Some of you have found your significant other.  I will share some insights that may be of interest or help to you in your relationships.  There have been many articles and some books written recently about single people choosing to remain single, choosing to not have a relationship or not to date at all.  Some people are choosing to never get married or live with a partner.  These books state that those who are making these choices have full satisfying lives without relationships, that their careers, friends and family are all they need to feel fulfilled in their lives.

Before I got married to my soul mate, I chose to remain single.  I said I would never get married again because I was happy owning my business and having many good friends and had a lot of fun.  My business was challenging and satisfying and I was making good money, so I could travel and buy things and enjoy life.

So I went along for a while without a partner or dating until I realized that my choice to be without a mate was not a choice at all.  It was fear.  Fear of commitment, fear of being hurt again as I had been in several relationships, fear of being controlled, or simply of working at a relationship because that meant also working on myself.  Let's explore some of these fears.

Fear of Commitment:

We all fear commitment to relationships, jobs, children, family, or whatever.  Because if we commit we may succeed and fear of success underlines our fear of commitment.  Fear of success comes from our self worth issues.  Perhaps as children we felt or heard that we were not good enough in some area of our lives so we internalized this and felt that we could not be successful in this area.  The area may be a creative endeavor, a school subject, sports, or relationships.  Whatever the area was, our feeling of "not good enough" spills over into other areas of our lives and instills in us the fear of not being able to succeed.  So we carry this through into our adult life and it may keep us from developing relationships.

We may even create situations that sabotage our ability to move forward in our lives.  When these feelings of "not good" enough or our fears come up it may bring up that uneasiness within our spirit that may cause us to have to look at ourselves.  We may have to look at what we like or don't like about ourselves and what we perhaps have to change in order to have more fulfilling lives and relationships.

Changing our feeling of "not good" enough means working on our self worth issues.  It means surrendering to our inner voice and then we begin to take responsibility for being honest with that voice and making commitments to grow and change.

Fear of being hurt:

When we are hurt by a relationship, family member, friend, or a significant other we shut down and say to ourselves we will never put ourselves in that vulnerable position again because it hurt so much before.  Yes, it hurts, we have all been hurt in many ways, but it is in the hurting that we can truly get down to the layers under the layers of what shuts us down.  Shutting down erases the feeling state and we may become numb and non-feeling.  We lose much of our humanness by being numb.

An object has no feelings so we objectify ourselves in a numb state because it is easier than feeling hurt.  But this numb state keeps us from moving forward in life.  We are like a statue on a shelf just sitting there and observing life and other people in relationships instead of living it ourselves.

To bring our humanness back, our divineness back, we have to bring our feeling back.  We need to allow hurt to happen because these hurts are part of feeling alive and involved in life.  Feelings also stretch us the most because we can look at ourselves and our patterns of why we may hold back our feelings.  When we look at these feeling it helps us to move forward to the actions we need to take to transform our fears and change our patterns.  Then we can begin to have more satisfying lives and more satisfying relationships.

Fear of working at a relationship because it means working on ourselves:

We learn and grow the most from our relationships, family, friends, fellow workers, lovers, significant others.  Relationships cause us to stretch and look at ourselves because we experience our deepest feelings through relationships.  One of our soul's purpose is to look deep within ourselves and get in touch with our true nature which we can experience the most through relationships.

As we experience day to day life in a relationship, issues come up in our conversations with the other person in our exchanges, sex, affections-whatever we share with the other person.  These issues touch us on emotional levels.  If we are conscious of our emotions in a relationship we can look at them.  In looking at our emotions and reactions to the other person, this is where we can learn the most about ourselves.  This is where we can see our patterns, especially the ones that don't work for us or the relationships we are in.  Looking at these patterns can stretch us to move through them and gently nurture ourselves while we feel them and recognize them.  If we can see the patterns in our relationships that come up again and again that cause us not to have satisfying experiences we can begin to change them.

Awareness is half the battle and with awareness we can then allow change in.  This may be a painstaking process and one that requires us to take responsibility for ourselves and get whatever support we need whether it be counseling, energy work or just being quiet with ourselves and perhaps journaling to sort through our feelings.  Then we can begin to heal our fears.

Feelings produce change if we allow them too.  We don't have to be a statue on a shelf watching other people have relationships.  Even if you have made a choice to not have a relationship, look at your choice.

Is it really a choice or just a fear?

Look at the fear as something that we all have but we can choose to recognize it as fear and join in the life of relationships.  When we lose a job do we allow that feeling of loss to create a fear in us that keeps us from looking for another job?  Perhaps initially, but we have to pay the rent so we get on our walking boots and start interviewing for another job.  If we are not hired right away do we stop looking for a job?  No, we keep on interviewing until we find one.  We can do this same process with relationships.

If one relationship fails, and we are all going to have failures, that is how we learn more about ourselves.  We can go out and interview for another relationship, and another one until we find one.  By interview I mean have relationships.  We gain our skills by having a job and learning on the job and becoming the best you can on that job.  We gain skills about how to have a satisfying relationship by having relationships.

By having experiences in relationships we stretch and grow and learn about ourselves.  It is sometimes painful (growing in a career can be painful) but by learning more of who we are through relationships we can be the best that we can be and have satisfying and successful relationships.  We can be our divines as it is in relationships.  So don't be a statue on a shelf observing.  Be a part of the life you are observing.

My challenge to you this week is to find a date.  Either get asked out or you ask someone out.  Don't look for prince or princess charming-they don't exist.  Just be yourself-be who you are and enjoy yourself even if the other person in not your idea of the perfect mate.

We learn what is perfect or satisfying to us by being in relationships.  A relationship can be anything from going out once for coffee or seeing someone for a period of time.

It's all about relating to people.  By being with and relating to people we learn more about ourselves as situations come up which can help us grow towards the fulfilling relationships we desire.  Relating to all kinds of people helps us see the beauty in others as we also see more of the beauty in ourselves.  We can create fun and joy as this is our right in life and what the Universe wants for us.