5. Creating Conscious Relationships

Exploring Conscious Partnerships and Personal Growth in Relationships

In this episode of 'Becoming Sunshine,' Madeline discusses the importance of conscious partnerships and the personal growth that relationships can foster. She shares her own recent experiences with dating, emphasizing the need to ask deep, introspective questions about love, treatment, and respect within a relationship. Madeline also delves into the different stages of relationships, the impact of childhood trauma on adult relationships, and the significance of holding space for each other's growth and healing. She encourages listeners to follow their intuition and design relationships that align with their personal happiness and fulfillment, beyond societal norms.

Chapter Markers
00:00 Introduction: The Most Loving Thing

00:46 Welcome to Becoming Sunshine

01:12 Madeline's New Year and New Relationship

03:21 Understanding Conscious Relationships

05:23 Stages of Relationships

08:28 Healing and Growth in Relationships

12:02 Challenges and Misconceptions

15:23 Deep Connections and Holding Space

23:22 Personal Reflections and Experiences

34:00 *Trigger Warning* Referencing Incidence of Sexual Assault

37:27 Redefining Relationship Norms

39:34 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Madeline: 0:00

Another really great question to ask yourself whenever you're in conscious partnership is what is the most loving thing I can do for myself and what is the most loving thing I can do for my partner? If you're moving from a place of love for yourself or for your partner and the answer's yes, is it loving for me to stay in this relationship? Am I treated well am I treated with respect? Who do I need to become in this relationship in order to stay in this relationship? I think that's a very deep question sometimes, because it's easy to shift blame or to look at a partner and be like, why am I so triggered in this relationship. Is it something that my partner is doing or is it something I'm being asked to heal?

0:46

Welcome to Becoming Sunshine. For those of you that know me, you know that sunshine has been an alias of mine for almost a decade now and sunshine also is me becoming my highest self and that's what this podcast is about. I'm here to help you understand yourself better and maybe learn some more about myself along the way. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm excited.

