When in love, we all want to find Mr. Right or Miss Right. However, if we insist that happiness lies in finding the right person, then we may never find our answer for the rest of our lives. On the contrary, if we understand that happiness is about inner harmony, and that the outer world is an expression of our own inner being, then we may find that the answer is right next to you, the partner you’ve been with.
One day, in one of my classes, a male participant came up to me excitedly and said he had made a very important discovery.
What was the discovery? I asked him.
He replied that he and his girlfriend (who was also in my class) had just finished the assignment I had given them – to use 10 adjectives to describe their personality and to find the antonyms, which are the opposites of their personalities. It turns out that he is the antithesis of his girlfriend’s personality, and his girlfriend is the antithesis of his personality.
That was a really good discovery, and I said to him, so do you have any further insights from this discovery?
He said yes, that the moment he realized that his and his girlfriend’s personalities were opposites, he finally understood that the base of their love for each other was also the base of their conflict, that is, the reason they loved each other and the reason they were in conflict was the same thing.
Specifically, he wanted to find a partner who was different from himself, which was his life’s desire, and he got what he wanted. At first, he cherished the fact that his girlfriend was different from himself, but as time went on, he began to get tired of her inconsistency with himself and wanted her to change, resulting in conflict. Likewise, his girlfriend had a similar psychological shift, and the conflict became more and more intense.
After all this, he felt a bit puzzled: why did he and his girlfriend fall in love because they were different?
He wasn’t asking me a question, he was deep in thought, but I couldn’t help but answer: because every life longs for completeness.
Why are there so many annoying “bad people” around?
We all have a system of self in which we believe that certain qualities are good, the “good me,” and certain qualities are bad, the “bad me. In this system, we believe that certain qualities are good, i.e. “good self”, and certain qualities are bad, i.e. “bad self”. We cling to the good self and reject the bad self, not wanting it to manifest in ourselves.
For example, a frugal person thinks that frugality is good and luxury is bad; an understanding person thinks that thinking about others is good and thinking only about one’s own desires is bad; a cheerful person thinks that optimism is good and sadness is bad ……
But, from a truly neutral perspective, these qualities don’t matter if they are good or bad. Luxury seems bad, but it is the desire for luxury that creates this kaleidoscopic world; thinking only of oneself seems bad, but one is only as strong as one’s respect for one’s own desires; sadness seems bad, but sadness is not only somewhat poetic, but sadness is the inevitable response when we lose something ……
p style=”text-indent:2em;text-align:left;”>And, any one person’s ego is very limiting; to put it bluntly, each person develops an ego system within their own family of origin. In this family, if one is frugal to get more love and attention, then one develops frugality; if being understanding makes one more popular, then one develops an understanding personality; if being sad makes one more compassionate, then one easily develops a sad personality ……
This is the clinging and persistence to the good self. At the same time, we will reject the bad self. The frugal person will naturally be somewhat resistant to luxury.
But this must only be a superficial phenomenon; I’ve learned countless stories and found that we cling to the good self to the exclusion of the bad self because of fear in the first place. In fact, there is still a desire for the bad self in us, but we are afraid to develop these qualities because we will believe that we can only get love and attention from others if we hold on to the good self, and that we will be alienated, punished, or even abandoned if we present ourselves with the qualities of the bad self dimension.
The above passage can be summarized in three sentences:
1 The qualities we hold on to – that is, the good me – are all about making ourselves better for others;
2 We have a desire for the bad me;
3 The quality that keeps us from developing the bad me is the fear that others will not accept us.
Every life is limited, for example, every family is different, and each of us has developed a unique system of self within our own family. Consciously, we think we have this set of things that are particularly good and must be adhered to, but subconsciously, we long for freedom and completion, we long to be able to absorb those qualities that are different.
For many people, they have this longing not only subconsciously, but consciously as well. This is demonstrated by the fact that they appreciate people who are different from themselves and are happy to interact with people who are different from them.
But many people are so attached to their own set of ego systems that they consciously reject people who are different from them, yet their subconscious must drive them to approach people who are different from them. As a result, such a person often has a dilemma that arises in interpersonal relationships where they hate a certain kind of person very much, but that kind of person just keeps showing up around them.
