Gender stereotypes have been present in society for centuries, shaping the way we perceive and interact with one another. We are taught to believe that certain qualities and characteristics are inherently “masculine” or “feminine,” leading to the generalization that “all men” or “all women” think or act in a certain way. However, this narrow way of thinking not only boxes us into defined groups, but it also feeds into the mindset of consumerism and throwaway culture. After all, if all men are the same and all women are the same, then any person can be easily replaced with another. But the truth is, people are not replaceable goods, and we are not the same even if we share the same gender.
Fortunately, there has been a growing movement to challenge these harmful generalisations and move towards a more nuanced understanding of our unique traits, beliefs, and characteristics. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen argues that we should embrace the multitude of identities that each person has, rather than pigeonholing them into a single category based on one characteristic. This means acknowledging and celebrating the many partitions that shape who we are, such as our nationalities, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and more.
It’s time to break free from the cycle of harmful generalisations and stereotypes and start seeing the beauty of each person’s uniqueness. Each individual on this planet is irreplaceable, and we should treat one another with the care and compassion that comes with recognising this fact. So let’s celebrate the many facets of human identity and move beyond the damaging notion of “all men” or “all women” mindset.
The heart of a human being is no different from the soul of heaven and earth. In your practice always keep in your thoughts the interaction of heaven and earth, water and fire, yin and yang.
Dads…. We may respect them, appreciate them, get annoyed by them, or laugh at their jokes. However one thing is for sure: We wouldn’t be who we are without them. And so often their jokes turn out to be some of life’s most important lessons…
One of my dad’s favourite songs was about a friend…
Once when he heard this song on the radio, he said: “Like with friends, do not be in a rush selecting a life partner… Take your chosen one up a high mountain with you… And if he survives your sense of humour, bring him home – I’ll have a look…” đ
Funnily enough, we lived in a flat part of the country with not a single hill in sight…. đđđ
Santaâs making his list of whoâs been naughty and whoâs been nice this year. Will you find you or your partner on the naughty or the nice list? Check out OneLove Foundation’s naughty and nice lists to find out!
1. You accept and love your partner for who they are, including their quirky qualities!
2. You donât make jokes at your partnerâs expense and you can have constructive conversations if something is bothering you in the relationship.
3. You trust your partner and donât get suspicious of what theyâre doing when youâre not around.
4. You and your partner make relationship decisions together with neither person feeling like they have no say.
5. Your relationship doesnât feel like an emotional roller coaster. You keep your cool when you argue, drink, or get upset.
6. You and your partner are both happy with the amount of time you spend together and the amount of time you spent apart. You have your own life outside of your relationship and can balance a love life and a personal life.
7. If thereâs a problem in the relationship, you and your partner can have a constructive conversation about it without fear of retaliation.
8. Your friends and family like your partner and your partner encourages you to maintain healthy relationships with these very important people in your life.
9. Your partner respects your decisions. They donât tell you or make subtle hints about what you can do, what to eat or wear, and who you should talk to or be friends with.
10. You know your relationship is making you a better, happier person. You have no doubts about whether or not itâs right for you.
1. Your partner tries to hide or change you instead of accepting you for who you really are. Your partner makes you feel like you need to change to keep them satisfied.
2. Your partner nitpicks and criticizes you more than youâd like.
3. Your partner is always wondering or worrying about what youâre doing when youâre not together.
4. Your partner is the one calling all the shots and you feel like you need to follow along to keep the peace.
5. Your partner wants all of your time, but you want a little more time to yourself. You donât bother talking to them about it because you know they will overreact or, if you do bring it up, they lash out at you or make you feel guilty for wanting some time apart.
6. Your partner makes you feel responsible for their happiness or success.
7. Your partner makes you wonder if youâre the problem in the relationship and they blame you for everything.
8. Your partner doesnât get along with your friends and family.
9. Your partner tries to control what you do, who you spend time with, and who you talk to. Theyâll tell you an outfit doesnât look good so you change, ask you not to talk to someone they perceive as a âthreat,â or tell you what parties you can go to.
10. Your partner is belligerent and out of control when they drink.
If you find yourself thinking, âthatâs my relationshipâ after reading this naughty list, start the New Year by addressing this and seek professional help if needed.
