It's a Guy Thing (31 page)

How Does My Mother Affect My Intimate Relationship?

If you have an inner struggle because of an unresolved relationship with your mother, then you won’t be able to fully relax into your feminine energy. And, it is only by relaxing into your feminine energy that you are able to open and receive your partner’s masculine gift.

When you are no longer at war with your mother or any other aspect of your internal feminine energy, then you will be able to open and receive your man’s gifts and also fully embrace him, gifting him as his source of feminine loving. If you can’t completely relax in your own feminine, in your own body, then you won’t be able to manifest your full love-radiance in reciprocal gifting with your man.

First learn to trust both masculine and feminine energies. Then, you can rest in your preferred energy and allow the
other to become externalized in the form of your partner. By embracing him, you can enjoy the bliss of reunion between the masculine and feminine energies of love. Relaxing into your own natural sexual character, you can enjoy the exchange of masculine and feminine gifts, rather than arguing over issues of power, control, trust and emotional support.

Such arguments often arise because we reject some aspect of our parents, and therefore some aspect of our own sexual character. We no longer trust our own gifts, or the gifts of our partner. We are not completely relaxed in our body’s desires. We do not trust that our partner will give us the love that we want. We do not trust our own sexual fullness, our own feminine or masculine gifts.

In order to relax in sexually polarized love with a man, you must be willing to relax in your feminine energy. Since your mother represents your deepest memory of the feminine, you must embrace her and accept her totally before you will be able to relax fully with your man.

You must embrace your mother to receive your man. Then your body, breath and sexual character will let go of any resistance to the full incarnation of your native feminine energy. If you are holding on to a conflict with your mother, you are holding on to a conflict with your own feminine expression of natural radiance.

How Can I Change His Need to Control Me?

One way to look at intimate relationships is to see them as an attempt to replicate our relationship with our parents, or the relationship we wished we had with our parents. Another
way to see intimate relationships is as a vehicle for the practice of opening, growth and real love. We feel internal conflicts because both of these efforts are true of us: We are consciously trying to grow in intimacy, and unconsciously trying to replicate the often painful patterns of our childhood.

The way this conflict is resolved involves communication and learning to love
through
our limiting personality patterns. For instance, a man might have a need to be in control. Maybe when he controlled himself as a child, his parents rewarded him with love. Now, in his intimate relationships, he will automatically act controlling, because that’s what feels like love in his body. Even though he may not be
getting
love for being controlling now, that’s what his body demands. That’s what feels like the door to love for him. He might be mystified because his relationships don’t seem to work, but he will still do it.

For a man like this, it would help for you to communicate something like, “I am feeling hurt right now by what you are doing.” It will be a revelation, because your man, at an unconscious level, will assume what he is doing will get him love, just like it did with his parents. But when you say to him, “I am being hurt,” then it gives your partner a chance to realize his actions feel painful to you.

This way your relationship becomes a feedback device through which he begins to unlearn old behavior and associations. He will probably never completely unlearn them. The pattern is recorded deep in his body. But it doesn’t have to be an obstruction to love. It could just be a humorous facet of the relationship. The way to dissolve the
force
of old patterns like this involves humorous communication between partners rather than blaming each other.

We have to be careful about condemning, blaming and
resenting our partner for having a painful pattern in intimacy. At some level, part of us may unconsciously desire this pattern; it is probably one our parents also had.

Just assume that when you enter a relationship, both you and your man will have patterns that need to be loved through. You can in effect, say to one another, “Let’s love each other and let our relationship be a free arena in which to be amused by our hidden patterns.”

By realizing that your man is not acting out his patterns toward
you
, then you are more free to smile and remind him of love. Don’t expect his patterns to disappear. Rather, practice sharing love and humor even while the pattern arises. The pattern may
never
disappear, but you can learn to share love even now, whether or not the pattern arises.

Why Do I Feel Like I’m Still Trying to Please My Mother?

For all of us, “mother” is part of our psyche. We have internalized her. She is always going to be telling us what to do.

During childhood we internalize both of our parents. They punished us and rewarded us and we internalized this process. Now, we punish ourselves and reward ourselves in the same way. Any decisions we make about what we should do with our lives and relationships, and how to be safe and protect ourselves, are usually made by internal parental voices. Whether we feel good about ourselves or bad about ourselves, it is probably our internal parent who makes the judgment.

