True Love
From Elfi
Q&Rohaa for Tea House group, by Rohaa (March 21, 2010)
Transcript by Yvonne
Some students were having trouble wanting to find our 'True Love' or 'The One', twin flames or soulmate. Here's Rohaa's answer to them.
What do we mean with “true love”?
Rohaa: Can someone tell me what you mean when you talk about "true love"? It's important we're all talking and thinking about the same thing here.
Student 1: For me it is love that last through thick and thin, sickness and health, rich and poor, mean and nice, whatever happens, forever. And a soulmate isnt always someone who is what you might have thought would be your "ideal" mate.
Student 2: It's like you have 'normal love': the kind that seems to be based solely on temporary attraction (look at all the couples coming together for a few months then splitting up, crying for a few weeks and try again. Robbie Williams I think had a nice term for it: Serial Monogamy). Then you have what I myself call true love. You find someone like the description above. Third is my idea of a soulmate, a step above that even. The love bond is even deeper and joined by a bond of the soul. It just, fits, somehow. You just know... This is a hard one to describe.
Student 3: For me it's a bond which can be build only by sharing one path with someone, a bond based on trust. It's like that bond is alredy existing when you meet somebody.
Student 4: First thought that came to mind for me is a life-long partner that you can easily get along with, someone you can fully trust and grow a family with if so desire, and it's long term.
Student 5: Perhaps we can all agree that we're curious if there's a fate or destiny element to it?
Rohaa: I hear a lot of ideas here that True Love has to be with one person only. If you have a lover or a partner for a few months and then move on, clearly it can't have been True Love. If you have had several True Loves in your life, they weren't really all "True". Whereas if you stay with someone for 30 years, it must be True Love or you wouldn't have stuck with it. Is that close to what you were saying?
Student 1: If I stay with somebody for 30 years, that don't mean I love that person. I can be deeply mistaken.
Student 2: It's if you put up with somebody through a bunch of shit, and they dont leave you and you dont leave them.
Student 3: But what kind of shit? If it's sickness and health, poorness and wealth I agree. But if the relation ship is abusive hell no.
Rohaa: If you put a slave collar on someone and hold on tightly on the other end, you can be fairly sure that they won’t leave you even tho you come across a "bunch of shit". So is it possible to have several True Loves? Who here has the idea somewhere deep inside that there is one special right person for them and that you'll only be happy with them, and that you should find them? Honestly please.
Student 1: I think most women in my generation were raised with that idea. I was.
Student 2: Hmmm in fact I heard that my whole live so probably I believe that.
Student 3: One special person, yes. And yes, you should find them. Not sure if you'd only be happy with them. Happiness isn't scaled in catergories, I think you can be happy with a True Love, but that one special person would make you soar.
Student 4: If there's only one special person for you in the whole world, what the hell are the odds you'll even meet them? I mean there are perfect partnerships, people who balance one another perfectly. But one special person? I doubt it.
Student 5: I personally believe that there are several "possibilities" of love in life...even at the same time possibly...
Rohaa: Topics about love and relationships are very close to our heart, for obvious reasons. So today may trigger quite a few inner pieces for you that you're not aware of yet. I'd like everyone to make sure you stay grounded and keep tabs on your emotions. If you notice anger, we're probably hitting on something relevant to you, so make a note of these things.
One special person
There are a few problems with the idea that there is one special person for you. Let's assume for a moment that such a person really exists for each of us.
One of you already pointed out an obvious problem with that: what if you never meet him? You'll spend your entire life with perhaps various partners, secretly thinking "This is nice, but if I had that ONE person....it could be even better." What would that do to any relationship you may be in? It would make it very hard, at least. Every time you look at your partner, you would think "Not quite right." Would you want to live with someone and invest building a life with someone if they think on some level, "Not quite right" when they see you? Me either. So that's one instance in which holding the notion of The One can actually cripple any relationship you're in.
Now let's assume you have met this person and they're your one someone special. Let's even assume you're single, he's single, you get together without any problems (because you're made for each other, right?) Now what? Several possibilities. Maybe you get along very well, and you live happily ever after. Maybe you start doubting at the first sign of problems. Or maybe you would get hypercritical of this person, because if they are The One, then they better make you perfectly happy. It's their job. And if they're not doing it...
A problem with having met The One and happily being with them is that you give them power over your life, over your level of happiness and accomplishment in life. With them, you're awesome, because you found your True Love. Without them.... So it becomes a necessity to stay with this person. Your happiness depends on it. If you somehow lost them you could never be truly happy ever again, you blew your one chance. But even more importantly, you get both of you trapped. You can’t leave even if you wanted to, because they're The One and you can't possible turn your back on that. They can’t leave you, because it's their job to make you happy, you're made for each other, and you can’t ever be happy if your True Love leaves you. What happens if you feel like you can’t be happy anymore if someone leaves you?
Student 1: You cling to them, become dependent on them.
Student 2: You may be obsessed in some way with them.
Student 3: You have to be happy with yourself first...someone outside you can't make you happy.
Rohaa: That's a good point. If with this person you soar, and with another person you don’t and you WANT to soar....then you need this person. They can be lovely, but you still need them to get what you want out of life.
Student 4: I guess I don’t feel I "need" anyone....I am responsible for my own happiness, not dependant on someone else...it comes from within me.
Rohaa: Absolutely. But this only works if you know that you can be happy with or without them, that they are not the deciding factor in your happiness level. If someone is your True Love, this idea goes out the window. Because any relationship you'd have after would by necessity be less. Your relationship can be amazing, but if you hold the idea that it's True Love and that you have to stay together always, you'll inevitably start clinging to that person. You'll start feeling like you can’t risk to lose them, either because they want to leave or because you do.
Mutual Slavery or Free Choice
Student 1: Then are you saying "death do us part" doesn't apply.
Rohaa: It's an unhealthy idea.
Student 2: I suppose there are two ways of handling losing your True Love. One you freak out, throw drama, never let the wound heal and be miserable for the rest of your life. Two you grieve, let it heal, and say 'yes, he was my One. And it was fantastic! But he's gone now, and I need to continue my life. And then decide you can still find happiness and choose to have happy memories of the time with your soulmate.
Student 3: You should always have the option to get out of the relationship (and he should, too), not just when one of you dies.
Rohaa: Well said. If there isn't the option, what you have is mutual slavery. It's slavery if you can't leave. Just because you entered into it voluntarily doesn’t make it any better. At the very best, it's a prison.
Now, if every day, out of your own free choice and without any pressure or fear behind it, you still both of you choose to stay together, because you want to - that's a different story. Then it's a free choice you both make each day, knowing you have the freedom to decide differently if you so choose. If you wake up every morning and think "Wow, I love this person, I really want to be with them", and you think that every day, awesome.
If you wake up and think "God, they're so annoying, they treat me terribly, my neighbor is smoking hot and would be much nicer to be with.... but I’m married!"
....
Then you're not choosing to be with your husband, you're staying because you need to. And sure, you can be pissed off at someone or have a bad day and still love them and want to be with them, that's fine. But if you made a vow to someone and they treat you badly, but you can't leave because you promised, because you feel that for whatever reason you can't, then you're a slave.
Abusive Relationships
Love can never come with abuse. If there is abuse, I don’t care what they say, they don’t love you. There's emotional abuse, physical abuse, intentional cruelty, constant unkindness... "But I made a promise! I threw away my key! He's The One!"
Student 1: Roses have thorns-- I still love roses, even when I get stabbed by one and it bleeds.
Rohaa: Ok. Let me repeat. Someone who abuses you does NOT love you. Ever. Period. Being abusive of someone is not an act of love.
Student 2: Is this for...like, family, or just romantic relationships?
Rohaa: Everything.
Student 3: God, my family is messed.
Rohaa: Most families are. And it hurts. But it's true. Tell me, who is the one person you can every truly love? Exactly, yourself. Everything else is just a reflection of that. Most people intensely hate themselves. It's no wonder they're no good at loving someone else, in such a state.
So to recap so far. Either you're not with The One, in which case every single one of your relationships will be "not quite it". Or you are, in which case you cling to them and can't leave them and trap both of you in a prison.
The Only Person You Can Change
Imagine you do something wild and crazy, like, say, join Elfpath. You've all seen some pretty big changes in the way you think, the things you thought you wanted, etc, right? So who you are can change a lot quite suddenly. Who they are can change, too. When you say "we fit perfectly together", you really mean "we fit perfectly together, as we are right now, in this moment". That may change. And if you change, and you still want to stay together with your True Love, then either you are limited in how much you can change before you don't fit perfectly anymore, or they are required to change with you in exactly the same direction as you do. That would ruin their free choice and their ability to grow and change or stay the same as is appropriate for them.
