Why Do Relationships Wither and Die?

The Incredible, Shrinking Relationship



Relationships shrink.

They get smaller and smaller until there’s no room to breathe.

Then, you must break out, or go crazy.

Have you ever felt like that?

If you can get past the pain and frustration and sadness, ask yourself how something rich and alive fell apart.

We may try to blame every problem on someone else, but the truth is more complicated.

We are not powerless. The decay of a relationship is not inevitable.

Are you a player in your own life, or does everything just happen to you?

Are personal growth and personal development real to you, or just words?



Everything changes.

It’s up to you to shape that change.

Or you will be unhappy with the results.



Abundant Relationships

Where do you find abundance in relationships?

Do we make our relationships small, old, tired, and endlessly the same, or do we look for ways to fill our relationships with wonder?

Do you look at the one outside your skin and think she is small and familiar and predictable?

Or do you dream the possibility that is dancing within her and around her!

Do you feel the abundance all around her and within her?

Relationships begin with possibility.

The other person is unknown and wonderful.

And in that newness, you feel that anything is possible for her and for you.

That’s the key.

An abundant relationship is filled with possibility for each of you.

You’ll find abundance dancing around others when you can see it dancing around yourself.

Abundance is around you and within you.

You can find abundance in almost anything, even in things that are physical.

But it takes the right attitude to feel it.

As William Blake said:

”To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

You can find endless possibility in the smallest place or thing or time.

And it is so much easier to see a person as infinite.

There are worlds beyond worlds within each of us.

But we live in a physical world, where things and even people seem to have boundaries.

Yes we have to pay the bills, change the diapers, and take out the garbage.

But when our relationships are centered on these actions as ends in themselves, as though abundance has vanished from the world, our relationships will shrink and disappear.

Our attitude can imprison us within the apparent boundaries and make everything and everyone small.

Or we can dance among infinities.

Possibility comes within reach of your mind and heart when you connect one little place or thing or time to the endless world around us.

One moment is a note in a symphony of time.

One place is a brush of color on a huge canvas.

And one person is a window into an endless series of worlds.

The possibility is born when one thing takes its place in relationship to the immense world around it.



Giving and Taking: A Dance of Energy

What is this relationship that we speak of that connects one thing or person to the world?

It’s a flow.

But that sounds too weak and random.

Imagine a great wave of energy that reaches out to each of us, like waves breaking on the shoreline.

Then imagine another great wave coming from each of us and bursting out upon the world around us.

Waves upon waves from an infinity of points slowly build up a great glowing, sparkling web.

This is closer to the image of flow and connection that I have in mind.

In this web of relationship, everything gives and takes, broadcasts and receives, influences and is influenced.

The world often focuses on our shortcomings as givers, saying that our relationships will crumble if we love taking too much.

Ah, and to be a giver, doesn’t that force my partner to be a taker?

Isn’t that a problem for her?

We’re looking at a great series of flows in isolation, and we’re getting mixed up.

It’s not the direction of any one flow that matters.

What we need is a rich web of energy that flows back and forth between us to build and maintain a healthy relationship.

And to keep our relationships young and powerful, what we exchange must be more than tiny things and moments, morsels of food within our cages.

We must exchange possibility.

We must give and take from each other the invitation to a world without visible boundaries, a rich, abundant world which calls to all of us.