In all cultures and throughout history it seems that everyone has to find a partner. The rightness of this is such an assumption that we think it’s abnormal not to have one.
Well, let’s look at it. On the upside, there is nothing more marvellous than having a dear friend: in this suffering world of ours, to find one person who becomes our best friend who’s also our life partner is almost a miracle: to help each other, to share successes and failures, to give and take encouragement, to support, to love, to have compassion for. And that’s the dream.
On the downside we can see all too clearly that so many relationships fail terribly. Of course, we can’t bear to think about this because it disturbs the dream. Or we think it’ll never happen to us.
So what’s the learning here? From the Buddhist perspective, the first thing we need to do if we want a good relationship – and initially this is so counter-intuitive – is put ourselves together, develop our own qualities, in other words, make ourselves a worthy partner for someone else.
We would never launch ourselves in a career without learning how to do it well, but we launch ourselves into the minefield of love relationships, parenthood, etc., without a second thought. It’s beyond naïve.
If we think it through, it’s obvious. How could someone who has low self-esteem, is needy, confused, jealous, angry, depressed, lonely – and join the club here! – have a healthy relationship?
The trouble in our culture, still, is that there is so little attention paid to healthy introspection, to inner development, or, as one of my teachers puts it, to being our own therapist. It just doesn’t occur to us. In fact, most of the time we don’t even realize that what goes on in our own head plays any role in our life at all. We’re all so addicted to believing that happiness is out there in someone else, waiting to be discovered.
The irony is that the other person is thinking the same thing. A recipe for disaster!
We joke about finding our other half, but we actually believe it’s true. And perhaps it’s even worse than that: we feel we’re nobody until we find someone to make us whole.
And what happens when the relationship fails? We go rushing off into another one. If we’re brave enough, we’d learn the lesson: “I didn’t do that one so well. What do I need to learn?” How wise!
When we get into the job of being our own therapist, one of the first results is to delight in our own company. We want the space to work things out, think things through; it’s a relief not to be pressured by the presence of other people in our lives twenty-four hours a day.
And this is the opposite of loneliness. We’re lonely because we have no one to listen to our thoughts. And why do we need that? Only because we don’t value ourselves.
There is no shortcut to fulfilment, happiness. We all have so much potential, so much inside us to uncover and grow. And from this comes everything we want, because we realize we are in charge, we can make it happen.
Someone who’s convinced that another person will make them happy will never find happiness, only more dissatisfaction, more loneliness.
It’s up to us to become our own best person. Then, guaranteed our relationships will work.