So many people are looking for that “meant to be” relationship. I was speaking with a student recently about this and why it’s such a sticking point with me. Besides the fact that the percentage of people we are “meant” to be connected with is rather small, percentage wise, it would be immensely boring and robotic to go through life only connecting with the people we are meant to connect with. Why bother with this embodiment process if we’re just going through the motions? A big part of why we’re here is to create and become things we have never been before, to unfold our possibilities and find our edges so we can surpass them. But how can we learn what we don’t know if we’re only doing what we’ve always known with people we’ve known before? The point is to experience the unknown and glory in the tapestry of what if.
However, there is another factor to the “meant to be” relationship which makes it such a golden ring to strive for. Regular relationships take work. No matter how glorious they are, they require our participation, our attention, our commitment, our willingness to be wrong, our honesty in situations where the intentions were good but the execution was suboptimal, our good humor and our desire to try and try and try again. “Meant to be” relationships are supposed to not require any of that. They take all the effort out of it. We are supposed to get all the good stuff without any of the bad, all the results without any work, all the commitment without any of the doubt. “Meant to be” means a free pass.
“Meant to be” also means a release from responsibility. Because if it’s meant to be then there’s no choice involved, it’s not up to the parties involved, it’s the will of outside forces bringing them together for their best and highest good and everything will work out happily ever after. And if it doesn’t it’s not their fault. They’re not responsible. It had to have been something wrong in the circumstances like bad timing or others that wouldn’t get out of the way or someone just wasn’t aligning with their astrological chart in the right way. “Meant to be” is like the gods of ancient Greece. They exist, their motivations are inscrutable, and we are at their whim.
I much prefer relationships that aren’t meant to be. Good relationships that are a choice between both parties, where they work to make it work, where they are authentic and share themselves and make mistakes and make it up and create something completely new from the combining of their souls and their lives in messy, goofy, wise and miraculous ways. That’s where the magic lies.