Relationships Are The Mirror In Which We See Ourselves

The world of human relationships inevitably interests and affects us, we cannot remain indifferent to this fact. We are learning to discover who we are through the eyes of others, and each person we meet during the course of our lives can bring us something different.

Do you remain open to the possibility that anyone can bring something important into your life? Depending on our openness, this will be more or less true; the important thing is to recognize that each person has this potential in our lives, just as we do in the lives of others;  being aware of this possibility and taking advantage of it depends on each one of us.

Relationships as a learning opportunity

Every relationship we live in is potentially important. Any encounter we have can make us discover many things about ourselves. Be it in our love relationships, with family, with our friends, casual relationships and work relationships. Any kind of relationship can have an impact on us.

Every relationship becomes an opportunity to see how we react to each person;  how we communicate, how we feel, what annoys us, what behaviors we like, what makes us angry and furious, etc.

When we focus on the other person in terms of how we feel, we are missing out on valuable perspective. It wasn’t the other person who created an emotion, it was me who had this reaction to their behavior, which I can investigate and see where it comes from, as an opportunity to see what it has to do with my life.

For a person to react in this way, he is supposed to be very aware that it is not the other person who causes us anger, discomfort, or sadness, nor is he the one who generates happiness, joy, or enthusiasm. The entire repertoire of emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, is generated by ourselves through connection.  They are responses that we issue about our experience and our belief system.

The relationship as a mirror of myself

There are many feelings, desires, and intentions that, for certain reasons, we are ashamed of, and end up rejecting outright. These are parts of us that we are unwilling to see; and to defend ourselves we use projection. We project onto other people what we are unwilling to see in ourselves.

We have emotional reactions that trigger the projection, and they can be either positive or negative.  In the positive ones you are reflecting in the other person a part of yourself that you like, that you value and appreciate, and that you are not aware of. In negatives you are reflecting something you censure, a part of you that you don’t like, doing everything possible to avoid having to acknowledge; this implies an internal conflict that interferes with relationships.

The interesting thing about being able to recognize our projections is to see how our attitudes and perceptions towards people and the world around us are essentially the rejected ideas that we harbor in ourselves.

Your relationships say a lot about you

Anyone can provide us with great love, good company and important lessons. We become demanding waiting for it to come to us from the outside, however, it is an internal issue. Everything that is meaningful to our life appears when we are open to receiving it.

No one can offer us integrity, strength and stability, and it is not fair that we take this responsibility from others. All of this comes from within, and is facilitated through the relationships we maintain.