The Worst Common Relationship Advice
who comes first?
The idea that I need to put a loved one’s needs and wants ahead of my own is a relic of the need/scarcity emotional economy.
Oh, it sounds like excellent advice, but it collapses with even gentle questioning: why is it one or the other? Why can't we both have what we want?
Because of scarcity.
Scarcity teaches us to value not only what someone offers us, but also what they're willing to sacrifice in order to be with us or serve us. Releasing our admiration and craving for their sacrifice is one of the requirements to enter a state of devotional love.
Devotion is based in the abundance where we have faith that we can all have all we want and need, and we are in a collaborative, cooperative dance with the world to create the conditions for that. Sacrifice rarely enters this picture, because it is an assumption which we make true by believing it, far more often than it is actually true.
Then, there's the fact that relationships which are created under the assumption of necessary sacrifice are built to a much lower standard of compatibility because of this fact. If we are 70% compatible and 20% willing to sacrifice, we are at 90% compatibility! That's good enough for a marriage.
Until it isn't.
These types of compromises seem like they are bumping our compatibility up, but they are actually thieving our joy and resonance and introducing opportunities for conflict. In the long run, this makes our compatibility harder to feel.
How come my loved one is only willing to sacrifice at 20%? It's clearly not enough, but they ARE willing to sacrifice, so what's going on here? Why won't they go all the way? Also, look how much I'm compromising and sacrificing! How can that not be enough for them? They should give a little more.
The sacrifice model requires us to determine whose needs matter more, bringing in a power structure and hierarchy.
This power structure may be stagnant or dynamic. Perhaps he's always sacrificing for her. Perhaps the one who is more of a people pleaser compromises more. Perhaps the one in less pain must sacrifice for the one in more pain. Perhaps we trade, I gave up what I wanted yesterday, so you sacrifice today.
No wonder we feel confused about serving our partner and relationship! We have inequality, orientation to pain, and bizarre, arbitrary rules about when we can and cannot have our own will and way tied up with love and commitment. Then we go and measure success by whether we are having good or bad emotions.
The subjectivity of this system leaves it vulnerable to being "called" in any given moment. How can I truly measure whether someone is putting my needs ahead of their own? It's just a choice I make about how to see them and what they offer me. In any given moment I have the ability to declare that it isn't enough and hasn't been for a long time. This is the bewildering ending to many long term partnerships.
The alternative has just as much liklihood of ending the marriage that you're in. Or perhaps your knowledge that there MUST be an alternative has already ended or functionally ended the relationship where you upheld this dynamic.
In any case, devotional love is available only in the realm of abundance, in the connections where we are all willing to feel it all, in the relationships where we are only willing to bring one another respect and reverence.
Devotional love is a tone in which we may experience and express any emotion, giving boundaries to our relational activities which honor the soul of our connection.