10 Powerful Relationship Principles

by Matt Laughlin

These ten healthy relationship principles lie at the heart of joyful and spiritually inspired marriages. Contemplating and acting on just one of these timeless principles opens the door to greater fulfillment and peace in relationship.

As this relationship advice site grows, look for specific videos and practices to assist you in discovering the depth and potential each of these relationship principles hold.

1) We cannot have from one another what we are not willing to be to one another: We acknowledge this life dictum at work in our relationship and recognize we cannot receive from the other what we are not giving or being.

"You cannot have what you are not willing to become." - Michael Bernard Beckwith

2) Inner honesty and self-examination: In our growth together we are committed to self-examination; to recognizing and admitting our inner limitations, mistakes and obstacles to integrity and lovingness in all aspects of our relationship/marriage.

3) Forgiveness and compassion: We value forgiveness over 'being right' and seek to be compassionate with one another when errors, misunderstandings, primitive drives, possessiveness and desires for control give rise to painful emotional patterns in our life together.

4) Awareness and witnessing: We recognize the healing qualities of awareness itself and seek, where possible, to step back and witness the experiences of life together from a more benign, expansive space of awareness versus the limited perspective of our minds/egos and prior conditioning.

5) "Healthy" relationship is our goal: The Anglo-Saxon root of health is "hal," from which we derive our modern words, "heal", "whole" and "holy." We recognize the essence of a truly healthy relationship is to heal, to become whole, and to realize the holiness of our union.

6) Higher alignment: At the core of our relationship/marriage is a shared alignment to realize and become the many qualities of Love itself; which is tender, uplifting, generous, selfless, supportive, humble, compassionate...

"More evolved patterns of relationship that are free of negativity are consequent to basing a relationship on mutual alignment rather than on possessive, emotional involvement." - Dr. David R. Hawkins

7) Devotion and surrender: We surrender and devote our life together to the care, guidance and innate presence of God* within. (*Higher Power, Divinity, Consciousness or whatever name you ascribe to the Source of Life which is in accord with your spiritual/religious orientation)

8) Your happiness is mine: We recognize that a fundamental principle of a truly loving spouse/partner is to seek first the happiness of the other and to support one another in the fulfillment of our potential in life.

"...grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love;..." - Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

9) Lovingness and laughter are natural: We acknowledge that tenderness and laughter are spontaneous, natural expressions of what we are. Our task in growing together is not to force lovingness but to remove our inner, psychological and emotional impediments to simply being ourselves together.

10) The source of our relationship fulfillment is within: We recognize that the source of love and relationship fulfillment is within and not derived from our companion, yet we also understand that our relationship allows us to acknowledge this inner presence of love and experience it.

"[In a true marriage], you are neither the man nor the women, but the love between the two." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

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