Happily Ever After? Conscious Relating: a new paradigm
by Gayatri
On August 8th Doug and I had a special celebration – our handfasting in Glastonbury. The modern convention for how long a handfasting will last is “a year and a day”, Doug and I chose “5 years and a day” as we felt it gave a strong intention for our relationship. For sure in that time we will face life changes and challenges, and we choose to face them together.
I see the handfasting as a commitment to walk together on our life path. Unlike a marriage, where people commit to being together “till death us do part”, a handfasting acknowledges that life is a journey and that it might take us on different paths. After 5 years, we will review our relationship and decide whether we want to keep walking together or go our separate ways, with love and honouring our time together.
Some people feel this is “unromantic” and I can understand that, if you believe in the fairytale version of relationship ending in “happily ever after”. There is another understanding of relationship, however:
Relationship as crucible for personal and spiritual growth.
Early on in our relationship, Doug and I had a conversation about our personal values and shared vision for our union. We even wrote a vision statement: “To become closer to the Divine through loving you”.
We had both been in significant relationships before. We had both whispered words of tenderness and declared commitments of love to other people before; so in coming together we brought many lessons and understandings. As much as we could revel in the heady concoction of attraction and sexual energy that so often marks the beginning of a connection, we also had our eyes wide open as to what
embarking on a relationship together could mean.
In our understanding, the purpose of relationship is to grow through engagement with another, this representative of the Divine who has come to teach us about love.
You might have noticed that it’s easy to feel spiritually evolved or enlightened when you are on your own. In relationship your beloved not doing the dishes again or putting the toilet seat up can easily knock you off your inner equilibrium. And that’s just the small stuff…
When we’re in connection with another, the needs and wants of our ego become activated and alive. We start to notice the conditions by which we give and receive love. With awareness, we start to identify the blockages that
hold us back from truly being love and consciously explore their edges.
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers withinto seek and find all the barriers wthin your-
self that you have built against it.”
(Attributed to Rumi) For some people conventional monogamy, the form of relating which many people assume as the “norm” for any loving relationship, doesn’t really work. This is the kind of socially imposed monogamy that somehow implies if you love someone, you only want them and they must fulfil every need you have – emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. The fairytale again.
On the other side, polyamory allows for a more widespread understanding and acceptance as a way of honouring the multiple