Madeline: 1:12

Hey guys, it's Madeline. I recently started dating again and it's funny, I feel like at the beginning of the new year, I told myself I was going to just be open and open to receiving open to new energy see where that led me and not have any judgments or preconceived ideas of what that was going to look like for me, and I met someone this year that I'm excited about. It's been kind of challenging because I haven't opened myself up to anyone new really in a long time. Really in probably six years. I dated the same person on and off for a really long time. I feel like part of that is out of comfort. I know a lot of people can probably relate staying in something that's not necessarily working and not necessarily healthy. Going through these cycles with the same person just because it's familiar and comfortable doesn't mean it's necessarily right for us, or it's going to help us grow. so at the beginning of the new year, I told myself we're done with that. We're going to just do our own thing for a little while and refocus on ourselves, pull back some of that energy and it honestly, didn't take that long for the universe to put someone new in my path. In the beginning, I was a little standoffish needless to say a little bit hesitant, apprehensive just because it's scary, putting yourself out there and meeting a new person. The person I ended up meeting, this guy, he actually was going through something really similar. He had just gotten out of something really long-term as well, and it's interesting I feel like this time around I'm entering partnership and relationship with a completely different mindset. I feel like I've had a more serious mindset around dating for a while now, but it's different in a way still. I'm focused more on creating conscious relationship and conscious partnership my understanding of partnership and relationships, just go so much deeper now and let me explain what I mean by that. Before when I was dating when I was really young, I was not conscious at all when I was dating, I wasn't even sure I ever wanted to get married or have kids and that was definitely reflected in my choices of partners and choosing unavailable people, emotionally unavailable people and then as I started to date more seriously, I chose partners where I was like, okay would they make a good father? Would they make a good husband? Which I think is important? But I didn't enter my previous relationships with how is this individual that I'm dating what are we co-creating together? Are we helping each other evolve. Are we pushing each other to be our best versions of ourselves? Is this person bringing out the best parts of me. I don't mean that as a cliche, in a healing way, it's interesting because that doesn't necessarily mean it's all sunshine and rainbows, and I think that's a common misconception with relationships and markers of whether or not they're successful because it's not supposed to be sunshine and rainbows all the time. We're complex people and the older we get, especially if we're doing the work on ourselves if we're in therapy, if we have a spiritual practice, things are going to come up. There's attachment issues. There's childhood trauma. There's trauma from previous relationships as we get older and as we are dating, we have these experiences that become a part of us and become part of our dating history and our dating story and we move into new relationships with these stories and they shape who we are I am working on a certification right now, a coaching certification. I'm learning a lot about relationships and they talk about the different stages of relationships There's the first stage I think we're all pretty familiar with, the infatuation stage or the honeymoon stage. That usually last anywhere from six months to two years. I think that stage gets a bad rap sometimes because it's more surface level. It's more superficial and there's a lot of different theories, like the Imago theory which is about wound matching and where we're attracted to certain people that mimic our earliest childhood experiences and attachments, which there is some truth to that. Love is attachment. When you're a baby and you're forming this bond with your primary caregiver, usually your parent. You form an attachment to them and it's that love that you share and it's because they're taking care of you You literally need this person to survive and it's not completely wrong. It's not completely off, but I think sometimes people misunderstand it thinking that, oh, I only liked this person because of my childhood trauma or we're trauma bonded, or I only am attracted to this person because my subconscious is trying to recreate these circumstances that I was first introduced to in childhood and I'm trying to heal them, which is not necessarily bad and not necessarily untrue. I think when you're doing this inner child healing and you're recognizing your patterns, just because you trauma bonded to someone or because, it's your patterning doesn't mean that this person is a bad partner. We're constantly co-creating with the universe and the universe is constantly asking us to self realize and sending us teachers to show us our next level lessons, so it would make sense that the next partner that you're attracted to is sent to you to help you heal these childhood wounds or to heal your wounding Maybe you're attracted to the same types of people, the same types of partners, and you're attracting the same lessons and that just means you haven't healed it yet, that doesn't necessarily mean this is a bad person. This is a bad partner. I think sometimes the best partners are the ones that mirror back to us, what we need to heal. I don't think that's a marker of a bad or toxic partner necessarily. I think that's what partners are supposed to do in conscious relationships. We're supposed to be mirrored what we need to heal. Otherwise we're not