Acceptance in Relationships

By Michael Knight

Monday 19 July 2010

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You often hear people say you must accept the other person in the relationship for what they are and have, and not attempt to change that person into what you want them to be, as clearly the latter does not work. People must have the desire to want to change themselves.

My belief however is, while this is fundamentally true to wholly accept the other person and perhaps their family into your inner circle of life right through to your heart, you must first consider a few things:

• Know thyself or rather have a good understanding of yourself including core values, such as what you will negotiate and what you will not give up or be prepared to change or tolerate;

• Identify all of the other person's character traits and core values by just being observant and perhaps asking questions;

• Then determine whether this other person is in alignment with your current values, or perhaps a set of new and improved values you may wish to adopt and finally;

• Whether you both have that fire and chemistry, or animal magnetism adoring and being madly in love with each other.
  

If you can get all the above in alignment with each other you have an excellent chance of a strong and enduring relationship together.

Summing up, it maybe easy for your partner or anyone to say you must accept the other person, however in reality if you intend being in a truly interconnected and intimate relationship for the long haul, you will need to spend some time working through the above areas before you can finally accept the other person. Hopefully, if the love and commitment to each other is real, you can both communicate your needs and sticky points making all the necessary changes needed to mesh together.

Who knows, during this process it may come to pass that you can't accept yourself and may want to change for the better. It can be a fun and challenging time and certainly time for enormous personal growth, alternatively if you have been diligent with this process, it may reveal that you have to indeed say goodbye to the other person.

Just a note if you are with a narcissist and he or she says they accept you, I wouldn't advise you to accept that on face value, but rather research thoroughly what narcissists are all about. You just may really be surprised with what you find out. Nothing is worth the loss of yourself or the selling of your soul.

With love, kindness and peace
Michael