BAD RELATIONSHIPS ARE GIFTS

  

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."    Leo Tolstoy

What lessons have you learned from the love in your life?

While lying in bed sleepless a few days ago, I started thinking about a conversation I had with friends ... Both told me to “Never give up on love”. What they are not getting is, I have not given up on love, am just cleaning my flat (read on you will get it.... #wink)..... , and making space for the new tenant. I don’t know how long it will take, all I know I don’t want the new tenant to find it messy…..

 

 No matter how badly or sadly a relationship ended, there is always something to learn from that experience. Whatever you learned is your gift. Very often a current or past "failure" is what fuels us to the very success that we’ve always dreamed of. Past relationships give us a clearer picture of what we want and what we don't want in a relationship if we only take the time to examine them.

The key is to, “take the time to examine them”.  Whatever we do, we shouldn't move to another relationship until we have performed this examination. Here is a comparison to make my point. When you renting a flat, you are required to pay a refundable deposit fee and you are refunded this deposit if you leave that flat in a good condition. Consider your heart as the flat and your self-esteem and self-worth as the deposit. If you don’t adequately clean your flat (your heart), you will not get the deposit back (your self-esteem and self-worth intact). Renting offices agents would not dare think of renting an office to a new tenant without first cleaning it up, cleaning out and refurbishing that space. Do the same for your heart; clear away the debris of pain, disappointment, anger, fear, etc. before inviting another guest to occupy your heart.

Now let’s get back to failed relationships as gifts.

One gift a failed relationship can give you is the power of contrast. If you can muster the strength and courage to let go of an unfulfilling relationship, you will soon see just how much precious time and energy you were wasting on something from which you were not reaping any reward.

Another gift a failed relationship can give you is the power of vision. By finally realizing what you don’t want in a partner, you can focus on building your vision of what you do want in a partner. You can now focus on what points of compatibility you desire in a partner.

For the gift of a failed relationship to really be useful, you must decide to bless the relationship and let it go to make room for the type of partner you desire and also to free your previous partner to find a more appropriate mate. In reality, there are no “failed” relationships. Begin to view past relationships as incredible gifts; some relationships offer more incredible gifts than others but gifts nonetheless. As the saying goes, people come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

We may never understand or know why we were in a particular relationship. We may never understand or know why people come into our lives and then leave. What I've learned is that if a relationship isn't working, it is not a bad thing or a failure as I believed. It is merely that you, and perhaps the other person have learned what it is that you were supposed to learn by being in a relationship with that other person and it's time to move on to other "lessons."

The purpose of all relationships is to help us to grow--personally and spiritually. Even the most painful and ugly relationships can be gifts in learning more about ourselves, strengthening of our intuition and learning to accept the truth when we see it. The greatest gift of a past relationship is that you now know what you really want in a mate. So instead of looking at a relationship that didn't work out the way you had hoped as a failure, I suggest you look at it for the gift that it is.