leveling up. We're not becoming better versions of ourselves, and if my partner isn't making me better what are we doing? I don't know. that's just me. I feel like there's just a lot more education and a lot more consciousness around relationships and interpersonal communication. It's different for every generation. Our parents were told don't fight in front of the kids, do that in private, don't ever show any of that in front of the kids, but in a way you do a disservice to your children when you don't have disagreements in front of your kids because they never learn to see repair in relationships, and I feel like one of the most important aspects of a healthy relationship is in the repair. It's not necessarily how you communicate, it's how you problem solve because things are going to happen. It's not going to be sunshine and rainbows all the time, and if you don't have the tools in your tool belt, and you don't have the endurance in the relationship, then it's not going to work, and also you can't really see how compatible you are if you never deal with the hard stuff. if you don't know how each of you handles conflict, do you shut down? Do you get aggressive? Do you belittle the person those are real moments in relationship where you see how compatible you are, you see how much compassion and sensitivity and perspective your partner can have, and how much space you can hold for your partner, and if you guys are creating a safe container together and I think that's so important. When parents are taught not to fight or argue in front of their children, of course don't raise your voice of course, don't scream or be disrespectful towards your partner, but I think it's important for children to see, hey, my parents are in love. These are two people that are very much in love and they had a disagreement, they worked through it. They repaired and now they're stronger than ever. I feel like that's such an important aspect to show children because otherwise all they see is super happy couple that never fights never argues, and so their frame of reference for a healthy and happy relationship is we must never fight, we must never argue. so then when they're grown up and they're in relationship and there's conflict or there's disagreements, or they're fights, they think that's a marker of a bad relationship and that's just not the case. I feel like one of the best markers of a relationship and the health of a relationship and the longevity of a relationship is how you repair and how you grow through conflict and disagreement and holding space for each other's perspective and seeing outside of your own perspective, and I think that's so important. I think too, it also is challenging for little kids when their minds aren't fully developed and everything is very absolute. Everything is black and white and they never see their parents fight and then they ended up divorced, especially with my generation so many of our parents ended up divorced and it's the same generation that was taught not to fight in front of the kid, it's so confusing. It's okay my frame of reference for relationships is my parents never fought, everything seemed perfect, but they ended up divorced. I feel like it's led to so much dysfunction in dating now with people of my generation cause it's like you almost have a trust issue now with it. You're like, okay, it doesn't make sense. it feels unsafe. I feel like that's a big part of it, it's crazy, having these realizations and thinking about it this way and I feel like people are starting to have these conversations now when they weren't like 5 10, 15 years ago and it just goes to show how many different aspects of ourselves and our relationships are based on childhood and what we saw and what we grew up with and what was the example that was in front of us and also just our childhood wounding and understanding at that age. That's the second stage of dating, so the first stage is really this, infatuation period and then after that you start to really get to know each other and see if there's actually some depth underneath that infatuation and the beginning and you see if you're really compatible and if there's really something there something deeper. In this stage, this is where things start to get a little bit rocky. I feel like that's why a lot of relationships and people go through these cycles where they date someone for two years, and then they find someone new and they date and they're happy for two years and then they date someone new and it's because after that honeymoon point that's where the real stuff starts to come up. Your attachment issue started to come up. Your intimacy issues start to come up, people don't know how to deal with that they don't have the tools, they weren't modeled that in childhood again, because parents didn't model that for them, and maybe they're not doing the work on themselves. Maybe they're not dating consciously which I think is a big part of it. I feel like a lot of these issues arise because you don't feel safe in love or you don't feel whole yourself, and your partner is showing you places where you don't feel whole and if you're not aware of your partner mirroring this to you, then you might incorrectly blame your partner for showing you these things that you don't want to see you showing these things that you don't want to look at. Your shadows come out and if you're not working together to heal them, then you ended up pushing your partner away, you ended up resenting them and then unfortunately, maybe it doesn't work out and then you start over with someone new. After a certain point, the same issues start to arise and the more you do this work on yourself and the more aware you become the next partner you attract is going to come in at a higher level of consciousness. So either you're going to move through the stages of love and dating faster or you're going to go into