Unrequited Love

Unrequited love doesn’t just show up in romantic relationships. 

It happens with businesses too. 

Our creative work.

Even in our spiritual practices. 

You know it the moment you recognize that no matter how much more you give to the situation it’s just not giving back what you need.

The outpouring of love, energy, and effort, just isn’t matching what you receive.

All the careful planning and intentional strategy is just not bringing in what you need.

I see this a lot in my practice. 

In fact right now I’d say it’s the most prominent issue I am working on with my clients. 

Some of it is personal. Some of it is impersonal. Some of it is inherited. Some of it is karmic.

But none of it ever resolves from a state of further induced stress, lack, or judgement.

Have you ever had the experience that no matter how hard you try to be the person you think the other person needs you to be, you never quite feel seen, heard, supported or understood in return? 

I see many hard working, caring, entrepreneurs giving SO much in their business to make it work and, sadly, the hard work is not always met with an equal, profitable, or fulfilling return. 

I speak with many loving, kind, generous-hearted people in relationships who are giving it their all, being everything for everyone, and still pushing against the grain of further depletion. 

What is felt, on both inner and outer levels, is a lack of real nourishment and a faint, yet persistent feeling of unreliability that their environment and/or their relationships will provide what they need. 

But WHY? 

Why does this keep happening when we our intentions are good and we work so hard?

What I find is that for some people the attention to giving is just so strong. They are hard wired into giving. At first they have trouble seeing an imbalance. The breakdowns in their work and relationships are confusing and overwhelming. Articulating their own feelings on the matter feels painful and challenging. They can’t see where the issues are and are not sure what to do. 

There is frustration and fatigue, the symptoms are visible, but the origin and architecture of the issue at hand for them remains partially hidden.

When we slow down and take a closer look, allowing the space between giving and receiving to come into view, we come into contact with a deeper, more emotional, and energetic pattern at play. A pattern that reveals compensation for what on some level we believe we are not worthy of or do not feel we can readily receive from another person.

Balancing our needs with the needs and demands of others is an everyday occurrence. It’s just part of life, right?

AND…

Many of us who feel deeply were not taught about how to have actual boundaries, how to manage our energy very well, or even how to appropriately and effectively handle our own and others’ unmet emotional demands. If you are in a care-giving role or in a helping profession this conundrum can feel multiplied by a thousand percent.

The truth is when we over-give to a situation that is no longer giving back to us we perpetually wire into a system of lack. 

Sure it is possible that for a time we can temporarily prop ourselves up on the belief that if I just give a little more things will change, they will finally see, or the situation will resolve because I CAN be enough for everyone. But in the end this imbalance proves to be unsustainable and induces unrealistic expectations in both our personal and professional relationships.

By slowing it way down, becoming more self-aware, and attentive to what IS arising within the self (thoughts, emotions, beliefs), we can begin the process of uncovering the habits and behaviors that keep us in a perpetual state of over-giving and under-receiving. 

When we are able to move beneath the surface and touch into where the lack, the worry, the judgement are we find refined remnants of the past. Survival instincts that got wired in and buried when we were young.

These nuanced places within the self are delicate and deserving of our attention. The relational patterns we developed when we were young were all we knew, for better or worse, and now they surface to reveal a need to the conscious mind that can no longer remain invisible. 

By allowing ourselves to become more aware and compassionate towards where we experience lack we can start to move towards shifting our internal state of attention to what actually feels nourishing.

For many big givers this pattern of over-connecting to others’ needs is not always an easy one to feel, see, or change. Sometimes it takes hitting burnout or for a relationships to end to catch the places within that are tied to old, outdated beliefs. 

So, what can we do to start the process….

First, I think we can be more compassionate with ourselves and remember that these survival patterns were formed at an age when it was the only option we had. We didn’t know anything else was possible. Wherever we may have developed a strong identification with being the strong one, the capable one, the one who gives, the one who does not need, is an opportunity to learn, to get curious, to become aware of how this may no longer nourish or benefit us.

Second, developing a conscious daily practice of meditation can be instrumental for becoming more self aware and sensitive to your internal state of being. When we can stay with the self, settle in more deeply to our internal state, worlds of information and energy are available. You can learn how to identify where emotional patterns take root, how they get inflamed, and often receive greater clarity through a more relaxed state of being. 

Third, learning how to hone your emotional, energetic discernment skills. When you get good at reading your own body, are able to consciously feel where the energy flows of giving and receiving are out of balance, where you may be getting hooked on another person’s behavior or attitude, are waiting for a certain expectation or outcome, you can start to release the urgency surrounding the other and begin to refocus your energy on yourself.

This is where your energy needs to be to make a shift.

These tiny or big moments can feel like a wake up call. 

When you no longer love what you do…. 

Feel burnt out on what you are creating….

Lost the vision for your business…

Doubt yourself in relationships… 

Something deeper within is waking up. Life is asking something new of you.

You know it’s time for a shift. The change is already underway. 

AND 

This is the moment you want to pay attention to.

Not by force, but by learning how to move with the change that is already underway.

Not to replace what was but to level up in a way that is entirely new for you. 

So, the future may not be clear…. 

So, there isn’t a tidy answer to this relationship issue….

So, your work and business looks entirely different to you now…

This is the good news. 

This is the liberating moment. 

This is the moment to say YES to.