Your Mate is Your Mirror

Many times we think that the purpose of an intimate relationship is comfort, and that is the path that we seek.  We think the destination is supposed to be happiness.  The only problem with the road of comfort is the impossible burden it places on the relationship.  We begin to believe that our relationship is the place that we get all of our needs met.  We believe that we will always be compatible with our partner - no exceptions.  We believe that we will get everything we want and we will both be on the same page at all times. 

However, the road to comfort ALWAYS end in selfishness, self-centeredness, and destruction.  Why?  Because ultimately we find that our partner fails to meet our needs and that even the best communication possible doesn't bring satisfaction.  We begin to think perhaps we have made a mistake in selecting a partner.

There is a second path we can take in our relationship - the path of maturity.  On the road to maturity, unlike the road to comfort, we begin to ask, "What truly is the purpose of this intimate relationship?"  That is the question we have to answer as we continue into recovery and healing.  I believe that the purpose of intimate relationships is this - this is the place where I learn to lose my self-centeredness and to truly learn how to love.  When I make true love my pursuit, God will use this relationship as His primary character-growing machine.  My relationship is His main "laboratory" where He matures me, changes me, teaches me, and molds me into the best version of Roy possible.  My intimate relationship has more potential to change me than any other form of intervention or development. 

How?  Because God uses our partner as a mirror.  Within the intimate relationship, we learn who we really are. 

Your relationship is naturally your mirror because your partner mirrors back to you what you actually need to see about yourself. This is not what your partner tells you, though that could be part of it, it’s more about how the relationship makes you feel, what it shows you about yourself, which blind spots it points out, and growth opportunities it presents.

Your relationship and your partner give you the opportunity to see about you what you need to see. The relationship itself becomes the mechanism for personal growth. When embraced in a positive way, seeing relationships as the opportunities that they are, old notions of finding that perfect mate actually fall away.

Isn’t it time that falls away?

There is not a person on the planet that is going to complete you, because in that case, you are asking for their puzzle piece to fill up your puzzle. When your job here really is to be your own complete puzzle. What if we actually defined the perfect partner not as who could fill us up but who could naturally help us be complete in and of ourselves?

It’s our work, with the great help of God, to develop into the best versions of ourselves. When two people come together in mutual agreement that they will use the feedback received in one another’s mirror, it takes so much pressure off of the relationship!

Another person will NEVER fill you up. It’s impossible.

In this path of maturity, each person is taking personal responsibility for their own self-growth. You are not responsible for managing another person’s realizations or how they go about their self-growth. But, when the agreement is in place that God is going to use the relationship as an development tool, no one has to point fingers. The rates of blame and misunderstanding go way down. Love, compassion, tenderness, and gratitude increase.

In this way, our relationship is our greatest spiritual assignment from God; they magnify whatever it is that’s going on within us.  How else will we learn to truly love, except within a genuine, authentic, raw, sometime difficult relationship?

Essentially, the bottom line cause of break-ups and divorce is when one or both of the partners can no longer stand to see themselves in the other person.