them a lot deeper. Maybe when you're younger, the honeymoon phase lasted two years, and now that you're older and you're more conscious of your patterning and your wounding, it's only a few months before these wounds start to arise, because the universe is pushing us to heal these things and we're just more aware of them. I think if you don't really understand what's going on on a deeper level, it can be frustrating. You're like, okay, this person is triggering me. we've only been together for a couple of months and in your mind, you're like, okay it shouldn't be like this in the beginning. It shouldn't be this challenging and I think that's unfair. It's completely false so the second stage is really this compassionate love that you and your partner are forming. You're starting to love each other on a deeper level, past the superficial stuff. You're starting to heal this wounding. That usually last seven to 10 years give or take and then after that, it starts to move into real true love and that's when you're able to self realize together. It's a deeper understanding of each other on a spiritual level. You've done the work, you appreciate each other in a different way and I feel like a lot of times that's why people have the seven year itch because you're going through this transition and that's why I usually around this time, people either make it or they don't make it. They're realizing, have we really evolved together? Have we really grown together? Are we still compatible, are we still helping each other become our best selves? Our greatest versions of ourselves They start to reevaluate as they're going through this transition to see if this really is my person still. It's okay if it's not, I don't think longevity should be a factor or a marker of the health or the success of a relationship. The success and the health of a relationship should be based on the depth of the relationship and the quality of the relationship. Just because a relationship didn't last a really long time doesn't mean it wasn't impactful and super meaningful and necessary for our evolution. People come into our lives at certain points to teach us stuff and as you do more work on yourself and heal yourself you actually move through these levels at a faster pace or in a deeper way. You're constantly attracting new partners that are meeting you to teach you these next level lessons in life and you're not going to meet the same kind of partner or learn the same kind of lessons hopefully that you were learning and meeting when you were 24, versus when you're 34, you should be completely different person at that point. Spiritually and otherwise. People miss the mark with this a little bit, they think, oh we shouldn't be having these problems this early on, or this shouldn't be so serious this early on. we should still be in the honeymoon phase and it's just we're both very conscious people, and these issues, or these wounds are going to come up a lot sooner. It's because our partners asking us to heal these at a faster rate so we're moving through the stages faster, or we're just going so much more in depth in these stages and into these wounds and into these shadows. Another really great question to ask yourself whenever you're in conscious partnership or you're in a relationship of whether or not it's healthy, whether or not to stay is what is the most loving thing I can do for myself and what is the most loving thing I can do for my partner? If you're moving from a place of love for yourself or for your partner and the answer's yes, is it loving for me to stay in this relationship? Am I treated well am I treated with respect? Who do I need to become in this relationship in order to stay in this relationship? In order for this relationship to be sustainable. I think that's a really good question to ask yourself, and I think that's a very deep question sometimes, because it's easy to shift blame or to look at a partner and be like, why am I so triggered in this relationship. Is it something that my partner is doing or is it something I'm being asked to heal? Am I feeling insecure because of their actions or am I feeling insecure because of my own wounds. Am my feeling needy or am I feeling anxious because, I need to learn to clean up my side of the street, or I need to learn to be more resourced and to self soothe. Healing these attachments and healing these wounds and, our partner asking us to take ownership and evolve and grow and to heal I think that absolutely is a factor of a great relationship and a happy and healthy relationship and sometimes it is asking us to do the work and it's challenging it's hard and sometimes it's easier to be like, you know what? No, I don't want to do this, but it's am I being asked to level up in this relationship, am I being asked to be a better version of myself and on the other side, am I going to be more whole and if the answer is yes, then I think that's a great partner and that's a great relationship relationships and love are really showing us where we're not whole and we're searching for wholeness, but it's not in our partner. A lot of people falsely try to search for wholeness in their partner, or they search for a partner that's going to complete them and that's false we can only feel completed by ourselves. We can only feel unconditional love for our inner child by ourselves because asking someone to love us unconditionally is asking someone to not have boundaries, to not have standards and it's just not realistic. The only person that can unconditionally love you is you Healing these wounds and healing our inner child and healing our attachment issues and healing our trauma it's really guiding us to become more whole and to serve our highest good and I think as long as we continuously ask ourselves these questions and the answer's yes, in order for me to stay in this relationship, I'm going to need to become a