Be the person you want to find

For the full article from Experience Life Magazine, click here.

By Cheri Huber

Looking for that special someone? Wishing you could change the person you’re with? You may need to start by taking a good long look in the mirror. Many books on relationships will tell you how to find and keep the right person, how to develop your communication skills — even how to properly “brand” yourself with the right set of attributes to attract a partner. While these resources offer plenty of helpful advice, they tend to overlook one important fact: The quest for an ideal partner invariably begins with a long look inward. You can practice communication techniques, make endless lists of the characteristics you look for in a partner and resolve to be more understanding, but until you’re willing to give yourself the love and attention you long to get from someone else, and until you can lay claim to the very characteristics you’re seeking in another, the chances are good that you’ll remain unsatisfied in practically any relationship.

Life is as good as your relationship with yourself. That’s because no one is more qualified to give you what you really want and need. Only you know your heart’s deepest desires. Only you know exactly what you want to hear and feel and do.


Looking Inward
So how can you become the person you want to find? Here are two processes that help develop your ability to look inward, learn to accept what you see and then embrace yourself with open-hearted compassion. Each one helps you assess and improve how you function in all aspects of your life, not just in a romantic relationship. But each one will also help you perceive and appreciate the very best in your partner. Examine your unconscious beliefs and assumptions. For most of us, our parents’ relationship is the paradigm we hold for all relationships. Whether it was good or bad (or something in between) doesn’t matter; it’s what was modeled for us and it’s what we learned.

You might not believe that the model of a relationship imprinted on your unconscious decades ago can affect your relationships now, but it does. The way you relate to yourself and, subsequently, the way you relate with others, are both strongly influenced by that imprinted standard. Until you can recognize it and move beyond it, you’re unlikely to find your highest choices being met. For example, if you believe that loving and accepting yourself unconditionally is selfish or conceited, you will never be open to receiving unconditional love from another person. If you are closed to yourself, then you are closed, period.

Sit down with a journal, or go for a long walk, and review your beliefs and assumptions about the whole concept of “relationship.” Consider how the models you learned in childhood might be stacking the deck against you. Once you understand how your ingrained ideas about relationships might be operating at a subconscious level, your conscious efforts to do things differently will be much more successful. Own your projections. Just as we are likely to find attractive in others the very attributes and abilities we most want to develop in ourselves, we are also constantly projecting our own ideas, feelings and motivations onto other people. Recognizing this tendency when it occurs, and observing it with compassion (as opposed to a lot of self-judgments), can help you take giant strides toward self-acceptance and self-awareness.

One of our strongest beliefs is that we can know for certain what is motivating someone else. For example, say your spouse spends more time pursuing his hobby than he does with you, and you project that this means he doesn’t value your relationship very much. You probably feel hurt, ignored, angry and abandoned. But you may be projecting a meaning onto your partner’s behavior that has nothing to do with his actual feelings or motivations. Are you really afraid that he values his hobby more than you? Do you value some aspect of your life more highly than your relationship? Or could it be that you wish you had a passion that you cared so much about? Your emotional response may have more to do with your reaction to your own projections than with the reality itself. When this new awareness emerges, so does the possibility of an honest examination in which no one is blamed.

Keep in mind that relationships are, by their very nature, reflective. We are here, and in a relationship with each other, in order to help each other learn. It can be very helpful to perceive that each person in our midst is in some way a reflection of an aspect of ourself. Whatever we find to envy, covet, long for or loathe in another is very likely something calling for our attention right here at home.

Cheri Huber is the author of several books, including When You’re Falling, Dive; There’s Nothing Wrong With You; and Be the Person You Want to Find (Keep It Simple Books, 1997) from which this article was adapted. She has taught for many years at A Center for the Practice of Zen Buddhist Meditation in Mountain View, Calif., and at the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, Calif.