Energy serves as both the medium and the message of relationship. The omnipresent energy that fills our world provides the medium through which the energetics of relationship can occur. Just as whale songs travel great distances through ocean water, we communicate (we spread ourselves to others) through the energy matrix that encompasses all life on earth. At the same time, much of what we communicate to others consists of the patterns of energy that have come to define us. Like a radio station sending out its specific content, each of us continuously broadcasts our “message” to current and potential others. This message comes out of our interior world and may include a full panorama of thoughts feelings, dreams, and memories. We especially communicate any fixed or contracted patterns of emotional energy, including those of relational inheritance, social viruses, and the unresolved energies of emotional suppression.

When two or more people have a relationship, they energetically “tune in” to one another’s messages. For short and passing relationships, as with a checker at the grocery or a stranger on the street, this tuning in amounts to no more than the channel surfing of a bored television viewer. One picks up but a brief and vague hint of another and then moves on, with little effect. In more intimate relationships people essentially stay tuned to one another as senders and receivers, for longer periods of time and experience. Ideally. This means that they willingly engage in a full and mutual sharing of their innermost selves, even if they do not comprehend the energy dimensions of that sharing, that they commit themselves to honest communications (truth in sending practices), and that they actively listen for the whole message of the other, from its more overt expressions to its most subtle vibrations.

This brings us to one of the great mysteries of human relationships, why do we feel attracted to certain people? While some of the explanation certainly has to do with such externals as physical appearance, social class, education, vocation, and avocations, the full story lies in the sending and receiving of subtle patterns of energy. Each of us continuously communicates specific relationship patterns formed through our unique experiences. We tend to attract those who in some way resonate with our patterns, even as we feel attracted to those whose patterns touch or trigger something within us.
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As an example, a man who experienced unremitting criticism from his mother throughout childhood will embody a whole tapestry of specific memories. Perceptual tendencies, personal laws, and suppressed emotional energies. A pattern of relationship related to her stance toward him. Though he may give no thought to his mother or his childhood, the “I can never do it right” pattern of relationship will nonetheless have a strong voice in his energy message to others. He will tend to attract someone who in some way connects to that message. Perhaps another harping critic (just like Mom), or another longtime recipient of harsh criticism (who can relate), or perhaps someone who always experienced loving parental acceptance (who can thus point to another way of being).

The specifics of one’s personal story do not matter so much as the general meanings and emotional tones. The woman who has a problem with her father may end up working for a female boss ”just like her father” or a male boss who matches the role she played in the father-child relationship. One’s over protectiveness or in a teacher who challenges and pushes beyond feelings of safety. The boy who grew up competing for a parent’s love may turn life into a competitive struggle against everyone he meets.

We draw people to us, even as we feel drawn toward others, in part because we somehow fit together. Our stories sound some common chord. The patterns of relationship that I transmit touch the patterns that you transmit and they resonate, they resound, they cause reverberations within each of us, subtle vibrations that get our attention, that makes us notice each other, that start us relating.

We especially feel attracted to those who, because of their unresolved patterns of damaged relationship, can help us to feel and ultimately heal our own unresolved patterns of damaged relationship. The people whom we feel most attracted to have a way of reaching inside and touching our suppressed emotional energies and unresolved relationship issues (which explains why “you always hurt the one you love”). This accounts for both the magical wonder and the hellish struggle of human relationship. We feel drawn together so that we can bring awareness to the patterns of contracted energy that hurt and bind (the hellish struggle) and then let go of them (the magical wonder).

The health and status of a relationship largely reflects the degree to which each person participates (or not) in this invisible play of sending and receiving emotional energies. Thus we commonly speak of people who “keep everything inside” or who “won’t let others in.” They seem shut down, closed, distant, withdrawn, uptight, turned off, frigid, and unfeeling. Their opposites “fill the room” with their personalities and live their lives “like open books.” They have personal magnetism. They seem open, outgoing, accessible, engaging, warm, attractive, sensitive, and feeling.