better, more whole more secure version of myself then absolutely I'm going to be more of a queen at the end of this, I'm going to be more of a king. Then, yes, this is a healthy partner. We're creating a conscious container. We're creating a safe container for each other to evolve and through that you have such a deeper level of appreciation for your partner. You have so much more compassion and love for the person that they truly are and you see them healing and becoming their best self and personally, that's the greatest purpose for a relationship is creating this containers together where you're both evolving to become even more successful, even more healed, even more self-assured even more confident, and who wouldn't want that. it's easy to get caught up in all the different narratives on social media of oh, like this is healthy. This is not healthy. but I think it's important to realize that nobody understands the ins and outs of your relationship other than you and your partner, and you can take anyone's advice or compare it to previous relationships, previous partners, but I feel like when you do that, you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your partner. It's not fair to slap a set of presets on a relationship and think this is how it's supposed to be. This is how my partner is supposed to act. This is how my partner is supposed to show up for me, and having healthy open communication is super important, but I feel like sometimes if things aren't going the way you think that they're supposed to take a step back before you are reactive or you go to your partner, and think to yourself okay why do I feel this way? Why do I feel like I need this, is it because they're not meeting my needs or is it because I'm not meeting my own needs? Is there something here that I need to handle? Recently I was struggling with this a little bit in my own relationship. My partner was going through a lot and I felt like I wasn't getting the attention that I needed. I wasn't feeling prioritized, and then I took a step back and I thought about all the things he was dealing with and I put myself in his shoes and I was just like, wow, this is a lot and despite all of this, he was still trying to be there for me. He was still trying to be communicative and supportive and I feel no, one's perfect. He has his own coping mechanisms, which he's working on and I feel like with partners sometimes they could be more avoidant or more anxious and I feel like we tend to find each other. The people that shut down are attracted to the people that get anxious and want even more communication and they start this dog paddling energy and they just end up pushing each other away and making each other crazy. It's so common again, these people are probably attracted to each other because they're here to show you. this is what you need to work on, this is what you need to work on. Maybe I need to not shut down or maybe I need to not be so anxious and pushy when this person really just needs a minute to ground and regroup and recollect themselves, and they just need to process their own stuff. Yes, they could probably be better at communicating but the anxious person maybe needs to be more perceptive and sensitive to the other person's situation and say, okay, if I was going through this situation, I probably would really struggle as well and I probably would need some time and space to heal and to move through that and to integrate that before I was able to do X, Y, Z, that's so important and I'm not always my most amazing self and I can be reactive and just taking ownership of where I wasn't at my best and apologizing and communicating, even if it's after the fact is so helpful and again, it's in the repair and in these moments where we're taking radical responsibility for ourselves and for our emotions and for our behavior and that's really how you grow in partnership and grow in your interpersonal relationships and with yourself and how you show it better next time sometimes when we're triggered by our partner, it's our partner mirroring back to us and showing us these places where we haven't healed ourselves or where we have this childhood wounding. Why, do I have this abandonment wound? Why do I feel this trigger so deeply? Even when we've done the work, sometimes these triggers still come up and it's our partner's way of helping us along our journey in our evolution and showing us what we still need to integrate what we still need to work on. Part of creating conscious partnership is seeing these patterns and being aware and not, blaming your partner or thinking that you're not compatible or they're not showing up for you they're not fulfilling your needs. There's more to it than that and I think it's easy to seek advice from our friends or take advice from other people, To be like, oh, this partner is toxic this person's a narcissist. These words are just thrown around so excessively these days, or the whole, if he wanted to, he would thing let's cut that out let's get rid of that if they wanted to, they would, they can go either way not if he, if, if she, if anyone, if they wanted to do a no, not necessarily, because people are way more complex than that. Someone can love you or someone can deeply care for you and not be able to show up for you in every way that you need. We're all dealing with our own inner wounding. We're all struggling in our own way. We're all carrying so much and working on our own evolution and our own healing and our own spiritual journey and whether we're conscious of something or not it's yeah maybe I want to show up for you and I want to do all these things for you, but I have to take care of myself first. I have to take care of my own side of the street first and sometimes people are going to come up short. That doesn't mean they don't care about you and I feel like just writing someone off or just cutting someone off