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Why We Do It

Increasing separation from our spiritual source leads to artificially created ways of relating to others. Pretenses, on an instinctive level, and defenses, on an intellectual level, are the tools we use to cut ourselves off from our authentic nature by substituting unconscious isolation behaviors and intellectual insulation patterns. While the initial intention of these protective patterns provides opportunities for survival and success on a personal level, this benefit comes at the cost of true physical and emotional closeness in relationships.

Instead, our attachments to socially accepted ways of acting function as substitutes for being authentically present. These roles isolate and separates us in a way that creates distance in relationships. As children seeking acceptance and approval, we learn to anchor our beliefs about ourselves in terms of how others see us. By combining various perspectives an outer identity is formed and organized that may have little connection to our authentic nature. The power of belief can overcome our truth. As a result, we attempt to use these projections to extend and enhance our own false identity, not realizing the disempowering effect this has in their relationships.

Expectations about others drives us to preemptively take positions to offset potentially negative interactions. Typically, fear of rejection and abandonment keep us from creating open and close relationships. Some use the expectations of others to leverage their own interests through game playing, seduction, and romantic entrancements. Reactive behavior is based on avoiding dangerous scenarios and reinforcing basic safety and security standards. Conformity to these general assumptions about how relationships "should be" can actually produce rebellious activity meant to destroy these standards. The effect is greater uncertainty, leading to anxiety, fear and doubt.

As we lose our sense of security and safety with these roles and rules, we begin to develop intellectual insulation strategies. The defense structure becomes more complex as we seek to be acknowledged for our desired capabilities while denying weaknesses. Comparisons to others or some fixed ideal become the primary means of discounting our partners, usually in order to maintain personal superiority. The belief that power arises from control and influence over others or that success occurs independently of the well-being of others around us (part of the illusion) keeps us stuck in competitive relationships.

What isn't realized is that our fears of not being adequate, loved, or wanted become a full time job of trying to prove we are adequate, loved and wanted. Unfortunately, only individuals with opposite defense styles are attracted to this particular presentation (who we think we are). In fact, they fall in love with our defense style (what we want to be) and are actually repulsed by who we actually are. It is no wonder, then, that in these relationships it is not sensible to share real and essential issues. The agreement in opposite defense style relationships becomes to accept the self-image and presentation of a partner in return for their not questioning our presentation.

Choosing partners with the same defense style initially feels unnatural we change our polarity by loving and accepting our higher creative potential. When we believe that we are our defensive style, our negative avoidance program only attracts others with opposite fears. Until then, we are more attracted to others that represent what we deny in themselves. For example, those with wisdom are attracted to those with aliveness and vice versa. Others with the same defense style would immediately see though the little lies that compose most of our self image. In addition to confronting what we would like to believe about ourselves, the primary challenge would be our inability to project what we don't love about ourselves onto same defense partners. This is why over eighty percent of relationships choose opposite defense styles.

Our attraction to opposites derives from the appearance that opposites can provide what we need and the belief that the false sense of security provides an opportunity for growth. Unfortunately, the greater the differences, the more awareness, attention and energy is required to maintain the relationship. This is why the energy in "opposites attract" relationships goes into fixing, maintaining and working out issues rather than mutually creating possibilities outside the relationship.

When we are attracted to our opposites it indicates that we are still learning who we are. Opposite relationships can be catalysts for clarity and acceptance of who we are or opportunities to lose our higher truth, harmony and alignment in compromises that never seem to end. While many suggest that acceptance of differences and uncomfortable similarities can lead to enlightened relationships, the odds suggest otherwise. Statistics indicate that the chance of success in this practice is 4 in 1000 relationships. With support and conscious self development (and with the compatibility information) we can increase the long term success rates to 1 in 4 for opposite defense style relationships.

The problem in many relationships is the growing polarization, compromise and entanglement that arises when we seek the apparently easy way out. When we adopt and believe that we are these patterns, they lose our spiritual connection and the hope, faith and love that come with higher alignment. Operating from artificial defensive identities attracts others with complementary false identities. Defensive opposites initially tempt us with the appearance of safety and security, intimacy and growth, but later we learn that these are promises that cannot possibly be kept. Ironically, the fulfillment of needs we feel to be outside of our control becomes the battering ram that compels us to compromise our own spirit.

Settling for what's reasonable is the justification that keeps people in unsatisfying relationships. When someone has never experienced the possibility of being met, honored and accepted for who they are, it is hard to imagine that the pretenses and defenses are what are actually keeping away our best opportunities. When we are not capable of honoring, loving and fulfilling our own needs, defenses lead us to believe that we need others to be complete. By defining ourselves in terms of our partners, we solidify the tradeoffs and lock ourselves into an endless cycle of trying to prove to ourselves and our partners that we are who we say we are and that we have value as partners.

Since defenses distort reality and opposite defense style partners have complementary distortions, positions become more entrenched, fears more real, and resentments more profound. We get sensitized to the smallest issues which in turn become personalized; we come to believe that a partner's actions must be intentionally designed to upset us. Showing love is the most difficult difference between opposite defense styles. Eventually we realize that the differences allow only one partner at a time to show love and be loved. When the partners realize that love has become work, it is usually the last straw that breaks the relationship.

It usually takes several breakups before we begin to deal with the unfinished business of our childhood and address our fantasies of self importance and success. Until we understand how pretenses have kept us from bonding with others or our how we use defenses to try and get our needs met through a partner, we are lost in a repetitive cycle. Pretenses produce only excitement and isolation; defenses produce intensity and insulation. Together they form a co-dependent system of interlocking and self-perpetuating screens. The alternative is to learn who we are so we can be ourselves. It is time now to heed the call of our authentic intuitive self to generate the enthusiasm, passion and integration that lead to enlightenment.

The challenge is the lack of individuation, the lack of personal ownership of our lives and the lack of understanding about the consequences of our choices. The lack of individuation results in believing that our source, answers and love is outside of ourselves. The lack of personal ownership derives from confusion about our authentic creative nature and uniqueness. The lack of understanding about the consequences of personal choices comes from doubt concerning our destiny and free will. Exploring our true nature leads us to recognize the creative power of relationships to clarify our opportunities.

I invite you to switch from hiding out in relationships and using them to sabotage your growth to using relationships to reflect your highest nature. It is time now to listen to your true inner voice and accept that your false personality of defenses and pretenses (which has successfully guaranteed your survival thus far) is no longer required. By first developing an enlightened relationship with ourselves, forgiving past mistakes and judgments, and detaching from instinctive programming, we prepare ourselves to consciously embrace mutual consensual opportunities.

The path to enlightened relationships requires that we become enlightened beings. We ready ourselves for Spiritual Partnerships by healing our past attachments, letting go of comfortable positions, and developing the autonomy, intimacy and creativity skills necessary for full uncompromised expression. To accomplish these results, we must learn to elevate and honor intuition as a way of anchoring our connection to our spiritual source. To this end, Higher Alignment encourages intuitive development by supporting natural compatibility factor recognition as a means of facilitating spiritual alignment.