When any participant in a relationship fails to send or receive, the relationship suffers. If such suffering goes on for too long, the relationship contracts into dysfunction. Conversely, when all participants at the very least make concerted efforts to stay tuned in to one another, then the relationship grows, develops, and moves toward fulfillment.

Connection is based on intention, not emotion. Intention is the cause, emotion is the medium. The intention to connect must come first whether consciously or subconsciously. Only then will the intention move the energy in motion as a means to form the connection. Conflicting intentions are what causes conflict in the emotional connection. It causes your energy to move in opposing directions at the same time because you want to expand but at the same time you also want to withdraw. The way to clear the connection is to resolve the conflict of intentions first and to make the intention to connect so strong that it overpowers the intention to disconnect, thereby breaking through and allowing your energy to flow across in the relationship.

When people first feel in love, they experience as all new lovers do, an exhilarating two-way rush of emotional energies. They energy expand outwards to embrace each other’s energy-self. They opened to one another all that each had to offer. They each basked in the other’s light and danced to the other’s song. They lived, breathed, and moved in the other’s love-energy, as if it formed a subtle chrysalis that gave them safety, nurturance, and the promise of ecstatic transformation.

For as long as they stayed in love, the received a host of secondary blessings that come with love. Their bodies worked better, they felt mentally and spiritually inspired, they became healthier on all levels. Their communication skills improved immensely as they finished each other’s sentences, sensed each other’s aspirations, and welcomed each other’s pains. The passion that they felt for each other flowed outward, touching those around them with positive energy, spreading a “love virus” throughout their world.

Yet eventually one of the blessings of living in love that doesn’t always feel so wonderful occurred. They began to touch and arouse each other’s patterns of damaged relationship. Like unwitting psychic doctors, each reached into the other, feeling for and palpating suppressed emotional energies. Their beautiful affair turned problematic and at times felt awful. Unaware of the opportunity for deep healing that had opened before them, each began to contract inward. The man withdraws from the woman as she withdraws from him. The woman makes herself less vulnerable to the man as he likewise closes her out. Essentially, they energy-disconnected, their love withered, and their relationship died.

All relationships pass through periods like this, when the healing that must happen makes it nearly impossible to stay in love. Some couples manage to remain together, but only by sustaining their emotional suppression and disconnection. They devolve into dysfunctional relationships, sharing little of their true selves and not risking love, passion, or real emotional healing. Other couples call it quits. The lovers move on to find new partners who, alas, eventually trigger the same old feelings and suppressed emotional energies. The same old patterns of damaged relationship repeat with every new partner until the lovers accept the healing that must happen or give up on love altogether.

True lovers find the courage and the will to stay emotionally flowing and connected through the hard times. They keep communicating, They stay energy-alive and open to each other’s message even when it hurts, especially when it hurts. They honor their commitments. They see love as a forever journey rather than some fairy tale destination, and they accept all the twists and turns of that journey, the sudden changes, the unexpected transformations and the inevitable healings. Of course, when you truly love, every moment is a fairy tale to you.

The difference between settling for a stuck and unhealthy relationship and calling it quits or creating a healthy flowing relationship comes down to each individual’s emotional responses when things get difficult. Those who respond with various combinations of unaccepting attitude, chronic bodily tension, and stifled breathing inflict damage upon themselves and their relationships. Those who respond with a mix of active acceptance, dynamic relaxation, and connected breathing create for themselves and others all the positive benefits of emotional flow.

They would either take the path of open and honest communication or stumble down the road of chronic suppression. They would either stay energy-connected and vitally related or they would pull back, close off, and settle for a halfhearted, futile attempt at relating across a widening abyss. A woman will interpret anything less than free flowing and unconditional loving energies from her man as a lack or withdrawal of love.

To create a healthy flowing relationship somebody has to respond with emotional flow when things get difficult. Acceptance in the hear and now only means to stay emotionally open and energy-connected, to respond with acceptance rather than contracting with denial. Active acceptance means to intentionally open and energy-expand rather than defensively shrink away. To energy-embrace each other’s whole message even though it hurt.[/hidepost]