What has to happen in order for you to find The Right One? (Part 1 of 2)

More often than not, I come across articles written by other relationship experts and advisors who share my similar view on achieving healthier, happier relationships. So from time to time, I’ll make a point to share with you what they have to say. This way, you don’t always only hear what I have to say.

Today, I want to share an article written by Mikko Kemppe, a Mars Venus Relationship Coach who has worked for the #1 bestselling relationship author of all time (Dr. John Gray).

So, what has to happen in order for you to find The Right One? On my last post, I spoke at length about “timing” playing a huge role. To explore this even further, here’s what Mikko has to say:

How do you know when you have found the right person with whom to share the rest of your life? Maybe you have been dating for quite a while and you have begun to wonder whether this person can possibly be your soul mate. Perhaps you are single and are asking whether it really is ever possible to know the answer to this question, or maybe you are married and are having doubts about whether you have made the right decision in selecting this person as your partner.

I have heard many answers to this question, and really the best answer seems to be that you just know. And I am going to use the rest of this article to argue why I think this is so.☺ See, the way you are able to recognize that someone is not the right partner for you is the same way you can recognize that he is.

This concept of knowing when someone is the One, is very easy to misunderstand. Why? Because unless certain preconditions are met, your ability to recognize the right one is impaired. You may be confused or think that there is no way you can know whether that someone is it, but, here’s the good news – it is really possible to know, provided that the right conditions are met.

What are those preconditions?

1. Your heart has to be fully open.
2. You have to have the ability to be fully honest with yourself.

3. You have to trust your intuition.
4. The timing has to be right.

Let’s explore each of these conditions in more detail. To have your heart open means that you are honestly in touch with your feelings. Often, while growing up, we have our heart broken – most often several times in many different ways, so, as we learn to protect our heart, it begins to close.

How do I know this to be true? By the time I was around 18-years-old, I had learned to become almost completely numb to my feelings. To protect me from the hurt that I was experiencing at that point in my life, I had became like a cold, hard rock. I had basically shut down from life. I was still doing fine with my day-to-day living, but I certainly was not in touch with my feelings. I felt safe, since I did not let anybody see who I really was or how I felt inside, but at the same time it was impossible for me to feel loved or accepted for who I was.

We’ve heard the expression of “building a brick wall around our heart.” That way we protect ourselves from getting hurt, but what we also do is not allow love to seep in or out either. This concept can be understood on a deeper level.

When we live with an open heart and follow our passions, we live in alignment of who we are. However, even so, there will be pain. To learn certain life lessons, we need to experience

situations where we may get hurt or even hurt others. This is an important part of our growth process.

Unless you live in a self-imposed, sealed box, it is virtually impossible to avoid pain. And even if you did live in that box, you would subconsciously attract events into your life to try and get you out of it.

In life, some pain is actually necessary. But while we really cannot avoid pain, this does not mean that we have to suffer. Suffering occurs only when we choose to hold on to that pain by not understanding how to properly process it and let it go.

It is this process of learning to fully acknowledge and feel our feelings, both negative and positive, that will assist us in becoming who we are and define what we are to do in this world. And by learning to let go of our negative feelings, we can grow emotionally and experience more happiness, love, and joy. I truly believe that each of us has come into this world to share and experience love.

To understand how you can live from an open heart, think of your heart as any other muscle. It has to be constantly exercised in order to grow. Just as you go to a gym to lift weights and develop your muscles, so you need to exercise your heart. Whenever you follow your heart and passions, and face the challenges that come with that, you are exercising your heart. Any bodybuilder knows that the more pain you are open to experiencing – with proper rest and nutrition – the stronger your muscles will grow. The same is true with learning to master your emotions.

Please don’t misunderstand. You should never intentionally hurt yourself or expose yourself to abuse or hurt. I am simply saying that by allowing yourself to live from an open heart you have already exposed yourself to the possibility that someone may hurt you or that you may unintentionally hurt someone else. This is very different from doing something intentionally. By following your heart, you are simply not permitting those self-imposed beliefs to shut down your life. This process will automatically make you more vulnerable.

It is only at times when we make mistakes or get hurt that we have the ability to grow. By learning to process our negative feelings and love others and ourselves despite the faults, it becomes possible for us to keep our heart open. It is also this process of keeping our heart open that allows us to cultivate our ability to know whether someone is the right or wrong life partner for us. To understand more fully how it is possible to love someone yet recognize that this is not the right partner for life, read one of my previous articles: “How To Deal With Painful Divorce or Break Up: Understanding When Love Is Not Enough".

This ability to keep an open heart is the first precondition for knowing whether someone is the right one.

(This post is getting long. Let’s take a little break so you can take time to process the information shared here. I’ll continue the rest of the article on my next post - by this weekend. Stay tuned…)