In fact, the constant presence of such people around him is a subconscious desire, a deeper need, because such people are his new homework and they will teach him to learn to accept more.
Usually, he will not understand what is going on, and he will go to battle with such people and try to get them away from him. He can do this and temporarily overcome these people who are different from himself. But fundamentally this is useless, and such people are bound to keep popping up.
It is a homework, so to speak, and he will only pass this homework if he learns to accept these people who are different from himself and to learn their qualities to some extent. Otherwise, this homework will go on and on.
Does the lover have a problem, or does he have a problem with himself?
My friend M is an exceptionally giving person, but he had a bad first love. His first girlfriend, F, was talented but eccentric and extremely selfish, but M just had a crush on her. He recalls seeing her somewhat withdrawn and somewhat proud demeanor, and was moved to conquer her, and secretly vowed to do so.
His conquest went well, because F had feelings for him, too. In the early stages of the relationship, they were both very committed, but as the relationship progressed, M’s internal dissatisfaction grew stronger. He found that his girlfriend enjoyed his giving very much, but she never gave of herself, and she demanded more and more, as if whatever he gave for her was deserved.
A year into the relationship, M felt physically and emotionally exhausted, and her anger at F had become unstoppable, so she broke up with him.
When they broke up, M also swore that he would never fall in love with someone like F again, and that he was determined to find someone who was as willing to give as much as he was.
Fate was generous to him, and sure enough, he next found a girlfriend, L, who was more understanding and willing to give than he was.
L’s parents were unhappy with M and didn’t think he was good enough for their daughter, and it took an uphill battle for M and L to finally get together.
But after they got married, M found out that it was an even worse nightmare because L’s family was seemingly beautiful but actually had a lot of debts and unknown difficulties, and to pay those debts and resolve those difficulties, he had to work 10 times harder than his first love, and it didn’t There is no guarantee of any result. It was especially painful for him to discover that his wife L’s siblings had multiple people like F who only took and didn’t give, and no matter what he did to them, they felt at peace with it and didn’t feel any guilt.
He also found that his father-in-law was an even greater giver. If M’s level of giving is a 10, his father-in-law’s level of giving can be a 20. This was devastating for M. He also came to understand that the reason his wife’s siblings had become “evil” and “useless” people who only wanted something was because of his father-in-law’s extreme giving.
When I talked to M, I asked him what he had learned from these experiences. At first, he replied that the lesson he had learned was that he should divorce his wife, that it was better to live alone for a while before considering starting a family again, and that he must not look for someone like his wife again.
I asked him again, “What kind of person should you look for when your wife is the giver and you are breaking up, and your first girlfriend is the taker and you have broken up? If the taker is not your right lady, and the giver is not, then what kind of person should your right lady be?
It seems like the answer should be a woman who is a balance of takers and givers. But again, M seems to feel little sense for such a woman, and also feels that she is not attracted to such a balanced, flexible and relatively healthy woman.
I went on to ask him, “If every karmic encounter is a homework assignment, what did you learn from these two assignments?
M said he had learned his lesson, the lesson of his first love, don’t look for a taker, and the lesson of this marriage, don’t look for an extreme giver ……
I cautioned that this sounds like the answer is pinned on someone else, and oh, so your happiness in life depends on what kind of wife you find, and if you find one, you’re OK, if you don’t find the right one, you’re miserable, and the blame for the misery is not on you but on the other person.
That’s when he came to his senses and said, I have to change myself and not continue to be either a pure giver or a pure taker, I have to learn to balance. Or, I can be both a giver and a taker, I can choose.
Fail to learn from each other and fall in love
We choose who to be with, it must have this meaning – I want to be like him, or more accurately, I want to have certain qualities in him.
Specifically in M’s story, he chose to be in a relationship with F in the beginning because he, who was super giving, wanted to have that same quality in F – to think for himself.