“Marriage is ugly, you see the absolute worst in someone. You see them when theyâre mad, sad, being stubborn, when theyâre so unlovable they make you scream. But you also get to see them when they are laughing so hard that tears run down their face, and they canât help but let out those weird gurgling noises. You see them at 3am when the world is asleep except you two, and youâre eating in the middle of the kitchen floor. You get to see the side of them that no one else does, and itâs not always pretty. Its snorting while laughing, its the tears when it feels like its all crashing down, its the farting, its the bedhead and bad breath, its the random dances, its the anger and the joy. Marriage isnât a beautiful thing, but it is amazing. Itâs knowing that someone loves you so much, and wonât leave you even though you said something nasty. Itâs having someone have your back no matter what. Its fights over stupid things, like someone not doing the dishes or picking up after themselves. And itâs those nights you fall asleep in each others arms, feeling like there will never be enough time with them. Itâs cleaning up their throw up, or just rubbing their back when theyâre sick. Itâs the dirtiest, hardest, most rewarding job there is. Because at the end of the day you get to crawl into bed with your best friend, the weirdest, most annoying, loving, goofy, perfect person that you know. Marriage is not beautiful, but itâs one heaven of a ride.”
All marriages have ups and downs. Relationship journey is not a straight line yet one that zigs and zags and has numerous curves. Sometimes it feels like it goes backwards and forwards all the time. You might be:
Feeling very close and intimate sometimes – then distant and disconnected other times
Communicating in ways that you feel heard, accepted and supported sometimes and other times communicating in a blaming and harsh manner where you feel unheard, rejected and disrespected
Resolving differences and conflicts effectively sometimes while other times your efforts seem to make matters worse resulting in ongoing disagreements and conflict
Having satisfying, passionate and intimate sex sometimes while other times it feels rote, mundane and boring
Sharing joy, laughter and fun while other times you are pushing each otherâs buttons
Experiencing times of calm and ease with one another which may be suddenly interrupted by an intense explosive fight leaving you confused and shocked and wondering âwhereâd that come fromâ
Gazing at your partner and having the conviction that you are with your soul mate and other times wondering âwho is this person and how did I end up with him/herâ
Agreeing on lifestyle and financial needs and wants compared to strongly disagreeing about these things.
Wanting to spend as much time with your partner as possible and other times wanting to be alone or with friends, or maybe even wanting to be as far away from you partner as possible.
Perhaps you can think about these ups and downs and curves in the following way. Sometimes when you go on a trip you get directly to your destination with ease in a timely manner. The trip and the roads you take are as smooth as can be. Other times you go on a trip and you have to negotiate bumpy roads filled with potholes and/or inclement weather and/or you are re-routed due to construction  and/or you get stuck in long tedious traffic delays… Travel, and life, is inconsistent and uncertain. Relationships are surely like this too.
How to Manage Ups and Downs in Your Relationship?
Understand that ups and downs and fluctuations are normal and know that they are surely going to happen
Be patient, kind and compassionate with yourself and your partner as you navigate the changes and curves
Look back to where you were and where you are now in terms of growth
Address concerns and issues as they arise to thwart building resentments
Communicate regularly with openness and honesty
Seek input and advice from friends or an experienced professional to help you see things objectively
Take responsibility for your part in the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship
Allow yourself to feel your feelingsâyour grief, relief, sadness, joy, sorrow, loneliness and anger
Divorce is one of the most difficult experiences a person can have. No one ever enters a divorce with joy and glee. Prior to the decision to divorce someone there has been a lot of hurt. Once you get to the divorce phase of the relationship you have already been through quite an agonizing process of grief and disappointment. Once it is all said and done, how do you proceed?
Be gentle with yourself. Showing yourself compassion as you work your way through the divorce will help you get through it a whole lot more quickly than if youâre impatient with yourself.
Donât dwell on the past. Dwelling on the past keeps you there. Just like you canât drive a car forward by staring in the rearview mirror, you canât move your life forward if youâre focusing on the past. You canât change the past. The best you can do is learn from it.
View your divorce is as an important lesson about relationships. You and your ex were in a relationship that didnât make it. The relationship failed and you can learn from it â if you choose to. Once you decide to learn from your failed marriage instead of labelling yourself as a failure, you will regain confidence in yourself and your ability to have a successful relationship in the future.
Look forward. There is no point in focusing on the past. Picture yourself shutting the door on your marriage, visualizing it as a room you are leaving. See yourself entering a new room, full of possibilities and hope.
Clean house. It is time to get your life in order. Cleaning house is both literal and figurative. Take care of unfinished business. Organize your home. Whatever you have left unattended because of the emotional turmoil the divorce has caused you, now is the time to start putting the pieces back together.
Connect with your children. The divorce has impacted your entire family; this includes your children. Your children probably have no idea how to heal from what happened in their lives and probably have no idea what to do with their feelings. The best thing you can do is lean in to your relationship with your children and be there for them and with them.
Surround yourself with nurturing people. And definitively say “no” to those who are not providing you comfort. Now is the time to look at expanding or remodeling your social circle. Look for people who are happy, positive and self-assured in their own lives. While going the solo route can feel lonely, itâs also an incredible opportunity to develop a more grounded, fulfilling life.
