Love is an essential component of any relationship. Unfortunately, for those in relationships with addicts or narcissists, love can begin to feel like an addiction itself. Individuals in these types of relationships must develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that mimic the behaviors commonly associated with addiction.
Everyone needs something a bit different in their romantic relationships. You might want something long-term or need a low-key relationship that takes it slow. No matter what your priorities are, everyone aligns when it comes to emotional intelligence. It makes every partnership thrive, so learn how to foster emotional intelligence in your relationship with these tips.
New terms are becoming popular for many of the bad, destructive, and even toxic relationship behaviors that help people label what they are experiencing. Over the last few years, people have become familiar with gaslighting and ghosting. To add to that, the term breadcrumbing has become mainstream, adding to the ability to easily describe the difficulties you are experiencing in your dating relationships.
What is Breadcrumbing?
Breadcrumbing is the act of dropping little bits of attention through social media platforms or technology to keep the other person interested in the potential of the relationship. Accepting breadcrumbs means that you are settling for these small and virtual signals of the potential for the relationship.
Most people that engage in breadcrumbing are those who have a significant fear of being on their own or alone. To hedge their bets of not having someone to be in a relationship with, they focus on keeping multiple potential partners available. In some ways, they are also testing the waters with numbers of potential dates or relationships without committing to any one person. It is highly manipulative, even if the person doing it may not think they are doing anything harmful.
Relationships have strange ways. You meet someone, feel attracted to them, and decide to stay together forever. The most unconventional ones may last for a lifetime, and the seemingly perfect matches part ways after a whirlwind romance. You cannot be too sure about the strength and stability of the connection when you meet a person. You have to take a chance and let destiny do the rest.
But astrology can show you the direction to connect with the right person and build a relationship that lasts. Although it sounds surprising, you can rely on horoscopes and the zodiac to understand the potential of a bond. Here are some ways astrology can help you secure and consolidate better relationships.
Our life experience can be easier then many of us imagine. Much of humanity has chosen to believe, even embrace, stories of pain and grief instead of love and joy. This is a betrayal of our true compassionate nature. I’m going to share the easiest way to transform relationships into a loving piece of your story.
Recently I was enjoying conversation with a Vedic astrologer from India. I asked him about possible challenges leaving his home country and family. San Jay shared he focuses only on how he feels now. He is able to speak with his family by phone and walks by their side energetically. He has removed the past challenge from the possibilities in his life and enjoys his everyday experience that includes an energetic closeness with his family.
In my own life I decided to reconnect with my brother that died of suicide years ago. I needed to let go of the grief and confusion I held in my heart and mind. I had been holding onto my brother’s life story, not reaching for his soul’s energy. I touched the uncomfortable and complicated thoughts and called his spirit to me. I did this in several meditations.
I’m the money chick, which leads a lot of people to ask, “Julie… why do you talk about so many of these others topics? Relationships? Work life? Health?”
The answer is actually very simple: success in all these areas has to do with how we are authentically showing up in the world, and money is actually the result of you aligning with your heart and your soul—aligning in your relationship, your work, your health, and so much more. Without alignment in all these areas, money doesn’t follow, and if it does follow, it may not stick and stay either.
So today we’re going to focus a bit on relationships because if you are not happy in your relationships, then going to affect many aspects of your life in a negative way.
Taking Responsibility
Many people get mad at me for saying this, but here’s the hard truth: you created exactly the life you have and you made choices to get to the place you’re in right now. I get that life happens and some things are out of your control, but you being in the relationship you’re in (or not in) is you’re choosing.
The universe is set up to help us grow into our higher selves, and relationships are the “vessel” of that journey. Difficult relationships show us both the need to grow beyond our present level of understanding, and deliver the vital self-revelations that make growth possible.
Of course, we love to be shown qualities within us that are positive. But Love often shows us what is un-loving within us, such as anger, impatience, and selfishness. To understand this is to realize that even in the darkest moment of some unwanted revelation, we are never without Love; it is always there, even if it is momentarily obscured by our negative reaction to what we’ve been shown about ourselves. These revelations are a gift from Love to help us become the truly loving individuals we want, and are meant, to be.