or being like, oh okay next and there's almost this culture on social media where it's oh, cut him off cut her off next and it's not helping anybody Being an understanding and conscious partner and having perspective and having empathy and having sympathy and just being a person and being understanding and being patient these are all very important attributes to a healthy relationship. At the first sign of trouble or the first sign of, whatever just to drop someone or, or to be like, oh, they're a narcissist or, oh, they're toxic oh no, we're all doing the best we can. Relationships are hard. They're not supposed to be easy and you're not going to be in love all the time sometimes, you're going to hate your partner and that doesn't mean that they're not a good partner. It doesn't mean you're not in love. That's just the way the world is we're complex human beings who have complex emotions and I feel like if you're in it for I don't want to say the long haul because again, I want to just want to reiterate that longevity is not the goal here it's the quality and the depth, but a big part of that is being more understanding and being conscious and being aware and healing yourself and healing is hard work on both ends and I thinking that relationships are just supposed to be easy is silly it's not like in the fairytales and the movies yeah, there are magical moments and a lot of things can be like romantic comedies in real life but, healing yourself and healing your trauma is hard work, and it's going to be a little ugly sometimes and having a partner that can hold space for you and show up for you is so important especially when you're dealing with challenging themes yourself I know in my own relationship we got really deep, really early. I feel like that was part of the attraction and part of the magnetism to each other. It was like, wow, I haven't felt this level of depth with a partner in a really long time if ever, and that's really special and that's really rare. I think qualities like that are much more important than oh, we never fight we never have disagreements, we never have challenges. it's like having only party friends, which is such a crazy comparison and never thought about it this way before, but just having party friends is not real. I'm at the place in my life now where I don't even need party friends. I need just a handful of people that, they can talk me through the hard times they're my ride or dies and that's really all I need at this point. I don't need surface level relationships. I don't need service level friends. I don't need a surface level romantic partner. If we're just gonna only have the good times we're just going to have fun together. Ah, no, like that's not what life's about and that's not what I need when life gets hard, because life is going to keep lifeing and I need someone that's going to be there to support me when it gets hard and that's what really matters. In my own relationship like I said, we got really deep, really early, and I feel like that's when we really started to connect and bond and I feel like at this point in dating, I don't hold anything back and if I'm in the talking stage and the getting to know you stage and I'm going through something and we're trying to get to know each other I'm not going to hold back because if you can't handle this now, then you can't handle this down the road. I feel like my strategy's I'm gonna throw this at you if I'm going through something and you want to be there for me and you're showing me, you're courting me Hey, I want to show up for you I want to be there for you I want to be your person I want to be you're a man, and I'm like, all right this is what I'm struggling with I'm going to give it to you and see if you can hold space for me, and if you can awesome, we can move forward and if you can't then we're not going to waste any more of each other's time and that's fine. early in the relationship I was really going through a lot. I was having friend breakups. I had something really traumatic happened in my life and there was also the anniversary of a death of somebody that was really important to me. That made me really sad and, I opened up about this to this new potential partner and the way that he showed up for me, the way that he communicated the way that he held space for me was so incredible, especially for someone that I hadn't known very long. That was just such a true testament of the quality of this person and the compatibility between us, because that's the stuff that I need. That's the stuff that is a priority to me in my life and in my relationships and is a testament of the type of people I want in my life and it's just little things like that. That really aren't that little actually at all Being able to have the difficult conversations and see how your partner shows up for you and sharing trauma and seeing how your partner can hold space or not is so important. I feel like we both have been through a lot and we were opening up to each other about things that happened in childhood or happened, just a few months prior or just a couple of weeks or whatever, like whatever we're dealing with, and the way a partner is able to hold space is so important. Everybody has stuff it's just who can hold it, who is compatible in the way that they can carry and hold you. That's more of an important factor than some of these other superficial things. There's some things that, maybe are challenges for us, but I'm willing to work through them because of the way this person shows up for me in these other much more important ways, in my opinion. Something that I've opened up about on the podcast. I haven't gone into detail really before, but this is a theme that I know a lot of women especially, men too. I don't want to just say women, men too, but especially women have dealt with. The statistic is one in three women, unfortunately will be a victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime and unfortunately, I've had my own struggles with this in my younger years I thought it was something that I had integrated and moved past and the more I've thought about it recently the more, I realized these themes still come up in my relationships. I'm still dealing with them and I get triggered by certain conversations, certain topics or certain things and being able to open up to a partner about these things and the way you're feeling and how it's affecting you today and in your relationship dynamic now is important Something that happened a decade ago now and unfortunately, there was something that happened a few months ago before I met this partner that brought up a lot of this old trauma and I feel like it set me back a little bit in my healing journey and it just goes to show that healing isn't linear. I've done a lot of work on myself and I still have these things that come up. I still feel triggered sometimes by stuff that happens. Maybe we're having a conversation or something just reminds me of this time in my life that I'm so triggered by still, and being able to communicate with your partner and have them being able to hold space for you and meet you with so much love I feel like having these conversations and the depth in the relationship is such a better indicator of health and growth than if we're always laughing or we never have an argument or we never have a disagreement or we never run into any type of wounding or triggering. Oftentimes we're triggered by our partner as we're growing and healing. Things in our life will come out that will show us where we're not healed and having these conversations and having a partner that can hold space for you is so important. That's what creating conscious partnership is about. I know that was a lot to unpack and I'm still working on what conscious partnership means to me. What type of relationship I'm searching for and I'm seeking and I'm building now, and I feel like it's something that's always going to be evolving. I think as long as we're asking ourselves these questions and we're being curious and we're being conscious then we're in a really good spot The most important piece is to listen to your own intuition first and your own guide because we're all very intuitive. We all have gifts and some of us just lean into them a little bit more naturally, but in your heart, whether or not this person's right for you or whether or not you want to be in this partnership or this relationship and I don't even want to say partnership because I want to acknowledge that so many people now are in open marriages or open relationships or polyamorous. I think there's something to that Evolutionary, we never were designed as humans to have one person meet all of our needs and I don't think that necessarily means you need to open the relationship up or you can be monogamous and happy, but thinking that one person is going to meet all of your needs is just so unrealistic. I don't think you need to necessarily supplement or outsource in the relationship. I think, having friendships and having a life outside of your partner and having your own stuff going on is so important. When your partner becomes everything to you, that's when you run into these issues Whenever we're in new partnership or we're re-evaluating partnership or relationships, I should say intuitively looking inside yourself as your guide and taking it one step at a time being like, okay, today, what do I want today? what is going to serve my highest good today? Accepting different types of relationships in different stages of relationships is okay too. I don't think again, slapping a set of presets on what our relationship is supposed to look like, what a healthy relationship is There's been so many social constructs and social norms and a set of rules set on us of what relationships are supposed to be and what they're supposed to look like and if you know yours doesn't look like that, it's wrong or you don't really care about each other. It's whatever you want to do, whatever's gonna make you happy and fulfilled and things can evolve and I think that that's okay. The whole concept of marriage and everything else and death, do us part, all of that is really all based on the patriarchy and religion and ownership and it's 2024 we can write our own rules. We can figure out what feels good for us and again, as long as we're asking ourselves these questions and we're creating conscious relationships it doesn't really matter what it looks like. It doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks. At the end of the day, it's your relationship and it's what's going to make you happy and forget about everyone else. Just do you, boo. That's what I'm doing and yeah I feel for the first time in my life, not just in my relationships, in a lot of different aspects of my life, I'm realizing that I can make my own rules and I can design my life to look any way I want it to whether that's your relationship, your career your whatever, people pleasing is out and radical responsibility of ourself and our happiness and our life is very much in, so anyways, this episode covered a lot. If you guys have any questions, feel free to message me. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you guys enjoyed this episode. I love talking about relationships I'm definitely not the expert. I just I have my experiences and I'm always trying to learn from them and grow from them. Anyways, love you guys. Thanks so much for listening. Bye. Hey guys, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, remember to comment, like, and subscribe. Share it with your friends. It really does help me. You can also go to my website at becomingsunshine. com and subscribe to my newsletter. You can support the podcast there. Thanks again. I appreciate you guys so much and we'll talk soon. Bye!