When you were growing up, you were sold an overlay by society… A pretend reality that sits over the actual reality. And the overlay that you were sold was the fantasy of a relationship with no contrast. So that you can understand what I mean, let’s define contrast. It is one of the integral elements of this time space reality. Contrast is the existence and the perception of polarities such as positive and negative, wanted and unwanted, dark and light, pain and pleasure.

The lie that you were sold is that it is possible to find a relationship (any relationship) that will not come with negatives, unwanted elements and downsides. In fact, you were led to believe that the right relationship for you, is a relationship that has no contrast, in that it is only positive and it only feels good. Instead of just hearing me say that, stop for a moment and really think about it. Try to recognize this overlay within your own expectations and within your own quest to find the right relationship.

As a result of being sold this lie, many people on earth are on a disappointing perpetual search mission that grows more and more painful with each relationship. And for many people, the minute they run into contrast in a relationship, they decide that the relationship isn’t right for them. Or that the other person shouldn’t be the way they are and needs to change.   

Overlays are very dangerous. Because they are essentially a game of pretend, they prevent you from living an empowered life. And they are one of the biggest problems when it comes to relationships. If you want to understand more about this, watch my video titled: Overlay (What Prevents You from Having a Real Relationship). 

So, what’s the truth? Buckle your seat belts. There is no such thing as a relationship without contrast. Every person and every relationship comes with contrast. This means, every single person and relationship will have upsides and downsides, positives and negatives, benefits and drawbacks, wanted elements and unwanted elements. Essentially, the same thing is true of relationships that is true about life. Incase you want to learn more about that, you can watch my video titled: The Biggest Lie the Self Help/Spiritual Industry Sells You.  

While dismantling an overlay is painful, this truth about relationships doesn’t mean you should sink into doom and think that this means you have to settle for what you don’t want. You should not simply give up on relationships being good and give up on aiming for improvement within your relationships. There are a great many things you can do, while still operating within the acknowledgement of this truth, to maximize your ability to find a feel-good relationship. And here are some of them:

1. You can consciously choose our contrast. We can take a serious look at what negatives and downsides we can genuinely say yes to and what negatives and downsides we can’t say yes to. The beauty of us all being different in many ways is that some of us have deal breakers that others of us don’t have. Some of us experience real pain with certain things and other people don’t really experience pain with those very same things. For example, imagine that you fall in love with someone who is committed to living and working in a place that you don’t like. One person could choose the contrast of being in a place they don’t like. Their expansion would be about finding wanted things and making positive changes that accommodate for that contrast that they chose. Another person could not. Doing so, would cause so much resentment and unhappiness that the relationship itself would unravel.
   When your free will is involved in the process of choosing the specific contrast that you can say yes to, you will not feel like a victim to the negatives and downsides of your relationships. You will be approaching relationships from a mature and an empowered place. To learn more about this, you can watch two of my videos. The first titled: Why you should consciously choose consequences. And the second titled: Want To Succeed? What Pain Will You Say Yes To?
2. With the contrast that you did choose, become as aware as possible of what that contrast means for you and become empowered around that. For example, let’s say that a woman actually chooses into a relationship with a man who plays lots of video games. This might come with the contrast of him being unavailable for blocks of time. Becoming empowered around that might look like filling up that time with other interests. Or establishing a relationship with someone else who can be available for her. Or asking him to take action to create quality time for them both, so there is more security and more of an emotional tolerance for autonomy. Etc. The goal here is to get on top of and ahead of the contrast you chose. Accepting the contrast doesn’t mean passively succumbing to it and just letting it be the way it is. 
3. You can focus on consciously seeking out compatibility in each of your relationships. Compatibility is when two things are able to exist or occur together in a state of harmony and without conflict. If two things are compatible, their co-existence is beneficial and ads to the wellbeing of each of them. Whereas incompatibility is when two things cannot exist or occur together without creating conflict and without being a detriment to one or to both of them. When we focus on compatibility as the necessary foundation for our relationships, we are forced to naturally accommodate for the reality that every person and every relationship comes with contrast. If there is a high degree of compatibility in a relationship, you will experience much more pleasure and much less pain. The specific contrasts that you will choose, will be ones that you can sign up for and that won’t diminish your wellbeing. You will perceive the positive to be what is dominant in the relationship. To understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: Incompatibility, A Harsh Reality in Relationships.
4. You can focus on having many relationships and resourcing many different people. And you can establish creative arrangements with those people. You can operate from the perspective that there is a place for every person in your life, the question is what place? This might just require adjusting the structure of your relationships and the way you think that specific relationships should and shouldn’t look. Humans are a tribal species. People were never meant to get all of their needs met by one primary partner. When we stop limiting ourselves by needing one person to do and be everything in our life, we have more room within us for the negatives and downsides of each person. We also have more room to get creative with where people do and don’t fit into our life because there is more wiggle room when it comes to incompatibilities. When we are fixated on this one relationship and on that one relationship having to perfectly match all of our preferences, a great many things go wrong. Any contrast that shows up in that relationship, becomes unbearable. We fixate on changing that person to become exactly what we want them to be, and this leads to lots of pressure and pain for both people. This is very different than healthy growth. We start to slip into deprivation patterns as well as patterns where love means suffering.                  

Knowing all of this, I want you to ask yourself the following questions: If I accepted that there will always be contrast in every relationship… That there will always be both negative and positive, wanted and unwanted inherent within each person and within each relationship… what would I do differently? 

If there will be contrast in every relationship, what contrast can I sign up for?