Personal development/Being versus (?) acceptance of “who the other person is”

[Tim Stretton]

If I have this right, or wrong.

1 — I read/watch/listen on various webpages and people about the acceptance of “who the other person in the relationship is”, that we should not change them, etc.  I read/watch/listen on-line that we are invited to understand the idea of “being on the same page as someone else” for the relationship to get a chance to work.

2 — However, we men (and women too, I am thinking) are all here to improve our personal development and our mindset to help attract the opposite gender, assuming that is, we want that.  I have read and noted Leo’s invited comments on his message, “To All Struggling Males: Stop Playing Victim!”  Many thanks for that, Leo!

3 — I am also aware of the idea of gender roles versus (?) the ever-changing roles of men and women in romantic relationships since, say, the feminism movement in the last 100 years or so and gender egalitarianism.

4 — With this, we are also invited to the idea of spiritual enlightenment and the idea of being conscious and separating the mind (the ego) from the body (the real self, the Being), that is (if I am right), “who we are” just is, that actually, there is no “changing” nor “non-changing” about our non-egoic true selves anyway, that I couldn’t change anyone, even if I tried to (!), that only those unconscious people who had a problem with their ego/self-image would feel changed!

5 — In spiritual enlightenment, self-actualisation and personal growth, we seem to be invited to the idea of not caring whether or not we are ourselves or someone else, the ultimate freedom, that there is no “page” at all to share with anyone, that we are at one whole with the universe because the freedom comes with the non-defence of “who we are”, that our “pages” (should they exist) are merely notional with no walls/boundaries etc. and that we are not imprisoning ourselves in whatever “I am ‘me’ and I will not be changed!” mindset we decide to have.

THE QUESTION:

“Who we are” (or not!), self-imprisonments (?), self-development, gender roles/gender egalitarianism, spiritual enlightenment, going beyond our “pages”, thinking outside the box instead of inside the box (No wait a minute!  What box????):  How can we marry up all this knowledge for romantic relationships so that they have a better chance to work?  And if not, why not?

Many thanks in advance for any enlightened comments from anyone, including Leo, should he want to. 

[universe]

You can always share the present moment with someone. And you can make it your mission to not get side tracked too much. You are not "blank" you are the expression of god. And you dont even have to be aware of it.

[bejapuskas]

@Tim Stretton  I observed this on myself and my parents, but I think it also works in romantic relationships. They always think like they need to tell me what to do, it's as if they were my owners. They are good parents, but this is really their problem, I want to feel independent and free. I think this is what it means to accept the other person, to not try to own them, to set them free and if they go back to you, they're truly yours. The first for growth is a good indicator of a high quality partner in my opinion, they don't have to be like some Jesus type of person if you know what I mean.  I don't know about the gender roles and sexual polarities though, they seem to have some meaning, some people really benefit from them, but I wonder how does it improve your life, how do you find out what kind of polarity you have...

 

[JustThinkingAloud]

We still are! We act, we think, we feel and that’s what makes us. Yes, the way we are can change but it takes work and only we can do that.

I think that love is about respecting and valuing each others way of living. If you feel like you need to change someone then you don’t really love that person, you love the person that you want them to be. We grow and improve but that means that we become a better version of our old self not a different person.

[Tim Stretton]

@bejapuskas  & @JustThinkingAloud I can also relate to my parents, not so much my dad but my mum, who for 30 years has hoped that I could be, not only a gentleman — which is great to be by the way — but also some lady’s knight in shining armour, that I should treat the gentleman as almost ‘necessary’, that I should play ‘by the rules’, that I should do things for women so that they don’t, like paying on first dates, etc.  I love my parents very much, but perhaps my mum hasn’t really appreciated my way of seeing the world (and I think that that has been shared by many women other too), whether or not that is a good thing at the time.    I think that there is one thing being a natural gentleman, and that being a gentleman as some kind of ‘requirement’.  I presently disagree with the latter as I think that it’s not ‘true’, if you see what I mean.  That doesn’t stop me from being good and gentlemanly towards women.

I also think that it’s not just ‘who we are’, but also how we use the ‘who I am’ element, and only we ourselves can decide to either build a thick brick wall around us and say ‘I will not be changed!’ where there is little or no room for manoeuvre, or better, I think, to demolish those walls that ‘imprison’ us and allow ourselves to grow without defending our direction.  These days, I try not to define myself as I used to, but to look back at what I have become instead.  If any future woman in my life feels changed by my outgoing ‘no box at all’ thinking during our relationship, that’s her decided personal imprisonment, I am thinking.  Perhaps I am wrong.

?

Edited July 16, 2019 by Tim Stretton

[bejapuskas]

@Tim Stretton  When I was younger, my parents were doing all the labour, shopping, etc... for me, so I grew up very dependent on them. Now I am kind of rebelling against that and I want to be very independent and I can even observe it with other people sometimes, that I don't like when they are trying to help me with stupidities and stuff like that. It's not like that I am resentful towards that, but if they do it too much, I can get mad. Maybe that's why we are members of such a radical forum, because we don't want to be part of this big collective ego. 

[Tim Stretton]

@bejapuskas  I have a similar story to you.  My mum asked my dad or I if one of us would empty the kitchen bin.  Dad and I had always done it and Mum didn’t much, though she did so much more that I did!  At the time, my sister wasn’t at the house.  I thought, ‘Why had the men been chosen to do this?  Was it important?’  I challenged my mum, though really, I was challenging ‘the system’, what I now see, rightly or wrongly, as the collective ego.  After I hung my head in shame, this led me to be a master of doing things all round the home; all jobs will be ‘unisex’ in their approach from then on, and this would also apply to dating and relationships in general!  I had become a gender egalitarian and I have done everything to the best of my actual ability ever since.

For example, when I was married at the time, my ex-wife would, want to take over the cooking that I was very happily doing, so that I was the one using the toolbox and she wasn’t because “that was a man’s job”.  This was a common activity, to which all/most of the women were united! 

Putting that aside for now.  By labelling myself this person, I had inadvertently ‘imprisoned’ myself because I was defending it!  I was defending the ‘me’ that I wanted to be, so I had ‘built’ thick walls around me as if to say, “Don’t change me!  I am who I am!”, as if I was only on that page and nowhere else.  A now ex-girlfriend did the same and I was then on the outside looking in.  ‘Ah’, I thought once I had grieved, ‘it doesn’t pay to do that does it?’  Don’t ‘be this’ and don’t ‘be that’, just ‘be’.  End of ego, singular or collective. 

Now, I am looking to (attempt to) combine all those elements in my question, and to find that special lady who would be willing to join, and we can then build our rose garden together and grow together!

[bejapuskas]

@Tim Stretton