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AWAKENING TO RELATIONSHIPS: INTEGRITY, Part 3

Posted on April 3, 2013 | 2 comments

“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.” Barbara De Angelis

Do you have integrity? In all situations or just some? On what beliefs do you base your integrity? Do you act with integrity when you know it will create difficulties?

Integrity is the third element in what I call the essentials for a good relationship of any kind. The elements I’ve already written about are empathy and intimacy, and I’ll conclude the series next week with the topic of commitment.

Integrity Strengthens Trust and Love

Integrity is usually defined as being true to your moral or ethical principles, so it has meaning only when it is coupled with a belief system. In a relationship, acting with integrity can create trust and strengthen love because you learn you can depend on the other person to act in accordance with their values. This, of course, assumes that you are in a relationship with someone whose values are compatible with yours.

Integrity Begins With Being True To Your Self

I like Barbara De Angelis’ quote because it covers several important aspects of integrity, mainly the idea that we must be true to ourselves if we are to be true to others. That’s where it starts—being true to yourself. Only then can you be true to others. When we always try to please others to the extent that we go against our own values or harm ourselves, we are out of integrity.

What Is Integrity In A Relationship

Years ago, I was in a relationship with a man whom I deeply loved. We were both creative people and that bound us in a spiritual way that was very powerful. But over and over, to be with him, I made choices that were not good for me financially. One time, I cashed out a life insurance policy so I had the money to spend an extended amount of time with him to see if we could live together. At the time, I was unemployed, but a month before I was to leave to see him, I was offered a good job and I turned it down. I put the relationship first.

Our relationship had always been off and on because he was afraid of commitment although he clearly loved me, and when things were good between us, they were very good. But in this case, I had sacrificed my security by turning down a job to be with him and expected him to understand I would need to get work. He kept insisting that I needed to create my own business and not work for any institution. He was self-employed and had no respect for people who worked for institutions.

I had tried to be self-employed, but I didn’t have the financial resources he did, so I had to work for other people. He had a fit over this. While he was true to his values, he had no respect for my needs—a not unusual dilemma in relationships. The situation disintegrated from there. I asked for his understanding and didn’t get it.

At this point, I realized I was settling for a lot less than I deserved. Clearly, his set of values and mine were not compatible. I didn’t feel I should have to sacrifice my financial security to be with him, and he couldn’t afford to take care of me, nor did I want him to. But I was not taking care of myself and I didn’t feel good about that. However much I disliked the choices this man made in relation to me, he was being true to his own belief system, no matter how selfish I may have judged it. It became clear that he would not change anything in order to be with me. At that point, I finally had the sense to walk away.

Being True To Ourselves Empowers Us

What became very clear to me was that, by speaking my mind and not sacrificing what I needed in a relationship, I felt more empowered, although it created conflict. I found the courage to be more of who I was and committed to living with more integrity in relationships. I could not live with someone who felt he would be out of integrity in order to meet my needs.

Integrity Is The Core For Decision-making

Living with integrity helps us to respect ourselves even when it creates difficulty, but without it, we lack an inner core from which to make decisions. On the other hand, we also need to look at our value system. Does it allow us to live with integrity and relate to others in a loving and caring way? Most of us want to be in a relationship in order to share in a deep and loving way, and that may require some compromises.

Relationships Require Compromise

The question is always: what can you compromise and still be true to yourself? Some couples want to keep the peace no matter what they have to do because they are afraid to explore what is hidden and unknown. The problem with hiding ourselves is that we can never be loved for who we really are because our partner never knows who we are. It may never dawn on us that our partner might love us more if they knew who we truly were.

The Value Of Shared Values

It’s not a choice I would make. I want the person I’m in a relationship with, even in just a friendship, to know who I really am and show me who he really is. I want the relationship to have integrity based on a shared set of values, and if the price we pay is to disagree sometimes, so be it. Disagreements hopefully lead to a discussion that leads to a deeper understanding of each other and enriches the relationship. Besides, making up can be a lot of fun. It’s all good.