Despite having learned to win love and attention by being super giving in his family of origin, there was still a longing in M’s heart to be able to just think about himself sometimes. But he can’t do that, because then he would be rejected in his family of origin, so he pushes this desire down. But the desire doesn’t go away; it just gets hidden deep in the subconscious.
When M fell in love with F at first sight, he was attracted to the way F was well behaved and proud, and being well behaved and proud really means, I don’t have to care about you.
Many people’s good manners hide this meaning – “I think so much about you, can you think about me. ” So people who are understanding often do things with hesitation.
F being attracted to M has the same implication.
F appears to be an extremely selfish person, but the reason she developed this quality was also out of love for her parents. It can be presumed that one of F’s parents is super giving, whose sense of value is based on giving for others, and F became a person who only takes but does not give in order to satisfy the needs of such a parent, because for her, her parents will be close to her when she takes, and they will be overwhelmed when she gives instead. So it is in this way that she expresses her desire for love and closeness to her super-giving parents.
F is just as tied up in her own ego system, and deep down she subconsciously longs for her own understanding side. So, she too is attracted to M.
Of course, F is also attracted to M because M is able to meet her need to ask for something, and if she meets someone who is like her, she has no possibility of asking for anything at all, and it is just as hopeless to meet someone who has a balance of asking and giving.
But in the end, F and M broke up, and the breakup was a way of saying that super-giving M can’t always play the giving role, and super-taking F can’t always play the taking role. They should learn from each other.
If M learns some of the qualities of F to properly ask, and F learns the qualities of M to properly give, that means that they passed the homework.
Usually, though, very few people pass this homework, and most people are more obsessive about their logic afterwards. I’ve been thinking about him a lot.
I can’t tell you how many stories like M’s and F’s I’ve heard, which led me to conclude a pattern: Because of some kind of childhood pain, we have a longing that we follow as we grow up, and that longing is always fulfilled, even over-satisfied, but In the end, we find that this longing is often followed by terrible pain when it is over-satisfied.
M’s longing was to play a super-giver, and he was proud of it, but F told him that actually being a super-giver was a very scary encounter.
Lovers who are different from yourself are learning objects
One of my
One of my classmates, who feels he has no desires and wants very little from the world, has a mantra of “it doesn’t matter.
Inevitably, he got into a relationship with a girl who had a lot of demands, who had a lot of obsessive demands, who never said “it doesn’t matter,” but always came up with a whole bunch of reasons why her demands were “no big deal. She never says “it doesn’t matter” but always comes up with a long list of reasons why her demands are reasonable, and she feels miserable if her demands are not met.
Naturally, the result of the two of them being together is that everything is based on what this girl wants, whether it’s dinner, going out, decorating the home, making friends, etc.
After two years of being together like this, they clashed over a not-so-small matter; he wanted this and she wanted that. At first, the conflict was very small, and both said they could discuss. But when it really came time to make a choice, both were adamant about what they wanted.
After a few rounds of this, one night they clashed again over the matter, and my classmate, who had inadvertently reviewed their relationship over two years, found a sadness and a strong reluctance in his heart, as he realized that in almost every part of their He found that in almost every part of their lives, it was the girl’s demands that were dominating and his demands were being ignored.
He didn’t resent his girlfriend; after all, he was the one who always said He was the one who always said “it doesn’t matter”. But now he understands that he can’t really be indifferent. Internally, every time his request was ignored, he had a little bit of resentment, and after two years of many requests being ignored, a lot of resentment was saved up. Now, he is so insistent on this matter because he no longer wants to be “indifferent”.
He and his girlfriend had several deep conversations about this topic, and it was painful, but in the end they both realized that it was a lesson for them, in which he learned that he needed to learn from her to respect her own important requests, and she learned that it was appropriate to say “It doesn’t matter.”
I think that’s where the male participant in my class and his girlfriend fell in love and conflicted with each other. We all inwardly desire completeness, so it is easy to choose someone different from ourselves, and this is especially common in relationships. But at the same time, we are consciously obsessed with our own logic, while rejecting other logics, so it is easy to clash with different people. What we need to do at this point is to let go of our attachment to our own ego system and instead learn from the other person.