The Myth of Happily Ever After
Angus and I are developing a free Rewilding Love challenge that will launch next year. As I reflect on what it is that allows love to be rekindled and to flourish in a relationship, I see more and more it is not about the other person. For me, it has been through having a deeper awakening to my impersonal loving nature that has allowed my marriage to thrive. This is something we can lose sight of as we become more and more focused on the personal nature of the relationship and our partner.
The myth of happily ever after links love and happiness. As a result, if the experience of happiness goes down it is assumed that the love in the relationship has diminished.
However, happiness is an experience that comes and goes. Love is who we are.
They are not equivalent and the misunderstanding of equating the two leads to suffering.
If I think that my love for my partner is measured by my happiness, it will look like the love in the relationship is all over the place. Sometimes I love him. Sometimes I don’t. And if this were true, it would be natural to think that in order to be happy, you need to fix your relationship. Because if love and happiness go hand in hand, you need to get the love right so the happiness can follow.
This misunderstanding led me to spend a lot of my time and attention looking at what was wrong in my relationship with my husband Angus and trying to figure out how it could be improved. This then evolved into the idea that if he were just a little bit different, I would be happier and then our love could flourish. What a win-win!
I didn’t think I was being unreasonable. I just thought it would be better if he were a bit kinder and less irritable. If he had just a little more patience. If he was a tad less reactive. So after identifying these opportunities for improvement, I had a project. What can “we” do to make these changes happen?
Unfortunately, my requests for what I thought were very logical and reasonable changes were met with resistance and sometimes anger. He felt judged and criticized by me rather than seeing how good my ideas were. It felt like my hopes for more happiness were dashed by his resistance.
During this time, all of the qualities I wanted Angus to change seemed to become magnified. After paying attention to them they looked more and more like problems. And as my suggestions were experienced as criticism by him, he would offer me his own critique. Could I be less stern? Could I help more around the house? Could I be less judgmental and critical? Could I be more fun and easy-going? Could I have more of a sense of humor?
Our mutual criticisms ate away at rapport in our relationship. Rather than improving, our relationship was now on a downward spiral. I didn’t want to have sex anymore. I felt hurt a lot of the time. Angus felt unappreciated and wanted sex more often. It was not a fun time.
And all of this simply because I thought love meant happiness and wanted to achieve the happily ever after.
Fortunately, I fell into a deeper experience of feeling okay as I understood not to take my thinking or my feelings so personally. When I saw that my uncomfortable experiences like insecurity don’t actually mean anything, I found myself much more comfortable in my own skin. It was ironically through surrendering to my human experience rather than trying to change it or control it that I felt significantly better. My mind got quieter, and in that quiet, I experienced more of my beingness and realized that my okayness has nothing to do with the ups and downs of my psychological experience. As I realized I am not my thoughts and feelings, I fell into a deeper experience of knowing I am okay, and this space was loving.
From there, my relationship with Angus shifted. I was no longer looking for him to be different or for the relationship to be better so I could be happier. I no longer saw Angus as the source of my suffering. Instead, I realized that suffering is a reflection of how much I am identifying with my thinking as me, and it is a normal part of the human experience to do that. It is not something I need to try to change or fix. It is nothing I need to worry about. It will come and go.
The more I look to circumstances, people, thoughts, and feelings to be a certain way for me to be happy the more I suffer. The more I try to stop suffering the more I suffer. The more I seek to feel differently than I do in any moment the more I suffer.
Suffering is not my enemy and resisting suffering only creates more suffering.
And impersonal love, who we are, is completely separate from suffering. It is not impacted by it. It is not damaged by it. It does not change. It does not come and go the way suffering and happiness do.
Happily ever after does not exist. Happiness is always going to come and go, but love is in a category of its own. The two are not connected.
When I realized I could stop chasing happiness the more connected I felt with the unconditional love inside me. The freer I felt. The more at ease I was. As a result, I showed up in my marriage differently. I was nicer, kinder, less reactive and less judgmental. And there was a beautiful ripple effect. When I showed up in the relationship this way it drew out the best in Angus.
Who knew that the quality of a relationship has nothing to do with the other person. How I showed up in the relationship had nothing to do with Angus. That was on me. And I was doing the best I could. I still am.
I was not meaning to be selfish before. I just didn’t understand that love is a state of being that is innate. And when I am not experiencing a connection with it, I don’t need to fix my thoughts, feelings or circumstances to get more of it because it is who I am. And I can’t escape it or lose it. I may forget, but I can always remember who I am.
I still forget that love is my natural state. I forget that it cannot be taken away from me. I look for it outside of myself, but I remember more quickly now, and I am less likely to make demands on Angus or my kids to be a certain way so I can be happy.
The difference now is that I don’t mistake love for a feeling like happiness. I understand that feelings will come and go, but love remains.
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, a regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. You can get her free eBook Relationships here. Rohini has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. She is also the founder of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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Cathy
28.10.2019 at 10:53Wonderful Post! You had me from the start.
“However, happiness is an experience that comes and goes. Love is who we are.
They are not equivalent and the misunderstanding of equating the two leads to suffering.
That statement had me looking in the direction of how often I confuse Love and Happiness and set my course to control one (happiness) in order to have the other ( Love) and still the Love is always there. Thank you.
Hilda Rhodes
28.10.2019 at 19:59Hi Rohini What a beautiful piece of writing……and that simple message that “love and happiness” are not connected, really touched me. That is a new insight for me. I knew that they were two different feelings and am very aware when I get in touch with who I am…it is such an amazing “state” and I know that it is always there….and often lose sight of that :-). Thank you Hilda x
Rohini
28.10.2019 at 20:33Hi Hilda, Thanks so much for writing. I love it when something so simple touches us deeply. Thanks for sharing your insight. Sending love, Rohini
Howard
29.10.2019 at 10:01Hi Rohini,
I think you really nailed your message here with this post. Very important for anybody in a relationship to understand this. I love your writing as you make it so simple and clear. Great Job. H!