Why do most people enter into relationships?

If you are a person who wants to be in a relationship, have you thought about why? Actually, there are two very different reasons for wanting a relationship. The first is about what you want to get, and the second is about what you want to learn and share.

We enter into relationships for the same reason we do everything else in our lives: because we are motivated by our needs. We seek out others in order to fulfill our unfulfilled needs. Alone we feel empty and isolated. We hope to complete ourselves through our relationships

When two people come together because they want to learn together, grow together, heal together, share their time and companionship, and share their love and passion, they have a good chance of creating a lasting, loving relationship.

By

Margaret Paul, PhD

If you ask people why they want a relationship, many will say things like:

I want someone to love me and make me feel special and worthy.

I don’t want to be alone and lonely anymore.

I want to have children.

I want to feel safe and secure.

What they might not say outright is that they want a relationship to:

Fill the empty place within them.

Complete them. They hope that their partner will give them what they are not giving to themselves and what they might not have received as children.

Make them feel taken care of emotionally, financially and/or sexually.

You might be thinking, “Right! Aren’t these the reasons everyone wants a relationship? Why be in a relationship if not to be loved, cherished, made to feel special, safe and secure? What’s the point of a relationship if not to fill me, take away my loneliness and make me feel okay about myself?”

The other reason for being in a relationship stems from the fact that relationships are the most fertile ground for learning about what is unhealed in us, and for having an arena to heal. Most of us have baggage from childhood that we carry into our primary relationship — such as fears of rejection and fears of engulfment. These fears generally get played out with a partner, which offers us an incredible opportunity to learn about and heal them. Relationship can be the Ph.D. of personal growth!

Learning about your fears of intimacy, as well as about control issues that may surface with a primary partner, can lead to much personal growth — enhancing your ability to love. The more you learn to take responsibility for your own feelings — learning to love yourself, cherish yourself, make yourself feel special and valued — the more you may want a relationship in order to share your love rather than to get love. Contrary to what many believe, it’s not the getting of love that takes away loneliness, but the sharing of love.

The most profound and beautiful experience in life is the sharing of love. But we can’t share our love unless we are filled with love. When we learn to fill ourselves with love from our “Source” — whatever that is for each person, such as nature, spirit, God, the energy of the universe — then we come to our partner with inner fullness rather than with inner emptiness. Rather than needing a partner to complete us, we desire to share our completeness with our partner.

When two people come together because they want to learn together, grow together, heal together, share their time and companionship, and share their love and passion, they have a good chance of creating a lasting, loving relationship.