What If You Evolve, But Your Partner Stays the Same?
When I started my process of awakening and healing – summer of 2013 – my husband was nowhere near the same page.
This is usually the case, by the way: this process of growth, maturation and healing is a uniquely individual process.
You cannot force it nor speed it up. Not for yourself, and certainly not for others.
And yet, many people in long-term relationships feel frustrated by this mismatch in the growth timelines of each individual.
To me this is a codependence issue: when we believe that a romantic partner is “mine,” and that they are here to fulfill “my needs,” so that I never feel alone or sad or insecure. In other words: we completely dehumanize them by not considering them as people in their own right, on their own timeline, with their own specific path.
The expectation is : I’m growing, and you should too!
Which, like many other expectations about relationships we’ve inherited, is completely unrealistic.
We take two sovereign beings — raised in different families, imprinted by their unique childhood experience and inherited patterns, living in completely different bodies with separate nervous systems — but then expect them to become alike?
It’s a pleasant surprise if our values about life, money, and how to raise children aline, but the expectation that another person should be on the same healing timeline as me is preposterous.
Growth and healing is soul-level work.
Each one of us comes into this life on our own soul journey.
Our relationship partners may become the catalysts for our awakening. They may wake us up to our wounds and spark the need to grow. They may also become the soothing or healing element that builds safety for growth.
But whatever you are going through on your life journey is yours.
Other people we meet on our life path are our mirrors or messengers, but they certainly don’t owe us anything.
It may happen that one partner, triggered by a life event to embark on a healing journey, will put evolutionary pressure on their partner to transform as well.
But we have no power over another person’s readiness or capacity for growth, awareness, evolution.
The evolutionary process toward healing and wholeness is each of our individual responsibility.
In my case, the journey toward sovereignty and wholeness was triggered by unpredictable life circumstances. I blamed my husband for our life veering off script, and the resulting stress in our relationship forced me to seek who I am outside of it.
That journey helped me see that I had been using my husband as father replacer and need fulfiller for nearly 20 years. When he no longer could carry that impossible burden, I was forced to grow up.
Remembering that I am a sovereign being brought me to disrupt the obsolete patterns on which my relationship had been built.
As I was stretching and growing, I kept changing the music and rhythm of our relating dance, inadvertently inviting my husband to do the same.
But the evolutionary pressure was initiated by him – when he could no longer be my father figure. As a result I was forced to grow and remember that I exist outside of our relationship. My process of individuation put further evolutionary pressure on our relationship and each of us individually.
And this is what relationships are – laboratories for growth!
As each of us embarks on our own growth and healing journey, we send ripples of change out to everyone who comes in contact with us.
Some people are able to hear the call, others are not yet open to receiving.
My husband felt ambushed by my change and threatened by my process in the beginning.
This means that he became unsafe in our relationship, and dug into his habits, on the defensive and unwilling to change.
Did I wish he was evolving with me? Of course I did! I demanded it, was angry that he wasn’t.
But I did not let his refusal (or lack of capacity, as I see it now) to derail my process.
I continued working on remembering who I was before I got married, dared to use my voice again, and expanded my awareness of where I end and he begins — without needing his permission.
As many of you know from my writing, the more I expanded awareness of my own inner processes, the more I accessed compassion for my own humbling process of healing – and for his.
The more I humanized my husband, the safer he felt, the more our relationship evolved into something that today suits both of us.
But it took the time that it took.
My husband is still nowhere near where I am on my journey. Sometimes I send him videos with messages that I think will help him see something. More times than not he cannot even understand what they are talking about.
As always – he is on his life journey. I am on mine.
I do not need him to be like me.
We are both learning to love each other as we are now.
We are no longer nostalgic about the past. Nor are we in fantasy about the future.
We are both learning to be here now. And to love what is.
Your growth cannot be derailed by anyone’s lack of compliance!
In fact, part of your growth is to free yourself from other people’s validation or agreement or timeline.
You are the #1 in your life! Your growth is yours.
Your relationships will be transformed with you.
I have opened some spots for 1-1 work with me, available for October and beyond. This is for people who need something on outside of them to change (circumstances, partners) in order to be at peace in their life or relationships.
Book a free 30-min conversation on zoom and let’s chat!
Warmly,
Galina
PS: I have been inspired for some time to talk about my journey of becoming an Elder. Last week I started a series on the subject. If interested, follow my daily video diary from this YouTube playlist.