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LISTENER’S COMMENT: “I’ve been listening to your podcasts for the past few weeks and I’d like to say thank you for the insight and information. Unfortunately it’s too late to help in my current marriage, but it is very insightful. Coming from a family with parents that didn’t show love to one another I never learned how to express it in a productive way. My wife recently filed for divorce and it has placed me in a state of shock. I’ve been reflecting on our relationship, going to therapy and attending AA to help through this rough time and realize how broken I am … Nevertheless I am hopeful that I can become a better person in the long run and express myself fully with all those I encounter and your words and guests keep me going. Your podcasts have taught me new skills and opened my eyes to the reality of how to build a strong productive relationship and they also help me get through the rough days. I hope that others will hear you before it’s too late and work on developing themselves. God bless you and once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.” (PLEASE LISTEN TO THE PODCAST EPISODE OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT TO HEAR MORE EXPLANATIONS, STORIES AND EXAMPLES.) In this podcast episode, I share quotes and excerpts from Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible, by John Welwood. I also discuss client stories that exemplify these concepts. Here are a few from the show: “While most people would like to have healthy, satisfying relationships in their lives, the truth is that everyone has a hard time with intimate partnerships.” by John Welwood “For one person to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks.” by Rilke “After numerous hardships and failures, many people have given up on intimate relationship, regarding the relational terrain as so fraught with romantic illusion and emotional hazards that it is no longer worth the energy.” by John Welwood “Although modern relationships are particularly challenging, their very difficulty presents a special arena for personal and spiritual growth.” by John Welwood “Yet opening to another also flushes to the surface all kinds of conditioned patterns and obstacles that tend to shut this connection down: our deepest wounds, our grasping and desperation, our worst fears, our mistrust, our rawest emotional trigger points.” by John Welwood “Many of us have a cartoon-like notion of relational bliss: that it should provide a steady state of security or solace that will save us from having to face the gritty, painful, difficult areas of life. We imagine that finding or marrying the right person will spare us from having to deal with such things as loneliness, disappointment, despair, terror, or disintegration. Yet anyone who has been married for a long time probably has some knowledge of the charnel ground quality of relationship” by John Welwood “The problem with running away when a relationship becomes difficult is that we are also turning away from ourselves and our potential breakthroughs. Fleeing the raw, wounded places in ourselves because we don’t think we can handle them is a form of self-rejection and self-abandonment that turns our feeling body into an abandoned, haunted house. The more we flee our shadowy places, the more they fester in the dark and the more haunted this house becomes. And the more haunted it becomes, the more it terrifies us. This is a vicious circle that keeps us cut off from and afraid of ourselves.” “One of the scariest places we encounter in relationship is a deep inner sense of unlove, where we don’t know that we’re truly lovable just for being who we are, where we feel deficient and don’t know our value. This is the raw wound of the heart, where we’re disconnected from our true nature, our inner perfection. Naturally we want to do everything we can to avoid this place, fix it, or neutralize it, so we’ll never have to experience such pain again.” by John Welwood “In relationship, it is two partners’ greater beings, gradually freeing themselves from the prison of conditioned patterns, that bring about this decisive defeat. And as this starts reverberating through their relationship, old expectations finally give way, old movies stop running, and a much larger acceptance than they believed possible can start opening up between them. As they become willing to face and embrace whatever stands between them—old relational wounds from the past, personal pathologies, difficulties hearing and understanding each other, different values and sensitivities—all in the name of loving and letting be, they are invited to “enter into reality.” Then it becomes possible to start encountering each other nakedly, in the open field of nowness, fresh and unfabricated, the field of love forever vibrating with unimagined possibilities.” by John Welwood MENTIONED: Build Happy, Love Presentation (webinar replay link – expires 4/17/17) Relationship Map (opt-in download – you will want this for the webinar) Connected Couple Information page (only accepting 20 couples) Discount code: cc500w (expires 4/17/17) Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible TRANSCRIPT: Click on this link to access the transcript for this episode: ERP 103: How Love Can Transform Us In Relationship [Transcript] If you have a topic you would like me to discuss, please contact me by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. Thank you!  If you are interested in developing new skills to overcome relationship challenges, please consider taking the Empowered Relationship Course or doing relationship coaching work with me.