Relationships are transforming. We don’t have the same relationships that our parents did, and we surely don’t have the same relationships that our grandparents did.
Men and women will always be different, but evolution has forced us to adapt the way men and women communicate, partner, and select whether or not to remain monogamous. Divorce has enabled women to leave repressive partnerships and pursue alternative means of support.
Because relationships vary, so does the ideal connection.
You married a while ago to unite families and properties, which was great. Because of Hollywood, we now have an ideal of “romantic” love through marriage, and we are also moving into love from spiritual places, rather than just about survival and pooling our resources. When it comes to relationships in the caveman era, it was all about pooling resources. And women were the primary providers back then because they gathered all of the daily staples, such as nuts, seeds, berries, and veggies. Every other time, the guys got the hunt. 80% of the meals was provided by women. Women faded into the background as males became more dominant in giving resources through technology and controlling women in marriage so men could track who was the mother of their children… and simply because the entire world became about control. The stranglehold of control is beginning to loosen on our world. It’s a big deal.
Consider the state of our economy. Women are resuming their roles as providers. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and researcher on love across cultures and time, has noted how women are returning to the center of economic power. Women are becoming more powerful as they become more central in resource collecting, decision-making in our daily lives, and leadership roles in our governments and communities.
According to love experts, a strong woman might be daunting to a guy, whilst others believe that a woman must offer a nurturing environment for the relationship, acting as the “soil” for the male to plant his seed and thrive. I don’t think this takes us anywhere with the transformation in relationships.
I believe a deeper evolutionary process is taking place in which we are questioning men’s and women’s biological roles and exploring how to actually shift these roles so that both men and women can be aware of their masculine and feminine bodies and hormones and have more choice in relationships, more choice in how to love, and more choice in creating the ideal love that they seek. I know my mum didn’t consider any of those things before she married! She was thinking to herself, what a nice hunk, I hope he chooses me!
Because women now have more flexibility in partnerships, we must rethink our relationship ambitions and standards. Being a strong woman has been stated to be a hardship for a male, but strong women have always been vital for survival and keeping families together throughout history. Strong women understand that relationships are not what we think they are, but rather what we make within our families and with our love partners.
We are experiencing relationship “breakdowns” not because we do not want to “work” on the relationship, but because the relationship itself allows us to access every wound, hurt, and uncertainty about love that we were meant to experience. You may find yourself with a fantastic man or woman, but the relationship does not take off because a part of you is still resolving a love hurt or determining what kind of love you want to establish.
You may be continuing in a relationship with someone not for any rational reason, but because your soul has made an agreement to be with that person. So, while our rational mind may constantly question the connection, our soul understands you must stay to help you learn your lesson of love and to help the other person learn their lesson.
Strong women know that even when our romantic relationships fail, we are still creating love around every corner. We continue to make room in our lives for love. And we are overcoming generations of preconceptions that women should suffer in violent marriages. However, women are no longer compelled to remain in a relationship in order to survive economically or to be accepted by their family or community.
Because the new objective of the change in relationships is self-realization rather than giving up the self for partnerships, women are choosing independence over pain. This does not mean that women will neglect their children in order to focus on themselves, but it does mean that, on a practical level, child rearing will no longer be the be all and end all for a woman, and we will change the way we define to children what is a woman’s role in the world, what is a man’s role in the world, and what is the individual’s role within the family. Women are making decisions that will alter the world into a world where the individual in the partnership has a voice to improve the relationship.
Because we no longer have the promise that any relationship will continue, strong women in love are the ones who remain open to the transition in partnerships.
That is not to say that strong women are unaffected by the end of a relationship. In truth, it means being more emotionally strong enough to accept separation, hurt, and loss into our hearts and heal and look at all the unresolved hurts we have had in love, not only in this incarnation – but in all the lives you have ever lived.
I know my mother did not have the opportunity to work through her relationship problems. So I also spend time thanking her. My mother taught me to be free, independent, and strong while feeling constrained, unable to express herself, and unloved.
Strong women, educate other women and men how to be hurt and still love in spite of the suffering, to give instead of falling into “what’s in it for me”. Consider what the world will be like after we stop feeling trapped in our choices of love, life, and relationships and begin healing those past wounds. This transformation in relationships requires us to turn over every stone to identify what remains unwanted and love it until we are free of all sorrow.