Here she is waiting for him to pop the question and she’s totally uncertain as to when this is going to happen or even *IF* it’s going to happen (because he hadn’t asked her yet.)
I told her something like this…
“This might seem a little bold but if you want to have an intentional relationship then, why are you waiting for him to ask you to get married?”
I asked her if being intentional about a relationship should include when and how to get married?
That’s when she got quiet and I thought she was really upset with me for posing this question to her since we had just met only a few minutes before and she was cutting my hair.
My question confused her and she didn’t know how to respond.
I told her that if she wanted to have an intentional relationship, it could include deciding when to get married.
Here’s the problem with waiting for her boyfriend to ask her to marry him…
All the questions she had rolling around in her head about when, how and if they were going to get married could easily be stopped if she was intentional about it.
Although Rebecca was really inspired to have an intentional relationship…
She had been living out of tradition from the past about the idea that the man should be the one to initiate the “marriage” question.
And that didn’t jive with her intention–to be intentional.
In a true partnership, there’s no guesswork.
There’s no mystery about decisions.
You travel the path of life together.
And this is where curiosity comes in.
In a truly conscious or intentional relationship, you don’t leave things up to chance.
You get curious and you explore with each other how you want your lives to be and you build upon those wants and desires.
Rebecca wasn’t doing that.
She was being intentional in some parts of her relationship but not others.
She just didn’t see it until I pointed it out to her and so a lot of questions she had been mulling over in the back of her mind came up…
What if he perceived her holding back and waiting for him to ask her to get married as a sign that she didn’t want him?
What if he thought it was a sign for him not to go forward?
What if her holding back and not having conversations with him actually started to put doubts in his mind about whether she was the one or not?
Now she wants to have a deeper conversation with me about how she can be more intentional about not just her relationship but her life.
Rebecca is starting to see something new that can bring even more love to her life now that she sees it.
So my question to you is this…
Where in your life do you want to be more intentional about a situation but are holding back?
The truth is that when you hold back from talking honestly with someone about something important to you because of the past or tradition..
Your mind makes up stories that may be untrue and the other person is probably doing the same.
When you approach the topic with an open heart and from curiosity, you can come together in a truly loving way and get clarity you never thought possible.
That’s having an intentional relationship that’s filled with possibilities!