Relationships 101: The Importance of a Truthful Commitment However Difficult it Maybe

Some long-term relationships have the security of commitment and complete trust. Those in such relations feel saturated and locked in the roles they either choose for themselves or get defined to.

Your responsibilities and chores, day after day, year after year become confinement. You forget to ask whether whatever you choose to do, adds to the well-being of you, or your relationship. This applies to household chores and also how you care for each other. When you do things because the other won’t do it or do it well enough, resentment builds up. The really small things in life, when added up, become the biggest source of remorse in such relationships.

There comes a rigidity of perspectives or a denial of an important communication that needs to happen. There is knowledge and understanding that one can depend on the other for life itself when needed, yet there is discontent on a daily basis.

The small things that become an unwelcome pattern in a long time, call for conversations that feel difficult. You tend to live with the conclusion that it is not something worth bringing up.

After this long, why doesn’t the other understand without explaining, you wonder.

Eventually, distress comes up just in the presence of the other person. The original intention of love is so strong that you can’t imagine having the conversation. This so-called love cannot see the other in pain, angst or anger. So, the pattern continues.

In my opinion, it is very arrogant to keep living both your partner’s distress and yours, on your own, and robbing the other, an opportunity of living and facing their own humanness. Say your truth, however difficult it may be, and let the other feel the distress. Allow space for all unfolding with love. Give some distance so you are not intersecting emotions. Allow some mess and chaos. It is as short-lived as the phases of happiness themselves. Remind each other anew the goodness that made you choose each other, in the first place.

When there is truthful commitment, it can endure this wave of uncomfortable emotion. When that wave has lived its life and washed over each of you, it will leave behind, your joyful ways of being. Then when you meet each other in your truth and joy, that is when you really meet each other again.

True commitment and love in relations come in allowing space for each to find themselves and their truths. Accepting the other, in all phases of that quest. There is certain accountability involved if the relation was skewed in balance to begin with. All change needs time and diligence.

Marriages have happened for all kinds of reasons – physical, societal, familial, true connection, and/or because you had a knowing certainty regarding your commitment. None are exempt from evolution, personal or relational. When we feel the greater love in our being to share with each other, that is true relation. And it always exists in intention and potential.

We are souls who found each other in commitment to do this work with ourselves, to have someone to come home to, from our deep explorations of ourselves. We hold space for each other, in trust, love and kindness, through our own courageous, individual life journeys. We speak our truth, the ones that did not have an opportunity before, because what we had was enough, or we simply chose to escape the discomfort. Don’t be afraid to take the lead.

(Top photo by Pragalbha Doshi)

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Pragalbha Doshi lives with her husband and two teenage boys in San Jose, California. As a yoga teacher certified in therapeutic applications (E – RYT500), she facilitates change for people who struggle with chronic symptoms of stress, physical & emotional, and who want a productive & fulfilling life (www.yogasaar.com). She works with the American Heart Association as the visiting stress management expert, teaching classes and webinars on stress relief and well-being. She writes poetry and personal growth articles on her blog Infinite Living.