If you’ve struggled to create, forge and sustain loving relationships, these experiences have been cracking you open so that you can release emotional baggage. When you break the cycle, you can truly show up for the loving relationship you need, desire and deserve.

Relationships expose the pain, fear and guilt we’re carrying around. These surface not because they want to make us feel bad but because we’re being given a fresh opportunity to respond differently from how we did in the past. In doing so, we gain an updated perspective that lets us heal and move forward.

Unfortunately, we humans tend to invest more of our energies trying to suppress, repress and reaffirm these feelings, beliefs and judgements than we do trying to declutter, feel and heal. We do this via the likes of people pleasing, perfectionism, overgiving, overthinking and over-responsibility. The moment pain, fear and guilt show up, we think, ‘Uh-oh, here we go again!’ If we sense a real opportunity for change, we then bolt, backtrack, act up, freak out, go into people-pleaser-on-steroids mode and more.

This emotional unavailability closes us off to the most loving experiences because we’re defending against vulnerability and being ‘back there’ (the past). We don’t realise we’re blocking intimacy and other landmarks of healthy, loving relationships.

Every relationship experience is a stepping stone to the relationship that’s most befitting of you.

This is the one where you will be most awakened to giving and receiving love, care, trust and respect. When you allow yourself to see this, you can recognise your emotional evolution. You also get to learn more about who you are and what you truly need, want, expect, feel and think. Take this data so that you can be more discerning in future relationships. Acknowledge your progress, even if you’re not where you want to be yet. When you allow you to heal, grow and learn, your relationship experiences get to, too.

The post Embracing Emotional Evolution: How Relationships Unlock Healing and Intimacy appeared first on Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue.