Do You?

Rhea: I think we have, as a society, over-intellectualized relationships to the point where it is cutting us off at our feet, constantly looking for red flags that aren't there and we're constantly avoiding the red flags that are.

Liz:  Oh yes.

Rhea: I feel something's off. I'm going to ignore the fact that they are a drug addict and I'm going to choose the fact that they don't call me five minutes after I call them as the issue. We're looking at the smaller things to try and figure out the bigger answers.

Liz:  Or to give us the excuses whether or not to stay or go, when really the issue is rarely the other person. It's always us.

Rhea: And the question is always, do you want to?

Liz:  Exactly.

Rhea: It's really as simple as that.

Liz:  You have a choice.

Rhea: We've over intellectualized it to the point where we don't think we do anymore, that we should want this. We shouldn't want that. We're not actually stopping looking inside and going, how does this make me feel?

Liz:  No, we're looking to polls, we're looking to signs. We are looking entirely outside of ourselves for answers.

Rhea: When it comes to whether or not to be in a relationship, it's how does this person make me feel? How do I feel when I'm with this person, and do I want to stay?

Liz:  And how do I feel about myself, irrespective of the other person? If I am alone in the room, how am I feeling about myself at the time?

Rhea: And you know what? I have such compassion for it. What I have come to understand is that every relationship we have is always a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. So the more you trust yourself, the more you're able to trust what's going on between you and someone else. It's really as simple as that. So the minute you start looking outside of yourself and picking out these little incidents or little moments to reveal a bigger picture, you are giving away your knowing and you're giving away your power. Because ultimately your power is just to know how you feel in that moment and to honour it.

Liz:  Yes, exactly. That's it.

Rhea: We keep thinking that in relationships, unless we're in our full worth all the time and that other person is respecting that full worth all the time.

Liz:  And they're showing that they are respecting it.

Rhea: Exactly. They're listening to us and they're doing exactly what we would like to do and all the rest of it, then somehow we have sacrificed our autonomy and somehow we are showing that we're not good enough and it's taken the humanity out of dating. And I did it because as I've always said, it's only about other people when you can stop making it about yourself. And not making it about yourself requires healing a certain amount, but the problem is is that when it comes to relationships, if you're constantly being like, well, I know that in seven previous relationships I always split the bill and that was an indication of how I was willing to not ever get exactly what I wanted, which was someone to pay for it wholly. Now, the next person that comes along could be perfect for me, but if they're not going to offer to pay the bill and insist, they're out of here because that is how I show my worth. That is how I'm showing the universe what I want. That is how I'm showing the other person that I'm in my power.

Liz:  Yes.

Rhea: Well that's not power at all.

Liz:  No, it's not.

Rhea: Power is looking at the other person going that might work for you. This is what works for me.

Liz:  And can we negotiate that or talk about that beforehand so I know what I'm getting myself into? Because I think that half the things I see, if you had just understood that going into it, how different would our reactions be?

Rhea: Totally.

Liz:  But we have such poor communication because we don't know how to talk about our feelings. We don't know how to talk about our expectations. We experienced so much judgment and shame. We still play around gender roles and stereotypes, even when we say that we don't. We still say that we want equality, but when it comes to dating, all bets are off. We still want to believe that we deserve and merit all the "upsides" of dating, but we don't show any of those qualities to ourselves. So we're still kind of spinning out in this old 3D paradigm, hoping it's going to get us to a different end.

Rhea: The goal is equality and equalness within that relationship.

Liz:  But that equality doesn't necessarily come.

Rhea: It's not with spitting the bill. It's: I care as much about this relationship as you do.

Liz:  Yes. And I see, feel, hear, or know that you are meeting me that halfway.

Rhea: Because when I was like that, when I kept thinking I had to show my worth or I had to settle, it's because I didn't think I could choose.

Liz:  No, we're always told you "fall" in love and everything is out of our power.

Rhea: We don't think we have . . . a lot of this relationship stuff, we've really taken out the choice of it, all the rhetoric.

Liz:  All the stories.

Rhea: All the stories are - men don't want to settle down, but they're forced to. Women don't want to be free.

Liz:  All they want is to settle down.

Rhea: All they want is to settle down. Sex is the man's prerogative and the woman's submission. All of the things that determine the interactions between two people in that relationship, they're predetermined. So we don't believe we have a choice in anything.

Liz:  To be fair, we have been looking at over the past decade or two really examining that. And so I think we've seen pockets of movements that have been challenging that, like I don't have to stay at home once I'm married. I can work and have children. We can split the bill. I think there has been the effort in the movement.

Rhea: No, I agree with you. We’ve got to challenge that. But I think we've gone so far the other way.

Liz:  We have gone so far the other way that we haven't recognized the fact that none of it was about any of that. We kept looking to our actions to speak to our changes when it's really about, has the internal shifted and changed enough to allow that to happen, and that was the issue. And so we're always circling around because we cannot face our own insecurities cause it's painful. What underscores all of these insecurities and all these issues isn't, as much as it speaks to people's fear of commitment, it also speaks to their loss of identity or their lack of identity. Because if we really didn't know ourselves from the inside out, if we understood our limitations, if we understood where our power lies, if we understood and embraced our individuality and we felt whole, none of this shit would matter.

Rhea: So what is an example of really knowing yourself from the inside out? Cause we reference it a lot, but I don't think we've really explained it.

Liz:  Well, in a spiritual context it means really connecting to your divinity.

Rhea: And then in a non-spiritual context?

Liz:  It's the 'I know who I am to my very core'.

Rhea: But what does that mean?

Liz:  Well we think that it's all about, I know what I like, I know what I don't like. Those are the small things. I know what I desire, I know what my needs are. But what that really is is I can clearly express them.

Rhea: Whilst I don't mind if I don't see you so often, I do mind if I feel disconnected from you. Whilst I don't mind spending some time alone, I don't like spending too many evenings alone at home because I feel like there's so much more I could be doing with my time. It's knowing what you want and knowing who you are in relation to that and giving yourself the space to not need it right now.

Liz:  That's true. And also when you really know yourself from the inside out, it also means really understanding the source of your fears and knowing your fears, and just recognizing the actions that you might take in order to mitigate those fears. It always circles back to how honest are we with ourselves about those fears.

Rhea: So really the goal is like acknowledging them, walking through as many as possible, fighting them as much as we can, but also being aware of when we're reacting from them.

Liz:  Completely. And when we're fighting our fear, it does not mean denying them. It's more like I know that if I feel this fear, I'm going to be inclined to act in this manner, which is detrimental to me, so I'm going to resist the urge to act this way, knowing full well that this fear is still going to be there.

Rhea: How then can you be so honest with yourself, yet be in a committed relationship, because you've got someone else's feelings and wants and desires and everything else to contend with?

Liz:  Remember, you're not responsible for any of those. That person is. What it means is there's actually just fewer people in this world that we're going to be truly compatible with, with regard to intimate relationship and that's a difficult thing to face because we want to believe that we have so much choice. That the person who's going to suit us best or persons, if you will, for our different places along this spectrum of growth and evolution, there really aren't that many, the more we know ourselves and that's okay, because we're coming into a point in this 5th dimensional oneness consciousness where our growth won't be so much through relationship as in, okay, I dated somebody for five years cause I had to learn all these things and burn through my karmic story. Okay, next. It really will be: Yes, we will have relationships but the intensity of them won't be so much about our trauma.

Rhea: When you're looking to heal something in you subconsciously, you will be attracted to the people that have the same issue broken so that you can heal it in them or you can use them to heal you. So what that means is . . . 

Liz:  Ideally both.

Rhea: Ideally both, right, but what that is is what a lot of people call a trauma bond because it's that intense - I've met you and I feel like I'm in love with you straight away. I feel like you're the perfect person for me. We must be together right now. It is not two people falling in love usually.

Liz:  No, although they trick themselves into thinking that.

Rhea: Exactly. It's two people's pain finding a home in each other. So as you start divesting yourself of your pain, you stop having those kinds of trauma relationships as much because actually what you start looking for is someone who can bring joy into your life, not healing.

Liz:  Yes. So when we experience a paradigm shift, it's never like, okay, we went just from one to the other. We move into them and so as we grow in one space, we are able to divest ourselves of something old and that's why our progress has always this kind of forward spirals. Four steps forward, two steps back and so when it comes to dating, it's always a little bit like that. All right, I've, I've learned something about myself. Okay, great. Now I can move on and do something else. Your relationship paradigm is definitely shifting in order to enable us to grow in other ways where relationships aren't just about, as you said, trauma or pain or having to heal our relationship to our parents and so forth.

Rhea: Because actually I think a big part of, I believe a big part of all growth as a society, as a world right now is learning that we don't have to be in pain. A big part of us - and me included - don't believe that it's possible to learn any other way.

Liz:  Right.

