by Olga Sheean

Whether they come and go or endure, relationships are designed to show us who we really are and what we can become. They enable us to discover our strengths, our creativity and, above all, what is missing within ourselves. As a result, they provide us with the means to become the powerful, loving individuals that we were meant to be. Once we understand their true role, relationships can become the most liberating, rewarding and empowering experiences available to human beings.
A friend of mine recently lost his wife as a result of an accident. He was devastated by her sudden departure, having had her by his side for almost 30 years. The loss was all the more painful because they had both invested a lot in their marriage, working through their personal issues with a great deal of mutual love, commitment and determination. Despite the pain of losing her, however, her death triggered a profound transformation in him.
As he began to come to terms with living without her, he discovered that he had allowed his power as an individual (in other words, his ability to fully be himself) to remain suppressed in his marriage and that he had some subconscious beliefs that had vastly limited his experience of himself and of life in general. He also realized that some vital missing pieces within himself had prevented him from living and loving fully.
A closer look at the dynamics of his marriage yielded him many other important insights. In his three decades of married life, he had become so good at setting aside his own needs that he had not realized how much he had given up of himself.
The reasons for this lay in his childhood, which had not been easy. He had been forced to take care of a disabled younger sister and his father always had unrealistic expectations of him. There had been little time, love or affection for him.
These family pressures led him to subconsciously conclude certain things about himself and about love: my primary purpose is to take care of others' needs; my own needs are secondary, so my power must be set aside; the true expression of my love (power) is not welcome; I must suppress it or it will have a negative effect on those I love; and loving someone means giving them what I think they need, rather than being who I really am.
Subconscious beliefs such as these are extremely powerful in determining the quality of relationships later in life. What we believe we deserve, how lovable we think we are and how important we believe ourselves to be are crucial factors in determining our capacity for intimacy and fulfillment. But these beliefs also have a very physical effect on our circumstances. They result in our attracting their perfect counterpart: for example, a partner whose neediness perfectly matches our subconscious belief that we must take care of others' needs in order to be worthy of their love. The partner we attract will also perfectly mirror back to us our specific missing pieces (essential formative qualities), such as acceptance, trust, affection, respect, validation, support, etc. that we needed to integrate as children in order to be complete, but failed to learn because our parents had these same missing pieces.
Our missing pieces determine how we act, the choices we make, how successful we become and how fulfilled and happy we are. And they are all the more powerful for being outside of our conscious awareness.
We all have three or four primary missing pieces and relationships are usually the only way that we discover what they are. Our subconscious will always bring us what we ultimately need so that we can reach our fullest potential; it does this most effectively by bringing us a partner with the same missing pieces as us. If we understand and take advantage of this external mirror, we can identify and fill in our missing pieces, thereby making ourselves complete. We then automatically attract more wholesome, loving relationships.
Relationships never happen by accident, however random they may seem. We attract them so that we can come into our full power in certain areas, but they can be deeply painful until we realize that this is their primary role. Pain represents the flip side of our power, as my widowed friend came to realize. For this reason, it is also the most unrelenting messenger. It will not quit until we understand its message. If we fail to get the message, we recreate a similar dynamic in our next relationship. But if we manage to interpret the message correctly, and fill in our missing pieces, we break through to where most of our power lies and we can then literally make magic happen.
There are two ways to identify your most significant subconscious beliefs and missing pieces. If you can detach from the drama or pain of your particular situation -- you may be in an abusive relationship or you may have just broken up with your partner, for example -- ask yourself some objective questions along the lines of the following: What kind of person would attract someone who had difficulty being intimate with his/her partner? Answer: Someone who felt he/she did not feel lovable. What kind of person would deny his own needs in favour of others' needs? Answer: Someone who felt unimportant or unworthy.
Your answers may not be very appealing, but your partner will always give you the key to figuring out what is going on inside you. And only by transforming yourself on the inside can you have a positive effect on your external world.
To identify your missing pieces, make a list of all the qualities that you would have liked to experience in your relationship with your partner but did not. Take each one of these and see how you could apply them in practical ways in your everyday life. If respect is on your list, for example, look at the ways you could practise self respect: by putting yourself first in healthy ways, by taking care of your needs, by demonstrating respect for yourself and others and by saying "no" to any form of abuse or manipulation. As you practise greater self respect, you will be commanding greater respect from others around you. As you fill in your missing pieces, you begin to attract situations, dynamics and relationships that are filled with these same positive qualities.
Identifying what is missing in yourself will give you a clear understanding of why your relationships are the way they are, and why your life is the way it is. Filling in your missing pieces will not only transform your relationships, but also the way you act, the level of success and abundance you experience, the choices you make and how powerful you are in creating what you want.
Emotional pain is almost always an indication that we have abandoned our true self in some way, usually in favour of another person. Yet, ironically, our significant other -- present or absent, near or far, loving or not -- is our catalyst for growth, propelling us towards wholeness. Pain, the great messenger, will always remind us of that inescapable truth when we forget.

Olga Sheean is a relationship coach, kinesiologist and author of Fit for Love -- Find Your Self and Your Perfect Mate. Available at Banyen Books and Duthie Books in Vancouver or through www.fitforlove.net.