I was walking through the Operating Room lounge when I noticed the newspaper on the table open to an advice column. Being intrigued by advice columns for many reasons but mostly to see if I agree with the advice I read about this woman’s issue. It seems that she and her boyfriend had been together since high school and now they were out of college and both working. She wanted to get married and move toward starting a family in a few years. He felt rushed and pressured and wasn’t ready. Both were only 22 which in the now standards is very young. 100 years ago they would have been middle aged or close to it. Of course, that is another issue altogether…lol
The advice was that they were both young and she should drop the issue for 6 months and revisit it but not nag or talk about it until then. She should decide that if not getting married is a deal breaker then she should be prepared to break up with him. I completely understand the limitations of a small newspaper advice column but there is a better solution.
Let’s look at this scenario a little more in depth and find a solution that actually works. First of all marriage is a concept that means many things. In our society there is everything from the most romantic idea of forever love to the shackles of prison and loss of freedom. In everyone there may be a little of both depending on their experiences and what they have as examples in their lives.
In every moment the person is creating their experience without exception. Whenever someone tells me that they don’t have the relationship they want most advice columnists would point to the other person and say they are not the right one. Actually it might be the case but you will never find the right one unless you take responsibility for your own part in the creation of this situation.
If you want to get married and no one is asking it is because you have resistance to marriage or don’t feel worthy of that kind of love. This is the real problem and working on your issues with relationships and your own self-worth is the true solution.
Working on this is no work at all. First cultivate a relationship with your true amazing, magnificent and unlimited self. In your mind you are conversing with yourself and having thoughts all day long. Give some serious attention to developing the habit of complementing yourself, loving yourself, feeling the feeling of being worthy of all you want just because you exist. When you find your inner conversation anything but supportive and loving, change the thoughts in whatever way you can.
There are many techniques to break the cycle of limiting and resistant thoughts. The two I find most powerful is to just focus on my breathing at that moment and then connect to my higher self by saying Thank you, I love you over and over again. There are a number of ways to do it and experiment with what works for you.
While you are doing your most important work of loving yourself then get clear about what it is you want. Whether it is a relationship or marriage or both, it is the essence of the feeling that you want to be clear about. When you question the idea of marriage you may find that it really isn’t the marriage that you are after but the romance that you want. We could get into a very long discussion about relationship and marriage but for the sake of the solution to this specific problem let’s say that we are clear that you want to get married and you want to marry the person you are in a relationship with.
In this specific example the young woman would then develop an imagined scenario of the marriage already a reality. It could be her having lunch with a friend showing off her wedding ring or reminiscing about the wedding. It could be her having a romantic dinner with her now husband and looking down at her ring and having him say something about how wonderful their wedding was. It could be the actual day itself exchanging vows. Whatever the scene, it should be short and reproducible. The scene should also be seen from her perspective instead of her watching a movie of herself.
Every night before she goes to bed she would visualize this picture while during the day just working on loving herself. There is no purpose to pressuring and ultimatums as they don’t result in happiness for anyone. During the day she would continue to develop her own self love and feelings of happiness.
It is possible that she may find that as she starts loving herself unconditionally she may grow away from her present relationship and decide marriage to this man is not what she wants. In fact that may have been the subconscious issue in the first place. If that happens then she will be free for the man of her dreams to enter her life and to then have the marriage she really wants to the man she was meant to be with.
The other possibility is that as she becomes unconditionally loving to herself, the man in her life will find her even more appealing and will want to marry her with all his heart. He will be sure of her and himself and it will be all she dreamed it would be.
I know it sounds unrealistic but when you truly understand how powerful you are you will realize that it can happen any way you want it to happen. You are beyond magnificent and unlimited and all things line up perfectly and magically when you are connected to that truth.