There's a difference between choosing to have a responsibility (say, to a child) and to locking yourself and your partner in prison the rest of your life. Who here has all had parent-issues in some shape? Things you picked up when you were young and that are still in your system today causing you trouble?
All students: I do. Definitely. So much.
Rohaa: Knowing that, what do you think of a phrase like "We're staying together for the children"?
Student 1: I heard my parents saying that. "I haven't split yet because of you kids." Quoting from my mom.
Student 2: I think that’s wrong, because the children will pick up a lot of stressful shit form it they have to overcome, or never overcome.
Student 3: ...often doing the children more harm than good.
Rohaa: Agreed. I’ve heard the same when I was a child. I remember from about age 8 telling them "Please, by all means, divorce! Don’t stay together for me! Get it over with, this sucks!" Kids know something's not right. And if you stay together and it makes you unhappy and angry.... you're not helping your little ones, you're just throwing all that trauma at them. At the very best, you're making them feel guilty for your unhappiness. It's because of them you haven't left. So it's their fault there's always fighting at home and mom and dad are miserable. This is how kids think. And that's a heavy burden to walk around with.
Dating your Dad
Who here have had at least two more or less serious relationships, or a 'Type' you're always very attracted to? Now if you look at those boys with some honesty and some of the understanding of your issues that you’ve learned here ... how much are they like one of your parents? Not in physical things or what they do, but in their energies, their attitudes, the dynamic between you, etc? Yeah, I thought so.
If you are trying to have a relationship while you are still dealing with the mess of your parents, the only people that you will draw in are people like your parents. Because you want them to poke at all those hurt spots, to abuse you in the ways your parents did - so you can find them and heal them. You'll think "Oh, no, they're entirely different, nothing like them, they....oh. Hey wait. Yikes. I married my mom/dad". And your partner will probably see a lot of his mom in you. That's not the kind of True Love you want to be attracting into your life. All the anger that he has for his mom, and that you have for your mom/dad, gets unleashed within your own relationship now. Recipe for disaster. A lot of the really strong relationships, the ones that are really intense and happen quickly, are just this strong recognition of parent energies that we want so much.
If you and a boy suddenly get along *really* well or you feel very strongly about it, the odds are good that it's just a case of "you're like my mom and I’m like your dad". We enact the problem areas so that we can learn to deal with them, work through them. And when we're done, and we removed these traumatic energies from our lives, the partner will probably not be appropriate for you anymore either. People make each other so intensely unhappy because of the concept of The One.
Love is a muscle
There are a few other aspects to True Love than we’ve talked about. This is a big one. Write it down somewhere. It’s not a popular idea, and most people won’t want to believe it.
Love is a muscle. It's like working out. The more you do of it, the better you get at it. If you're only willing to love the right person, you won’t be very good at it when they come along. If they ever do. Love takes practice. And I don’t mean practice as in sitting in your safe living room thinking about it. It takes getting out there, taking a risk, getting involved and truly sharing love with someone else. It's not this big holy thing that everyone has and that happens by itself out of nowhere. It's a muscle. Train it, and you can do awesome things with it. Don’t train it, and it'll be a limpy little thing, and if you ever want to use it, it won’t be very strong.
It's not just a trial and error process, not just "How do you know what you want until you've found out what you don't want?" It's the practice in loving itself that makes you more capable of love.
Student: How do we train it if we tend to attract abusive relationships? Love them anyway?
Rohaa: Get out and find better ones. Someone who abuses you does NOT love you. I believe I've said that once or twice.
Student: So you need to be loved back in order to practice loving?
Rohaa: We agreed that the only person you can ever truly love is yourself, right? And if you choose to stay in a relationship that you know is abusive to you, what does that say about your love for yourself? You probably think you deserve the abuse. I'd go so far as to say you must really hate yourself and despise yourself, to do that to yourself. A disturbing amount of people hate themselves and don't even know it. So if you stay in an abusive relationship, you might end up practicing to love them, but at the same time you're practicing to hate yourself. Not helpful.
