Our relationships, but especially with those we love, are a kind of "magic mirror." Our partner helps bring us into an awareness of qualities and characters that otherwise we'd never see as dwelling within us. And we serve the exact same purpose in their life. Further still, whatever level of patience or anger, strength or weakness, cruelty or kindness, that any of us have realized in this life, we know each of these qualities within us only because our partner -- whoever or whatever that may have been at the time -- stirred us into an awareness of it.
Understood properly, this insight means that we are in each other's life as a kind of "secret agent" of this kind of revelation, and we're all brought together by love for this same reason: so that any pain or limitation still concealed -- yet unhealed within us -- might be revealed, realized, and integrated into the greater whole of us.
Of course, all of the above sounds great; in fact, perfect! That is until...one of us stirs the proverbial hornet's nest in the other. Suddenly all we see, and know -- because our negative reaction tells us so -- is that our partner has done us wrong, and what must be done to make things right...again.
We can do better than to take the side of this resistance that wants to wrap us up in a dark ball and roll us away. Yes, of course our partner may have and -- in fact --- will cross whatever "line" we've drawn in the sand. They will test the limits of our patience, kindness, or ability to forgive, as we will theirs.
But, what other circumstances are there that can reveal the parts of us that will only go "so far" for the sake of the one we love? How else would we ever come to realize the present limits of our capacity to love...so that as grows our willingness to recognize the secret good in these unwanted revelations, so does our ability to see -- and to appreciate our partner -- for what they are in reality: an "agent" of love whose secret mission is, in part, to initiate the kind of healing that begins with revealing whatever painful character still lives concealed within us.
We have a choice: we can either continue to unconsciously resist this pain that we've always blamed on our partner, standing by, helplessly, as it reseeds itself again and again, growing into greater levels of frustration, resentment, and mistrust...
...Or we can work to make this resistance, along with its attending pain conscious; we can recognize and realize its appearance in us for what it always has been in reality: the unmistakable awareness of an invitation to let go of who we have been and, at the same time, to grow -- along with our partner -- into a love that is altogether new, true, and beautiful.