An Antidote To Cure Toxic Relationships
A love formula to guide you away from neediness and towards true love.
My trade by day is as a web developer. I work for a company that develops cloud based business and accounting software, so I work with formulas and equations all the time in my code to figure out VAT, currency differences, etc. This is something logical and natural for my brain to process.
Love, on the other hand, has been something of a mystery for me. I’m a recovered codependent and I realise that everything that I thought I had known about love was completely wrong. I had a very warped view of love that had been formed when I was very young. What I had mistakenly thought of as love was actually a form of need — a need for me to fill the emptiness inside of me.
This is not just within the realm of codependency, though, as I believe the majority of people confuse love and need. We have turned something so simple into something so complicated. We conjure up in our minds a dream of what love should be, but the reality never meets up to this.
I have done a lot of reading on the topic of love and I have observed couples whose relationships I greatly admire. I’ve also come to an understanding of the mistakes that I have made in past relationships. Using all of this knowledge, along with my skill at creating formulas, I have come up with an equation that I can use as a guideline on my path to someday have a healthy and loving relationship. It took me several months, but here is the formula I’ve come up with:
Healthy Relationship = ((Love/Self) + (Sharing — Expectations) +
(Devotion + Non-attachment)) x (Experiencing + Self Discovery)
Love Divided By Self
This first part of the equation is the most important part and is the foundation for all the other parts of the formula. This is where I am currently at on my path towards true love. This is the love that you give to yourself. So, with the love that exists within you, you must first take a large portion of that for yourself. You must give to yourself what you wish a partner would give to you.
Think of it like the emergency instructions you receive before every airline flight. You are instructed to put the oxygen mask upon yourself first and then on your child. You can’t take care of your child, if you have no air! It’s very logical, no?
Like that old song goes, love is like oxygen. You must give love to yourself first before you can give it to anyone else. Without nourishing yourself first, you cannot nourish anyone else, as you will eventually run out. The more love and attention you give to yourself, the more the love will grow inside of you and, therefore, the more love you can give to others.
Loving yourself creates an abundance of love within you until you are overflowing. When you are to this point, then the next part of the equation just comes so naturally….
Sharing Minus Expectations
Now that you have created this abundance of love within you by putting the focus upon yourself and giving to yourself the love and attention that you so rightly deserve, you can now share this with a partner. Loving yourself was the training ground you needed in order to be able to love another.
Sharing should be something that is joyful and as natural as breathing. It should happen without a second thought and without expecting anything in return. If you find yourself feeling resentful or start playing the role of the martyr, then you are not sharing from the heart.
Expectations come from the ego, sharing comes from the heart.
So, the key here is self-awareness. Is what you are sharing a love that comes from the heart or is it coming from your ego with strings attached? Are you reliant upon your partner’s response or approval? Then it’s time to take a step back, settle into your heart, and examine your motivations. The thing with expectations is that it is like throwing dirt upon the fire of true love. It snuffs it out.
Your partner is not there to validate you, they are there for you to share with and experience.
Devotion Plus Non-Attachment
As I developed this formula, I wasn’t happy with adding loyalty to it, although I did want that to be a part of it. Loyalty had certain elements that I would require, but I felt it didn’t completely encompass all the elements that I would wish to have. Devotion, on the other hand, contains not only the element of loyalty, but also other qualities such as sincerity, passion, and faith.
Loyalty can be forced through fear, while devotion can only come from the heart. There is an innocence to devotion, a purity, an honesty. Devotion to your beloved shows that you have faith in them and the love that they share with you. You honour the sacredness of this love within yourself. When you are able to be devoted to a partner, there is no jealousy or possessiveness. You have faith in them as you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. With devotion you can be apart and even live completely separate lives, yet know that their love for you does not waiver just as with your love for them. There can be a feeling of relaxation and comfort within this devotion.
Devotion allows there to be freedom within the relationship.
A key element to devotion that can be a healing experience for many who have experienced bad relationships is that there is no need to control or manipulate. With devotion you simply have faith in the relationship as it is. You accept the partner as they are, with all their flaws and baggage. You understand that these elements of your partner may test your devotion, but these elements are also there as a reflection to learn more about yourself. This will be explained further in the last part of the formula.
Devotion cannot happen when you are attached. In order to experience the purity of a devoted love, you need to develop the art of non-attachment. Non-attachment is not the same as detachment. As attachment is in the realm of the codependent, detachment is the affliction of the love avoidant. The key is to separate yourself from the relationship and not to use it as your identity. The relationship is a part of your life, but it does not define you.
This article from Zen Thinking beautifully illustrates the benefits of a non-attached relationship. From the article (emphasis is mine):
“A non-attached relationship is healthy, strong and filled with effortless love, kindness and compassion. In other words, it is totally selfless because your sense of ‘self’ is no longer inserted into every situation. You are no longer self-centered or selfish, and you become single-pointed in your awareness of the other person. Love and intimacy isn’t diminished in the least, in fact, it becomes even more intensely focussed — but you no longer self-identity with it, as it, or through it.
Non-attached love is pure and present.”
Now take all of the previous elements of the formula, add them all up, and then multiply it by these last two elements….
Experiencing + Self Discovery
A good friend of mine, probably the closest person I could ever say has been a guru to me, helped me to figure out the final piece to my love formula. When I told him of my relationship problems, he said to me that some relationships are like going to university. Once you graduate, you don’t stay in the building, you move on, of course. Other types of relationships are ones of discovery.
The relationship becomes a journey of discovery where you discover things about yourself, about your partner, and about life, but without all the drama and negative emotions that comes with the “university relationships”. Universities are all about expectations, where you are expected to perform and then you are graded and judged for that performance. The discovery relationship is one where you are open to new adventures every day with unique landscapes to explore. There is nothing expected of you. The discovery relationship is also one that you don’t graduate from, it just keeps going for as long as you want it to. Which brought me to the final element in my love formula: Experiencing.
Experience every moment of your partner as it comes. Experience their mind, their bodies, and their souls just as you would experience a beautiful painting or piece of music, where the flaws are an integral part of the whole that causes them to be that incredibly gorgeous and unique entity that they are. You take the time to experience their very essence.
When you are experiencing you are passive and open and there is no room for projections. When you project upon your partner, then you are not seeing them as they truly are, but how you wish them to be. Projections are manifestations of the ego and how the ego wishes to be reflected back to you. You have created a dream, an illusion with no basis in reality. With experiencing, this is the opportunity to know your partner in all of their raw beauty.
When these last two elements are combined and then multiplied against the sum of all the other parts, this then creates an environment of trust and compassion that can lift both partners to new heights within themselves.
Relationships are all about reflections. What you put into it and what you are projecting outward will be reflected back to you. By following a formula based upon the well being of yourself and your partner, you will get reflected back to you that which is the ultimate goal of any relationship — love.
