Much of what you learned about love and intimacy may no longer work.
Conventional ideas of relationship and marriage don‘t leave much room for who two people are as individuals. Centuries-old gender stereotypes have forced men and women to play out predetermined roles. They prejudice and limit what can happen. As a result, relationships often feel like exercises in futility, leaving people enraged or depressed wondering — “What’s the point?”
But the source of prejudice actually goes deeper. We all grew up learning, to some degree, that those who are different are somehow “wrong,” “bad,” “not to be trusted.” So we feel threatened by those who are not like us.
When your date or mate behaves in ways that are different from what you expect, don’t you feel the impulse to want things your way? Doesn’t that wipe out the other person? And it all happens so fast, it just seems like “the way things are.”
Well, it’s not! Any time we want things to go only our way we are immersed in prejudice, in a deep seated need to protect against anything different from ourselves. Then the world becomes a tiny place, only as large as we are. And we’re left to wonder why we feel so alone and lonely.
Yet, there’s so much more to life than just what we already know. And some of the best teachers
are those people who are different from what we already know and expect. It’s because they are different that we can be awakened to new consciousness about all kinds of things, most importantly to new awareness about ourselves and those we love.
To be prejudiced means to pre-judge others (and often ourselves). When we drop the fear of differences then we give ourselves and others the benefit of our openness to discovery. Then we can be alive in the adventure of life each and every day.
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