True love begins with both curiosity and acceptance of yourself. For years I couldn’t understand why my Dad and step-mother wouldn’t accept me. I never felt truly loved or accepted by them, even though they would tell me they did any time I would question them. I would seek out proof as well. It was easy to find. Any situation that didn’t go exactly the way I expected it to go, I would tell myself, “It’s because they didn’t love me.” I would also get consensus with friends, by sharing all of the horrible things my parents would do to me. The stories would, of course, be from my point of view, and my reality.
I tried everything to get them to accept me and love me. I blamed myself for not being good enough. I blamed them for being mean. I went to therapists, and read books, never figuring out how to have the relationship I always wanted.
One day I got a completely different perspective. What if I was being a certain way and they were just reacting to my way of being? I realized that I had deep resentment towards them and it grew deeper over time because of all of the stories and evidence I had collected. What if those stories and evidence weren’t actually reality? Could they have been telling me things and doing things that I had twisted to mean something else? I brought up a few situations to my Dad, and told him how I felt and what I had made it mean, and it turned out that from his point of view, it was a completely different story! I realized that I wasn’t fully and completely accepting them for who they are, and because of that, realized that if I was projecting that, I just assumed all others projected the same back at me.
Once I shifted my way of being, took responsibility, and let go of the resentment, because really there was nothing to be resentful for, they started reacting to me differently. They became loving and accepting. I now have the relationship I’ve always wanted with them.
Try talking to the people in your life if you feel like they’re not treating you right. Hear their side of the story with a truly open mind and heart, and you will often find that we are responsible for much of the negative connotations we assume are the “one true reality.”