Student: That’s true Rohaa, but a lot of us are taught through family/religion/expectations that moving out of a relationship like that is just not appropriate...it's selfish. Even tho WE know that’s not true, it's often a lot of programming from society/family.
Rohaa: And it's a silly programming. One we'd do better to leave behind.
The art of loving
By having a relationship with someone, getting involved, you practice and eventually perfect yourself in the art of loving. You could go out and find 5 different guys to play with tonight even, if you want. That's certainly a way to get into it. It always takes many relationships to learn this. Like it takes many trips to the gym before your muscles even resemble something like healthy and strong.
Student: Not just romantic relationships though right?
Rohaa: Yes, loving other people helps, too.
If you and your partner both have had only one relationship in your lives, chances are you're both not very good at it. It's what our teens and twenties are for. To experiment, to date different people, to look at love from several different angles, and to practice at it. You don’t have to find The One right away, still assuming such a person exists. You do have to exercise, though.
Student: Is the only way to experience it is to live it? Can you learn from watching and getting affected by other peoples relationships?
Rohaa: If you watch other people work out and smell their sweat, do your muscles get any better? If you have 20 close girl friends but never had a romantic relationship in your life, your love and relationship muscles are still going to be pretty fledgling.
You can have a relationship with someone and not intend for it to be "forever". There's nothing wrong with being with someone and knowing it’s just for as long as it’s fun, but you won’t grow old together. A lot of people hold off on being with someone and practicing to love because they somehow feel it should be The One, and that the one they pick for a relationship needs to be this big special lifetime long person.
Student: But what if you want a lifelong person?
Rohaa: Then you better make sure you have enough practise at loving to be able to make it work once you find this person you want to spend a long time with.
It's a bit like saying "I want to be a champion at weight lifting and have awesome muscles the rest of my life. But I don’t want to start with the tiny weights and work my way up there". I know most of you don’t like this idea. That's ok, I told you that you wouldn't. And I’m not asking you to like it. I’m asking you to consider it, play with it, see if you find truth in it.
So to all of you who’ve been holding off trying to find The One or True Love, get out there. If you like someone a lot but you know they're not The One, date them. Practise. Play. Have fun. Exercise that muscle called love.
I love you for today, but maybe not tomorrow
There's this odd idea that love is synonymous to "always staying with them". You can love someone deeply and truly and still be with them for just a few months or years. Perhaps even just a few days.
Student 1: Then you're just in it for feeling good... you're not growing with someone through challenge.
Rohaa: That's like saying "I'm terrified you'll leave me, so you must commit and stay with me forever no matter if you want to or not, and if you dont want to, you're bad and you didnt love me."
Feeling safe is all well and good but if you're not careful, you just make yourself a cage. Love takes exercise. That means it's like work. If you bail the second you hit a rough spot, you won’t be learning all that much. If you stay for sake of duty or society ideas when it’s not what you want, though, you're living as a prisoner or a slave.
Student 1: I love you for today, but maybe not tomorrow? Then what does "I love you" mean?
Rohaa: I love you for today, but maybe not tomorrow? That's often a given. The difference is "I love you for today, and I may not love you tomorrow but I’ll stay with you even tho I don’t love you" vs "I love you for today, and if that should change, I’m honest about it and not living a lie". If someone who doesn’t love you stays with you just to make you feel better, would you be ok with that?
Student 2: You are not always going to be the same person you are right now, and that's not because you're promiscuous, it's because you're human. You will change, you will evolve, so will your partner.
Student 1: I would hope they would communicate with me...and try to find the love again...and if not, then we part way.
Rohaa: Agreed. Can you see how that's different from "I promised you till death do us part but I changed, or you changed, it’s not working anymore but let’s suffer anyway"? There always needs to be the choice of leaving, for both sides. If, given that choice, you both choose to stay, awesome.
Twin flames/soul mates
I'd like to touch up on something one of you mentioned earlier, the idea of twin flames and the like. In effect, "twin flames" or "soul mates" work the same way as The One does, just on a meta-level and between lives instead of just in this one. If there's only one, then you’ve a right to them, you own them and they own you. Anything you do without them is less than perfect, and if you find them, you need to keep them. It doesn’t work that way in relationships, and it certainly doesn’t work that way between souls.
