Why Relationships Are Often So Disappointing - The Little Prince Series

Daily Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

Whenever we experience a chronic difficulty relating to another person, it's a mirror of unresolved issues within ourselves.

If we fight with another person, it reflects the fact we are fighting with ourselves internally.

The issue here is all the unresolved content of our unconscious. Until we make this content conscious, so that it no longer restricts our flow of energy, we are bound to act this out with others.

One of the primary tasks of relationships, which we don't much enjoy as it unfolds, is to surface the issues deep within ourselves from which we have been hiding.

In other words relationships are intended to make the unconscious conscious.

As consciousness increasingly arises, we begin to wonder whether we ever really lived before at all. So different does the quality of our life, and therefore our experiences with others, become that it’s as if we were the “living dead” before we began to awaken.

Relationships of every kind, though especially those that are extremely close, are our most potent tools for growth. Yet usually we head into relationships not to be prodded into growth but for comfort and security.

The process of unconsciousness being made conscious feels far from secure as we are passing through it. It isn’t at all comforting.

On the contrary it's extremely unnerving. It feels like our world is coming apart, as if we are plunging into a bottomless abyss.

It isn't actually a nothingness that we drop into when we “crash in the desert,” as the airman in the story of the Little Prince has done, but rather only a seeming emptiness that is actually a potential fullness.

At such a time, what's seeking to emerge is a whole new sense of ourselves that is much more authentically who we are than we have known ourselves to be thus far.

In other words we don't surrender into nothing, even though it feels like it for a time, but into our potential to be the most incredible version of ourselves we could possibly imagine.

Few things in life can drive us to a crash in the desert as can our relationships.

Like the Little Prince, we are usually enamored with one another when we first meet, whether as parents with a newborn, as new friends, as people in a new workplace, or in a romantic setting. Mirroring this, the Little Prince is absolutely crazy about the flower he has met.

But it's precisely this sense of being enamored that sets us up for tremendous disappointment, which proves to be a blessing as we are driven to the realization that no one can fulfill us, no one be what we need them to be for us, and that we must find fulfillment within ourselves.

Then we bring this fulfillment into the relationship as our contribution.

So many of us are afraid of our attraction and attractiveness. We are frightened we might rebound. We are frightened that if we get close it may all fall apart. We want to ensure everything works just right.

It’s precisely these fears, which tend to unconsciously drive our actions, that the situations we are placed in are intended to bring to light. Fear is nothing but locked up energy—locked up love.

All of our attempts to stave off disappointment in our relationships will prove futile. There is simply no way to avoid the unearthing of our unconscious as we rub shoulders with our fellow humans, especially with a romantic partner.

Relationships are a setup. They set us up to encounter ourselves in all those aspects of ourselves we haven't yet come to know.

Once we have been introduced to our true self and begin to live authentically, we find we have so much more to offer. We are now able to at last truly connect with another person.

The growth that empowers us to relate isn't achieved by avoiding those situations in which relationships go awry. It’s precisely through the mess of everyday emotional turmoil that we are pushed to discover, in the depths of our disappointment—our “crash in the desert”—our true being, and from this authentic place begin to enjoy one another.