How enchanting to find someone who understands the difference between love and a relationship; between unhealthy and healthy expectations! 🤩

I have a tendency to separate between love and a relationship. Love — the genuine form — is a free emotion we can give to a stranger, to animals, to a flower, to a beautiful rainbow — you name it! A relationship, though, is a wholly different story! It takes two individuals, and what would be defining its nature is how much emotionally healthy each involved party is. A person’s expectations can tell a lot about their emotional balance.

An insecure person navigating life with numerous limiting beliefs and emotional scars, who has never had an opportunity to become aware of their conditioning outcomes, or who were not able to get out of their denial circle, would have such unhealthy expectations:

Expecting the person to fix them, to make of them the center of their world, to understand them even when they don’t understand themselves, to forgive all their endless reactivity and drama, to make them happy even when they’re doing everything to stay in their victim position their unhealthy ego loves so much.

An emotionally self-reliant person — or at least who is on the path of becoming one — on the other hand, would expect the following from a relationship:

First and foremost, they need to be actively listened to:

Instead of listening to respond, we listen to understand. Instead of listening to the words, we listen to the body language and emotions. Instead of listening with the ears, we listen with the heart.

An emotionally healthy person also needs to be seen, recognized, encouraged, challenged, celebrated. They also need free acts of kindness and generosity. They need the roles in the relationship to be clarified. They need people to keep their promises. They need them to apologize quickly and sincerely whenever screwing things up — as we all do anyway!

Simply put, they need to be in a relationship where the other party is also living wholeheartedly!