We don’t come into this life half a person, with a soul mate to make us whole. We come in perfect and whole already. We don’t need someone else to make us happy or to make us complete. And like with practising love as a muscle, our spirits want to practise, too. When you die and go on to whatever's next, there won’t be a one person who's your other half, there.
Family
However. Like a game you want to play, we often come into this life with a group of friends. A bit like going to play WoW or D&D with a bunch of friends, to hang out and have a great time together. And like in WoW, you can play with your friends, and you often will, but you can also play with any of the other people in the game, get to know them, and have a great time. We often spend many lifetimes with the same group of friends. And when we meet one of them again, they'll feel very familiar. Like we know them instantly. Often a sense of "family" about it. Anyone familiar with this?
Student: How is this different from attracting the "bad" people?
Rohaa: It's very different. It's the "wow, I feel like I’ve known you for years and it’s been 2 minutes". Or the feeling that there's just so intensely familiar about them, that you belong, that you're home. And the other will almost always feel exactly the same, assuming they're not completely asleep and blindfolded still but actually paying attention. I had this with Angel since the moment someone mentioned "I have a housemate who - ". Not even a name.
Student: Call me silly but the one time I had 'hey hello!' was with a fictional character. I just felt a desire to meet with them.
Rohaa: Possible that the person who wrote it had energies that are familiar to you, or the character reminds you of someone.
Because we're human, and so engrained with society ideas, when we find such a person something inside us will insist that it's a sexual attraction. Now getting into a sexual relationship with "family" like that isn’t always a good idea. Sometimes, you'll be downright terrible for each other as lovers, and all the mess that comes with a relationship can totally mess up any closeness you would have otherwise enjoyed. And sometimes, you do decide to be partners for some time in this life.
When you meet someone from this soul group, you'll be very inclined to say "oh this is THE ONE!". There isn't a one. There's a group. So say you meet one person from your soul group, you both fall in love, think you're The One....and in 3 years you meet someone else from the same group. Then what?
Say one of you falls in love with this new person, because it's that same strong sense of "family" and "home" as you had with each other. Now because of your idea of The One, you end up either messing up your relationship with your first partner, or ignoring someone who's family to you just to preserve that first relationship.
What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be sexual between people in a soul group. But it'll feel like that a lot. Something in us tends to go from "Oh you're family!" to "and I want to sleep with you!" In an instant. It helps to recognise that the sexual part is some society ingrained thing, a way of wanting to stake ownership over this person we feel so strongly about. That's not to say you can’t have sex. By all means do. Lots of it. Have fun :) But don’t do it from the idea that this or that person is The One. You'd be setting yourself and them up for a lot of mess.
Student: Where does all this come from?
Rohaa: It gets obvious once you can look past your own fears and society brainwashing. As always, go with what you can handle, ignore the rest for now.
Getting a healthy, happy relationship
Just because someone feels like family or could potentially make a great match for you doesn't mean anything. If you're an emotional mess, and they are, and neither of you have developed your muscle to love, you're not going anywhere. The best you can do to get a healthy, happy relationship is to clear out your own muck so you're not acting from fear, pick someone who isn't caught in muck, either, and get some practise in. If it lasts 2 months, great. If it lasts 20 years, also great. You're sharing a part of your life with someone, not building a prison.
A good way to test if you've build a prison is this. If you’ve a partner, ask yourself right now: "If I were to give them a choice right now, with no restrictions or drama or guilt tripping or duty, whether they truly wanted to stay with me or not... does that scare the hell out of me?"
If you find yourself going "Yeah but they HAVE to stay with me, it's what you do if you love, they promised!!" then you’ve likely built a prison. Same if your response is "I wouldn’t even think about leaving them". You should think about it. And if then you still decide to stay, it'll mean something real.
Student 1: What if your partner loves you but refuses to acknowledge the changes in you....what then? Ok...not refuses...but can't accept the changes in you.
Rohaa: If you’ve really changed, then does he love the old you that he’s used to, or you as you are now?
Student 2: This is really shaking me up.
Rohaa: You're not the only one, [x] is fuming, [y] is all but storming off, [z]'s bordering between panic and a tantrum. You want to really smash something. Preferably me for trampling on your holy cows.
Student 2: You've caught me.
Rohaa: Just read back on it. Check carefully what I did and didn't say. I said get experience, exercise that muscle, and don’t build cages for other people or yourself.
That's all for now :)
