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Relationship Minefields and Mirrors

Relationship Minefields and Mirrors

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Do you understand what truly reflects on your relationship?

Is Your Relationship a Mirror of Yourself?

By Lisa Raphael

The realization that relationships are basically mirrors is the key to healing any and every relationship with ourselves, with others, with nature, and with the universe. We are all interconnected. What we think, feel and do affects everything around us.

This may be easier to accept as a general concept than as a truth about a particular relationship, especially an intimate one. The blame game has forever been a favorite couples’ sport. “If only he would do that,” we protest, or “if only she would be more like that.” It is always the other person that needs to change. Yet just as mirrors in everyday life reflect what we cannot see, our partners reflect back to us aspects of ourselves that we do not see otherwise. It is a ‘not easy to consider’ that the traits that irritate us in our partners are reflections of ourselves.

The role of the mirror in everyday life is to tell us how we look. Is our hair tidy, does this clothing look good on us, are our pimples or wrinkles showing, and so on. When we see something we do not like, we try to fix it. We do not blame the mirror for what it is reflecting back to us, nor do we try to correct it in the mirror. Yet when we see something we do not like in another person, we forget that they, too, are a mirror, and begin trying to fix in the other what needs fixing in ourselves.

When we understand that our partner’s behavior is a reflection or our own, it becomes easier to sort out what is his and what is hers. Close relationships are like minefields; we never know when an innocent remark or incident will trigger a reactive explosion. We each carry imprints from the past within us, memories of how our family or friends responded to us, reactions to past trauma. When one of these memories is triggered, we react the way we did in the past. We may even say “you sound just like my mother” or “stop treating my like a child” and blame our partner for what is essentially our own childhood memory. This is OUR minefield, not something our partner is doing to us.

Knowing ourselves is essential to good relationships, and relationships, being mirrors, help us to know ourselves.

To see past the distortions of all the mirrors that reflect our reality requires discernment, and discernment requires quiet. Quiet is hard to come by in a world in which there is constant noise from traffic, refrigerators and microwaves, television sets, computers, cell phones, and radios. Yet it is in the quiet that we can come to know ourselves. It is only through awareness of the flow of our own psyche that we can discern what is true in our relationships, and create healthy ones.

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This article is sponsored by Ascending Hearts Conscious Dating


View Comments (3)
  • How is it a mirror when I give more than I receive every time? I can’t understand this, I’ve learned to understand what I need in a relationship. I thought I found that person (on accident), I was told and shown by this person that they are a certain way…then when I am fully emerged the person pulls away, stops giving, stops trying.. how is this a mirror of my self?

  • I keep attracting narcissistic types…both my parents were diagnosed and I understand the confusion. I am in group therapy and it’s helped me to hear others who have been programmed for love/hate relationships. And yes I am confused too. Everyone says I am very sweet…yet I attract very angry people. I was very harsh on this guy for being so combative and so obsessive then cold towards me. Yet I realize I want intimacy more than anything yet I am comfortable in abuse. So maybe it’s mirroring our self worth back to us? I was raised by 2 narcissistic personality type parents…so I went the opposite way…terrified to be friendly charismatic or charming to anyone. So this guy has opened up all the wounds I have to heal in order to attract real friendships and love. Talking to my therapist he said the one trait I have in similar is changing to try and fit in with whoever I’m with and feeling shame if I am not like them. So I’m focusing on finding my own soul…instead of living to try and be loveable to others. So in a way he was my mirror…of my survival techniques from childhood. I don’t know if this helps at all. I’ve been sobbing realizing everything about the abuse and it being my comfort zone.

  • I wholeheartedly disagree with this mirroring theory and think someone with self-flagellation issues came up with this. This might also be a cultural issue as I am from a somewhat different culture that surely would not constantly beat myself up and blame myself for everything that goes wrong in my life. I do find this kind of thinking consistent with the white American female.
    I agree to some extent with the other commentators.
    I was involved with someone who in no way mirrored me. He was my opposite. He was contolling and brought out the doormat in me. I am certainly not a controlling or power hungry individual.
    What he did do was force me to face the weak side of my personality and the result is I have strengthened that side. I may still have doormat tendencies, but i am now very much aware of it and I aint’t ever going there again.
    And one more thing, he has a lot of work to do on himself, but that is no longer my business.
    I do not know how anyone can call that mirroring, it is an extremely poor analogy.
    What this is,is yin-yang!!

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