We often try to obey or resist our internal parents and become suppressed or confused by our own inner voices. Our inner parents tell us one thing, but our adult desire tells us something else. We are divided inside. As a child we listened to our parents and we still do, obeying and sometimes rebelling against our own internal voices. All of us, at times, find that one part of us wants to do something that another part of us thinks is bad or risky and unsafe.

You can say to your external and internal mother, “I know you are only trying to help and protect me. I am an adult now and sometimes I choose to rebel and take a risk. So, although I hear and appreciate you, I am choosing not to obey you. I am willing to learn from my own successes and failures in life.”

If you have not made peace with your internal mother, then you will continually doubt your worthiness. It is time to realize that you do not have to do anything to become worthy of love! You deserve love exactly how you are, because you are made of love. Your nature is love. If you simply relax and allow your heart to melt through the tension in your body and emotions, you will express love. And if you express love you are lovable.

You do not have to please your mother. She’s working through her own process. She is trying to fulfill (or has tried to fulfill) her life through you. She wants you to be the perfect daughter—
her
version of “perfect.” You can choose to honor your mother’s version of perfect, but it does not have to be your version. You do not have to oblige yourself to carry that weight. You are free. But to be free, you need to love your external mother as well as your internal mother. And when you love them you still don’t have to behave for them. You don’t have to be the “good” daughter.

Be who you are. Be all of you, sinner and saint, bum and workaholic. Embrace all the parts of you and love. This is your only true responsibility. It is a responsibility not because you are supposed to do it, but because
you are love
. To be love is the truest expression of who you are. Your mother may not accept you and you may not even accept yourself. You may suffer rejection from within, yet still
you
are love.

Your mother is learning her lessons in life. Let her go. Serve her in love and let her go. When your inner mother makes you behave “properly,” simply smile and breathe through her. Love her. She is only the internal pattern of your external mother. They have both served you in your growth as a child, protecting you, teaching you and caring for you. But now you are ready to reclaim your life. You are ready for love. There is nobody, internal or external, that you need to be good for. You are free to learn by your own successes and failures. You are free to love and be loved,
exactly as you are
.

How Can I Get Rid of the “Mother” I Still Hear in My Head?

You may not like all of your inner voices, such as your inner mother. You may try to push some of them away. But the truth is, you have many voices inside of you. Some of them are pleasant, others are not. You have a saint inside of you as well as a sinner. You have a protective mother inside of you as well as a little baby who wants to be held and loved.

When you objectify all your internal voices, you understand and are aware that they are all part of the energy pattern you call “me.” You also understand that your awareness
transcends them all. The real you, the you that is always free and clear, is the you that is awareness itself. Growth involves greater and greater self-awareness. And the more conscious you become, the more you will have to face your inner cast of characters.

The characters we hate most in other people are the “characters” we hate most inside ourselves. If we hate lazy people, we hate the lazy part of ourselves. If we hate stupid people, we have developed an inner criticism of our own stupidity, perhaps from our parents reprimanding us as children. The way we have learned to respond to our internal cast of characters is also the way we respond to our external friends, family and enemies.

We don’t have to obey any of the voices we hear, internally or externally. We can choose to push them away. But if we do, they will inevitably return. If we try to disown them and push them out of our lives, we are only strengthening their energy. For example, if we don’t want to see the seductive part of ourselves, we will attract a display of seductiveness from others. We attract in others what we resist in ourselves.

The universe is moving toward greater and greater consciousness and love. The universe has its own divine intelligence. We are going to have to face our hidden parts, sooner or later, either within ourselves or in the guise of others. If we are unwilling to face the dark part in our own psyche, we will attract people into our lives who display the same darkness hidden within us. One way or another, we will be brought face to face with what we hate and fear most, so we can learn to love more fully.

In the end, you will learn that all the internal and external voices you hear are only part of a lifelong lesson of consciousness. You can try to please
others
by hiding parts of
yourself. You can try to make
yourself
happy by hiding parts of yourself. Or, you can learn to be conscious of every part of yourself, including the parts you would rather not face.

Consciousness
is
freedom. You don’t have to “get rid” of your inner mother to be free. To be fully conscious of all your parts, embracing them all instead of resisting them, is to be free. Even though you may hate or fear certain parts of yourself, they all developed for a reason in their own time, during your childhood.