Is Your Past Ruining Your Capacity To Love?

"When people are having trouble loving currently, it's because they have an old love that they've never given up" - Elvin Semrad⁣⁣⠀

Ya, kiddin'?⁣
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What a bloody beauty of a quote - from a book I am reading called Soul Friends by Stephen Cope.⁣⁣⠀
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In all intimate relationships, there comes a time when we want to go deeper and fall more in love than ever before. But to get there, to that new depth, we have to first meet with what we haven't yet processed from the past.⁣⁣⠀
Fuck.⁣⁣⠀
Really?⁣
Isn't there an easier way?⁣⁣⠀
No.⁣⁣⠀
It is this moment that causes the unprepared person to sabotage their new (and often desired) relationship.⁣⠀
Bailing out is easier than doing the work. We have to ask ourselves, do we really want to be free, do we really want to experience deep and real love? And does our partner want this too?⁣⠀
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If so both parties need to be willing to sit the fuck down, be still and really and truly hold each other. All the practices of kindness, equanimity, compassion and awareness from your daily meditations now floods your significant other as they bare themselves to you so you can, ultimately, have more of them.⁣⁣⠀
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You see, we are SO quick to react to their issues that we forget that the reason those issues are coming up is so that we can support them through it so that we can exist with a MORE open, MORE loving, MORE free expression of that person we love!⁣⠀
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Don't run from their issues, run into them, and all the way through them, hand in hand! And as a result, come to a new agreement about what your relationship means and set a new standard of what is possible for love.⁣⁣⠀
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Letting go isn't easy, offer support to your lover in the same way that you would want to receive it. That is our duty in a conscious relationship.⁣⁣⠀
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How can you show up for the one you love?