Rhea: There is a scar that's waiting for the other shoe to drop because we haven't experienced learning through joy. We haven't experienced learning through flow. We haven't experienced learning through just by learning, without having to have our hearts broken wide open, without having to be disappointed or traumatized. I don't want to learn this way anymore. I want to start believing that I can continue to evolve in a way that doesn't split me in half.

Liz:  Right, and that requires two things. One, that we allow it to happen and two, that we are far enough along in our spiritual growth and evolution that we have divested ourselves of our karmic story enough. Otherwise it just won't happen that way.

Rhea: I can tell you all the ways in which a relationship doesn't work. I'm not sure I can tell you all the ways in which it does.

Liz:  We don't know that. Most people cannot speak to that because the models don't exist and in part because in 5D, all of that has to come from within. We are not here to try to fit into any existing model. We're here to create it for ourselves individually, not for other people and that's what it means and why it's so essential that we come into our own power. Because if we're not in our own power, our relationships will suffer and when they're suffering, what we do is we look to others to tell us how to live. We look to others to tell us what a healthy relationship is. If we're not acting according to our truth and our knowing, then we're never going to find that place of peace and contentment. The more solid our identity is, and by solid I don't mean like you know, what he said mattered . . .

Rhea: Unyielding.

Liz:  The more we know ourselves, again, our ability to be completely honest about all we are and all we want, the more we will know where our boundaries are when it comes to compromise. I know for me, I always knew what I wanted. I knew where I was going. I knew I was going to end up somewhere. I actually knew I was going to end up in London.

Rhea: Did you think you can only really find the right person for you long term, if you really know your path and your purpose?

Liz: I think you need to know it enough. You don't have to know it 100%, sort of like I didn't necessarily know how I was going to get to London or that I was going to really even end up. I just knew somehow I was going to end up back in Europe again and somehow London just made sense to me in all these stupid ways that my brain works right? But yes, the clearer we are about who we are, why we are here and more or less about what we're going to be doing with our lives, the closer we get to our partner if that person isn't already in our lives. 

There is, and I say this with all my heart because I know this to be true, there is someone for everyone. Whether or not we have found that person depends so much on a lot of factors that are not worth listing entirely here, because ultimately our ideal partner now in terms of our generation or future generations will live their purpose alongside us. Which is why we keep talking about a relationship is about two whole individuals coming together because it is going to be so purpose based. So if we're not in our purpose, we're not in our power, the level of satisfaction that we'll experience in relationship won't be particularly high, and it will leave us feeling quite disappointed to the point where we're going to feel like we've compromised ourselves too much in order to just not be alone.

Rhea: But you can compromise yourself just enough.

Liz:  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because God knows there were things that I just look back and I'm like, man, why didn't I stand my ground on that one? I would have spared me some of my sanity. And it's not because he didn't love me enough to not listen to me, but I also just didn't love myself enough to really stand up and say, listen, this matters. So did he really know how much it mattered to me or how important it was to me? Maybe not, because man, I was a mess.

Rhea: So then if you feel like you're compromising yourself a lot, is it just another area of your core fear that needs to be looked at? Because why are you compromising yourself? Why are you not standing up for yourself?

Liz:  Why are you not valuing yourself enough?

Rhea: Really when you start looking at commitment and compromise and all the rest of it, it's really about compassion.

Liz:  Yes.

Rhea: And it's about respect. Do I know myself enough that I am able to be me? Do they know themselves enough that they are able to be them, and are we able to bring that together in a way that doesn't harm us?

Liz:  Is us moving me away from myself or closer to myself?

Rhea: Exactly. As simple as.

Liz:  Yes. Do I feel free to be myself wholly and completely?

Rhea: Am I able to let them do the same? And if not, then this is probably mirroring to you something about your fears and most likely it will be mirroring to you something about you not wanting to be alone, and how you're not good enough. And if you want true, peaceful partnership or true symbiotic partnership or true partnership that has respect and love and admiration and damn good sex in there as we was discussing the last episode . . .

Liz:  Amen!

Rhea: Then you really do want to look at that, and you really do want to be as freed as you can from your fears or at least as aware of your fears as much as you can, so that it doesn't impede the relationship and it doesn't feel like you're taking a wrecking ball to everything because you haven't dealt with a little piece of your shit first. And then that's why really the only commitment and the only compromise as it were that we should ever be making is the one to ourselves. Because if we commit to ourselves properly and if we choose just to give space to our feelings, to honour how we feel and to, if not act accordingly, at least recognize it and be honest with ourselves about why we're doing something, then the rest should naturally follow.

Liz:  It will.