Living the Magic

Expectations

I have a really great relationship with my husband, David.

We've been together for 5 years now and our friendship continues to grow.

It doesn't grow every day, as the old cliché would tell us; instead, it just slowly continues to deepen.

Our respect and love face the challenges of any couple, but our commitment to our relationship keeps everything steady and moving. After all, movement assists growth.

People sometimes ask me how we have such a healthy relationship, what our "secret" is. I tell them communication is the key to any good relationship, but they already know that! Our "secret," if in fact there even is one, is in our expectations.

I believe very strongly, that if we have the expectation for our partner to complete our life, make us whole, fulfil our destiny, then we are setting ourselves up for failure. Expecting someone else to know what we need and focus their energy on fulfilling those needs is, in my opinion, ridiculous. If we, instead, focus our energy on healing ourselves, we will find a complete person in the end. Once we are complete, we can have relationships that enhance our lives but still remain independent within them.

Rather than focusing all of my energy on his need - for him to be complete and whole, I am free to focus on other aspects of my life.......spiritual, emotional and physical. He is able to do the same. He focuses on what he desires for growth and fulfillment. The beautiful part about this is that we meet in the middle!

Since we are both communicating with each other, we don't grow in different directions, away from one other. This allows for the aspects of ourselves which we don't share. I am not interested in building things with wood, for example, and he has no interest in the tarot. This beautiful dance, which is our relationship, is allowed to be eclectic and fun and magical within itself.

David doesn't "do" many of the things I do, but he quietly supports me. He does little things which are big to me, like making me coffee when I'm in the middle of writing an article and can't possibly leave the muse to refill. Congratulations Aleesha! Or cooking dinner while I am preparing the meditation for the night's meeting and holding my hand when I'm sludging through something painful.

We also allow other relationships to fulfil some of our needs. Having a friend who loves to garden and swap plants (indoor and out) fulfils a huge part of me. I am, after all, a child of the Goddess and need to assist Mother Earth to remain healthy and beautiful. David has friends who like to create things out of wood, whether it's a new room in the basement or new furniture for the garden. He is fulfilled through his friendship with them.

We don't expect to be the all, end all, everything possible to each other. We only expect to respect, honor, love and cherish each other, with a dash of loyalty thrown in for good measure. We have boundaries and a code of ethics we both live by and in the end, we love each other, really enjoy being together and equally enjoy being apart. It's a balance which has taken me years to acquire - as there is a level of maturity and trust which I had to create for myself before this relationship was possible. Now I reap the many benefits of having my best friend become my husband and partner. Through the good times and the bad, especially the bad. Through sleepless nights and days of joy.

I know that I could live without him, but I choose not to.

In light, Aleesha Stephenson

By Aleesha Stephenson