Create a new normal. Now that you are no longer part of a marriage, you have a new reality. You are single and independent. You can do whatever you want. You no longer have to share your decisions with your spouse.
Develop your confidence. Divorce has a way of corroding your confidence. Regardless, you still have tremendous qualities that you can and should feel really great about. Figure out what you really like about yourself and remind yourself of these things daily.
Donât close your door to love. Lastly, as you recover from divorce, donât close the door to love and throw away the key! Allow yourself to meet new people and be open to the chance of falling in love again. Divorce is not the end of your life. Donât allow your fears to prevent you from finding your happiness.
Yes, getting a divorce is difficult, but so is staying in an unhealthy marriage. It is hard to face, but it is helpful to know that youâre not alone… Getting divorced hurts, but you will recover and have a better future as you go through the healing process.
Love is a spiritual journey that involves constant learning and shedding of illusions. The illusions and fantasies of Love that we grew up with and have been fed through movies and the media. Letâs clear up the Fantasy of Love versus the Truth about Love.
Fantasy:
Love will always feel exciting, passionate, and fearless. We will always feel attraction
Love eliminates feelings of pain and grief and sorrow and promises only ecstasy
We will never argue, have disagreements or fight
It will be completely effortless, always
Real love:
Holds everything, every feeling. Ecstasy and pain, magic and sorrow. We will disappoint and upset each other and we will have to choose to love each other. We will have to practice forgiveness and compassion.
Requires my conscious effort each day. Every day is brand new and every day itâs my responsibility to show up fully. I am responsible for my part in the relationship
We are wildly imperfect
Everything changes and we are always changing
We will have to talk about responsibilities, money and sex and taxes and values and children and time and needs and fears and feelings and make lots of difficult decisions together
The work never ends, there is no destination and I intend to make sure my partner feels loved and appreciated every day
My partner canât read my mind. Itâs my responsibility to express what I need and how I feel.
The fantasy keeps so many in such painful, excruciating struggles and their feet are never on the ground. The fantasy fuels unrealistic expectations that leave us empty and starving for real love. Real love is grounding, humbling and messy. Â It is a choice that requires effort every day. It shines through the routine experiences of the everyday life.
Infidelity is a major factor in broken marriages. It destroys families, and paves the way for traumatic experiences for children.
Cheating does not always mean actual sexual activity. Emotional cheating and flirting are still considered as cheating.
The cheaterâs actions hurt the spouse who was betrayed, their children, their families, close friends. But these arenât the only people infidelity hurts. Cheating hurts the cheater too.
Despite the initial thrill of an affair, cheating often negatively affects the cheater emotionally. Itâs common for them to feel anxiety, guilt, shame, worry, regret, confusion, embarrassment, and self-loathing when they contemplate how their actions impact those they love and why they cheated in the first place.
When they think about and experience how their actions impact them and others they feel the sting and anguish of their poor judgment.
All of these thoughts swirling through their heads and the rollercoaster of their emotions can lead cheaters to live two completely different lives while the affair continues. One where they feel the addictive ecstasy of love and one where they feel hatred.
Of course, living these two polar-opposite lives puts extreme stress not only on themselves, but on their marriage too. And when the spouse does discover the truth, they will feel pain to their core as they rightfully wonder what part of the relationship with their wayward spouse was real and what part was a lie.
Not only can the spouse now blame the cheater for every bad thing that happens to them and every problem in their relationship, but their children get to blame them too. If they feel depressed, if they cheat or their spouse cheats on them, that will be their cheater-parent’s fault. When their children are sitting on the therapistâs couch unmarried, unloved and childless at 44, the cheater-parent will be the reason they can’t trust or make and keep commitments.
Cheaters often are not able to trust others to be loyal to them. After all if they did this themselves, anyone can. If they could violate trust and hurt someone they love in such a deeply damaging way, what’s to stop others from doing it to them?
Being on the receiving end of the pain their spouse is suffering because of the cheating can easily become too much for the straying spouse. At one extreme, they may deny their responsibility for causing the pain and blame their spouse for forcing them to cheat. At the other extreme, they may feel they deserve the punishment, accept it as just, and live out the rest of their lives as a mere shadow of their true selves.
How cheating affects the cheater is complicated and painful. Why do they cheat then?
There are a lot of reasons why cheaters cheat, including:
emotional immaturity,
personality disorders: narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and psychopathy.
childhood trauma, or
being raised with bad influence regarding relationships.
Cheaters often deeply fear abandonment and seek out their second relationship as something of a security blanket against physical or emotional loneliness.
Repeat cheaters often have certain core negative beliefs. They feel unworthy, feel no one can genuinely love them and so on. As a result of these insecurities, people addicted to cheating tend to avoid intimacy and to compartmentalise and split off part of their sexual, romantic or intimate life. Being intimate with a spouse is problematic for them and they find an escape.
