The Ego in Relationship

You have your thoughts, opinions, interpretations, judgments, and experience. All these come against her pattern of thoughts, opinions, interpretations, judgments, and experience, in your relationship with her. What is the result? Misunderstanding, grudges, and bickering. “But it was not like this at the start,” you say.

You remember meeting her for the first time. She was the woman of your dream. Full of your egoic thoughts, beliefs, and ideas, you started a conversation with her. And she responded or rather, her ego responded. A relationship is about to begin. There is talk but no true communication. It is your ego communicating with her ego not your true self communicating with her true self. You are not being real, you are not being you, so you pretend to be who you are not. The same happens with her. You do not meet her, your ego meets her ego.

Ego meets ego and so the egos interact and form a relationship. You call it love but ego love is conditional, possessive, having so much expectations. Love is a state of being but for the ego, it is not so. Love for the ego is a business transaction, “I will give you my attention and resources and you will give me your appreciation and sacrifices.” This is why ego love ends up being a story of negotiation and compromise, a journey of infatuation, lust, and betrayal.
At the centre of our being is God. If we are in alignment with the centre of our being, we are in alignment with God. That is a blissful state. I call it the state of grace. In that state, it is no longer you who lives but God – God lives through you. But the problem is that our mode of living is decentred from the source of our being, we are no longer in alignment with God. A void is created and we feel it as fear. The void gives us anything but peace. Instead of dwelling in God to fill this void and experience peace, we try to fill the void with work, entertainment, pleasures, and other forms of distractions none of which can fill the void even though they can make us feel happy. Needless to say, a relationship cannot fill the void but you have the expectation that your relationship will fill the void, will make you happy.

A true relationship is a communion of beings in love, in love with themselves first. You cannot give what you do not have, so if you want to give or share love, you have to experience the love in you first. If you are in love in yourself and she is love in herself, then the relationship both of you will form will be a communion of love. If you are not in love in yourself and she is not in love in herself, then the relationship becomes a distraction, a distraction that prevents both of you from going within to face that fear created by that void resulting from your decentred mode of living. Instead of dissolving the fear, you compound the fear.