Love’s Power of Revelation
Here is a list of three false beliefs that betray our hearts and poison our relationships. The more aware we can become of these long-conditioned false beliefs and how they compromise our ability to have fulfilling relationships, the more freedom we will win from them:
False belief # 1: Our value as a person is determined by how others see us.
If we believe our individual worth depends on how others see us, we live with the fear of being judged by them, where trying to win their approval causes us to compromise ourselves again and again. People sense this kind of weakness in us, causing them to resist us, which in turn, makes us feel even “needier.” The cycle deepens, things get worse. Here’s the solution. Seeing its truth sets us free: we are not in this world to “win” what we believe we must to feel “good” about ourselves, but rather to realize that who we are – our True Self – is already whole, happy, and complete.
Although Thanksgiving Day has become a time for turkey and football, its true purpose lingers, often as a wistful hope that one could be truly thankful. You cannot conjure up thanks if you are focused on the world’s troubles and a constant stream of bad news. So how is true gratitude found?
As writer and teacher Dana Arcuri has said, “The more you are grateful for what you have, the more you can live fully in the present.”. Psychologically, research has shown that practicing gratitude measurably improves your well-being and on the physical side, your heart health.
Gratitude begins when we change our relationship with life from an attitude of rejecting and defending to one of acceptance and appreciation. We all need reminding about a truth expressed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
If you think finding a deeper connection with your partner, decreasing stress, enhancing your sexual relationship, and getting fit all at the same time sounds like a sweet deal, you might want to consider rolling out a yoga mat (or two).
Couples yoga is changing the way we look at the the role of exercise in relationships.
The benefits of couples yoga are similar to an individual yoga class and include stress reduction, increased range of motion, relief from pain, cardio and circulatory health, improved respiration and energy, better posture, and much more. Couples yoga takes these benefits one step further and also includes the element of bonding with your partner in a new way.
By creating a shared experience, the poses in couples yoga allow you and your partner to listen to each other and work together. “Couples yoga helps bring couples closer physically, emotionally, and energetically,” explains Beth Shaw, founder and CEO of YogaFit.
We try so hard to overcome separateness with others in the moment.
More intimacy. More rubbing of bodies, exchanging of ideas. But it’s always as if you are yelling out of your room and I am yelling out of mine. Even trying to get out of the room invests the room with a reality. Who am I? The room that the mind has built.
We spend so much effort to get out of something that didn’t exist until we created it. Something that is gone in a moment. We’ve all had moments when the room disappeared and we freaked out, or explained it away, or ignored it, or let it pass by.
A moment. The moment of orgasm. The moment by the ocean when there is just the wave. The moment of being in love. The moment of crisis when we forget ourselves and do just what is needed.
We each come out again and again. We turn and look and realize we’re out, and panic. We run back in the room, close the door, panting heavily. Now I know where I am. I’m back home. Safe. No matter how squalid the room is, no matter how unmade the bed, no matter how many bugs are crawling around the kitchen, it’s safe.
The holiday season is upon us- and no matter what and how you celebrate you’re likely going to face some family stuff! And, while this time of year is meant to be full of joy and excitement, for many of us it’s also the harbinger of family tension, stress, weight gain, and emotional upheaval. So much gets triggered at this time of year, especially for those of us who are empaths and feel all the subtle forms of energy around us, and the obvious not so subtle energy as everyone behaves in extremes.
Over the past week, it seems everyone I’ve talked with is on edge about the holidays. So, I’m going to share how you can create a better experience for yourself this holiday season, and any other stressful time for that matter. First, let’s talk about the joys of family gatherings.
Could it crack?
The Practice:
Welcome fragility.
Why?
The truth of anything is like a mosaic with many tiles, many parts.
One part of the truth of things is that they are robust and enduring, whether it's El Capitan in Yosemite or the love of a child for her mother and father.
Another part of the truth is that things bruise, tear, erode, disperse, or end—fundamentally, they're fragile. Speaking of El Capitan, I knew of someone climbing it who had just placed anchors above a long horizontal crack when the sheet of granite he was standing on broke off to fall like a thousand-ton pancake to the valley floor below (he lived, clutching his anchors). Love and other feelings often change in a family. Bodies get ill, age, and die. Milk spills, glasses break, people mistreat you, good feelings fade. One's sense of calm or worth is easily disturbed. Wars start and then end badly. Planets heat up and hurricanes flood cities. Earthquakes cause tidal waves and damage nuclear reactors.