People who cheat will look for opportunities where the potential mate may be in a vulnerable state, such as after a break-up or divorce. When the preyed-upon is in a more vulnerable state, they are more likely to be open to and engage in the cheating behavior because they miss the feeling of being loved and are not emotionally grounded enough yet to set secure boundaries.
Like with all addictions, repeat cheating is a dependency on a ‘drug’ to escape pain, fear and other negative emotions.
The prospects for repeat cheaters can be good if addicts give up all the related behaviours and get treatment that addresses their insecurities and their fears around intimacy; in other words the âdeeper workâ. This might involve:
Professional help to uncover the root cause of cheating
Practicing total transparency with the spouse OR
Changing the relationship type. Instead of cheating, they can find partners who are comfortable with non-monogamy. Sometimes it is better to follow a less traditional â but honest â path, then live a life of destruction, betrayal and lies.
As with all recovery, it takes time and treatment to change a lifelong adaptation. It also takes vigilance. Even well into recovery, addicts may still be drawn to sexual validation and non-sexual forms of cheating. But these behaviors will continue to fade away over the years.
Transparency and authenticity are buzz words that are heard a lot nowadays, but the actual practice of being honest, open, and even emotionally raw in a relationship is no easy task. On some level we are all facing that fear â afraid of being seen for who we truly are. Afraid of seeing ourselves for who we really areâŚ
When we continually lock out our partners and refuse to let them know who we really are âbehind the mask,â we limit intimacy, hamper communication, and create barriers to a fulfilled relationship.
According to Dr Gary Brown, “Being vulnerable in relationships is really opening your heart and letting your partner know your true self. Itâs the warts and all. Itâs those secret parts of yourself that you may have never shared with your partnerâŚor maybe anyone else for that matter.
Itâs the stuff that has stayed hidden away that you really donât want to say â too scared to say â but maybe are thinking. Itâs surrounded by the âif I share this stuffâ my friend/partner/lover wonât like me/love me/will want to leave me.
And that is why being vulnerable with our inner world is directly linked to overcoming our fear of how our loved one may react. That is why vulnerability requires the courage to be truly authentic and real, letting your friend/partner/lover know all the sides of you, even the icky parts alongside the fear of the reveal.
Being vulnerable can be really scary. But it is the single most thing that will create trust and deep connection for a relationship to go the distance.
In a healthy relationship, both partners have a sense of connection and trust. Vulnerability creates emotional (and sometimes physical) intimacy and a closeness because you can feel safe to be your true self. Itâs what creates a deeper sense of love and understanding.
In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen. And that, understandably, can feel emotionally risky….
To know that you are seen and loved for simply being your full self, to be with someone else in all of their vulnerability and love them for all that they are may just be one of lifeâs most fulfilling experiences. When you feel yourself starting to shut down out of fear in your relationship, notice if you can make the choice to be courageous and embrace vulnerability.”
âYou become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.â
Antoine de Saint-ExupĂŠry, The Little Prince
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All grown-ups were once children ⌠but only few of them remember it. The Little Prince reminds us who we are and what makes us special by helping us to see the world through the eyes of a child.
As Michael Rennier points out, “adults arenât disappointing simply because we have grown bigger, or obtained jobs, or taken on responsibilities. We are disappointing because for many of us these pursuits have taken on a disproportionate importance. We have forgotten how to see the world as it actually is and are blinded by appearances. We see people as statistics, education as functional, food as fuel, clothing as utilitarian, books as unnecessary luxury… We vastly over-value what we can experience with the senses. If this is what it means to be a grown up, is it any wonder that Saint-Exupery refused to condone our way of life? We are like the accountant he describes, spending our days working over our books, counting everything up, claiming ownership of all we can fit in the ledger, and failing to see that we live in a whole, wild universe filled to the brim with stars somewhere in the midst of which one, unique rose lives on a planet and calls out for love.
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The rose, for Saint-Exupery, represents love, the way in which we tame each other and allow ourselves to be tamed. It is this invisible virtue that makes one, single rose special. It isnât the flower itself, after all, there are fields and fields of roses out there. By outward appearances, a rose is like any other rose. So how is it different? It is the invisible bond of love.
In order to have a truly perfect love, we are required in a way to become children again and learn to whole-heartedly trust and give all we have to the beloved. If we care for one another, we deny ourselves for their sake, even if this means we sometimes get hurt. It is worth the risk because the only other alternative… is to treat every other person as an object… to see a field of roses, objects that are nice enough but fairly common… ”
The cost of not daring to love is to miss the warmth of a close connection with another person, inability to open up, be loved and understood…
Otrazhenie 