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Posted in Inspirational Posts

Tagged #WPLongform, Growth, Integrity, Love, relationship, Sharing, Spirituality, Wholeness

AWAKENING TO RELATIONSHIPS: INTIMACY, PART 2

Posted on March 27, 2013 | 2 comments

“Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.” John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Bee seeks flower for intimate relationship (Photo credit: ZaraBaxter)

What does intimacy mean to you? Do you experience intimacy in all your relationships? Is it important to you?

Many Types of Intimacy

Like empathy, I feel that intimacy is an important part of relationships, and we can experience it with friends or lovers because it can be experienced physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Intimacy is an aspect of relationship that comes from one’s deepest nature. It is personal and private and based on trust.

The Intimacy of Friendship

A couple months ago, I sat in a café on a cold, blustery day with a close friend who had been out of town for a couple of months. As I sat sipping my coffee, I felt warm all over, not so much from the coffee as from the pleasure of being with this person to whom I can tell my deepest secrets without ever fearing she will share them inappropriately. I trust her completely because she is truly a loving and empathetic person and treats relationships as sacred.

At home or Intimacy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Challenges of Emotional Intimacy

It is also possible for a person to be intimate in one aspect, but not in another. I once dated a man whose intellect was amazing. Having a conversation with him was like making love with words, for the passion of our ideas and the way they intertwined was so exciting. I could always say what I thought without fearing that he would criticize me. Even if he disagreed, he did it with respect and admired my intellectual ability.

Unfortunately, our relationship didn’t last because I couldn’t trust him emotionally. When there was emotional conflict, he often responded angrily and shut off all possibility of discussing the issue. His ego was so fragile. He would say hurtful things to assert his power. Although I loved him, being emotionally intimate with him was impossible, and without that, the physical intimacy was not satisfying.

Intimate Communication

As John O’Donohue says, “Real intimacy is of the soul.” This suggests that in order to experience real intimacy, we must connect at the soul level, and that requires us to share what is deepest within us. We must find the courage to share our feelings, to express our love, to show empathy when our friend or lover is in distress. We have to learn to listen, and if we are to be trusted, we must demonstrate in the relationship that we will always make loving choices and respect each other.

But in any relationship, the way we communicate has a powerful impact on the intimacy level of the relationship. I have had the pleasure of experiencing Imago Relationship Therapy which is based on the idea that we draw to us people who bring our deepest childhood wounds to the surface so that together we can heal those wounds. Developed by Harville Hendricks, who has written many wonderful books on relationships, the process involves learning to communicate so that one can listen and respond with compassion. Without this, a relationship has little chance of developing intimacy.

The Intimacy of Making Love

A physical relationship without an emotional connection is merely having sex. While the touching and closeness provides us with pleasure, it involves only physical intimacy. When we make love, we are relating in a deeper way, and intimacy, an aspect of love, is present. It may take on another whole dimension of experience that enhances the emotional aspect of a relationship, for it is about giving pleasure to each other, not just pleasuring oneself.

The reason we are so drawn to a sexual experience is that it takes us beyond this earthly realm. It is ironic to me that some religions see sex as unspiritual because an organism is an ecstatic experience that blots out ego and time. After I balance my chakras, I integrate the work by drawing energy from the base of my spine, up the spine and over my head. It feels virtually like an orgasm. This loss of time and space is also typical of Tantric practices.

Ecstatic Spiritual Intimacy

There are many examples of religious ecstasy that reflect the same experience. In Rumi’s poetry, he speaks of his relationship with God as a lover’s relationship. In the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, the 16^th century Christian mystic, her experiences of religious ecstasy seem to reflect this same lost of ego and time.

And so this aspect of intimacy and the spiritual intimacy we experience in meditation, take us to a deeper relationship with Spirit. The experience of Oneness transcends the earthly and connects us with all that is. On earth, there is no greater and satisfying relationship than one that encompasses the emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual aspects of intimacy. Challenging to create—oh, yes it is, but in the end it is worth it even if we only manage some aspects of the intimacy. Even that is far superior to a relationship that lacks them all, for when no intimacy is present in a relationship, it can serve only a superficial purpose.

How important do you think intimacy is in a relationship?