Those with whom we assemble we will soon resemble, so the simple old saying goes. Yet it tells of a deep Truth. It says that who we are - the stuff of our soul at present - is being transformed continuously by the nature of the company we keep; so that, in (our) essence we are always moving and evolving towards a kind of psychic oneness with whatever relationships we have revolving around us that we are "within."
This "company" we keep refers both to the kinds of people "outside" of us and the presence of accompanying thoughts and feelings circulating within us. To see the Truth of this spiritual Law - and how it works in scale upon us, shaping our soul’s possibilities - just imagine how a cold piece of iron or damp wood soon assumes the nature of the fire it is brought next to. Radiant energy is transferred from one to the other, and soon what has no luminous properties of its own is transformed and begins to glow. With all this in mind, now consider there are four distinct types of people that can be identified by the four dark spirits inhabiting them. By recognizing these dark forces at work in others, we can learn to catch their dark works in ourselves. Once we have the Light to see what is so (in us), we are on our way to being set free from the enslavement inherent in living in the dark of ourselves. 
A money issue doesn’t just mean having none. It can mean that one of you makes a lot and one makes none or a little, unbalancing the ‘power’ in a relationship. When you were dating did you both try to pay equally for things? After you moved in together did financial responsibility shift to one person alone? Did things move from balance to imbalance? Did you talk about it or just let it happen because it was uncomfortable?
Are you living within your means or way beyond them? Address this. This is one of the biggest problems couples face - And they usually don’t want to talk about it. Does one of you like to have lots of savings, college funds for the kids and insurance policies and the other simply likes to have things when they want them regardless of cost? This has to become balanced. It’s not a fight of one being responsible and one irresponsible. It’s different personalities; one may be fearful and label it responsible. One may be free and fun and label it irresponsible. Don’t label it. Talk about balance.
Show each other the real financial situation. Maybe you have separate credit cards with balances the other partner knows nothing about. Maybe there’s a secret debt. Maybe there’s a secret habit. Talk about it or honesty will be compromised and the relationship will be undermined.
Problems with sexual compatibility can arise when being honest and authentic with your partner are missing. Not all people who love each other are naturally sexually compatible. Sometime, as a couple, you have to ‘try’ and talk about what you each like – honestly. That is not always an easy thing to do because it exposes a deeper layer of who you are that might be judged by your partner or society.
Sex doesn’t have to be spontaneous. If you both have difficult jobs and 3 kids and community involvement, sex may not be a priority for one or both of you. Set aside time for it, and not when you are both exhausted. Try a morning or get a babysitter where you can drop the kids off (grandma). Mix it up. It doesn’t have to be in bed all the time.
Try something new and talk about it. Test you comfort zones. You have to do this together. You have to experiment together and you have to discuss this together.
Check out the Free Training form Arielle Ford, Bestselling Author of The Soulmate Secret and Claire Zammit, Ph.D. Founder of Feminine Power:
Dear Fabulous You,
It’s been an interesting week as for some reason we’ve been getting more and more email from people who have watched my TV show Messages from Spirit in recent weeks. So, because of the comments and outpouring of love and hope, I’m pondering some big questions again about what I learned on the show and what people are responding to as more have been discovering it now that it went to Youtube and Amazon prime worldwide.
If you are with another human being and you want to awaken and get free, you can do it by dealing with the people around you without expecting that they will also want to get free. But if you’re lucky, you’ll get to be around people who also want to get free. In Buddhism it’s called Sangha, and in Hinduism it’s called Satsang. Every religion has the fellowship, the spiritual community of people who are seeking together, and it’s very reinforcing to those qualities in you that want to awaken to be around other people who similarly want to awaken. These relationships help remind you of it.
We look for people that are simpatico to those values. The highest one of those is where two people have consciously and intentionally said, “Yes, let’s get free and let’s use our relationship with one another as one of the vehicles for doing that. In order to do that, since we know that in freedom there is truth, let’s be truthful with one another.” That is a very high and very special relationship. It is very rare.
