Mindfulness and gratitude in relationships

How do I accept what people give me with gratitude and without expectations while also nurturing relationships that are nourishing to me? This seems like a contradiction to me, but I guess it depends on how I ask for things in my connections—the weight my asks have on the meaning of the relationship. I can ask for something and see how the other person responds to it: Are they willing and able to give it to me? If so, I accept it with gratitude, and recognize that this relationship is more nourishing to me. If they’re not willing to give it to me, I accept with gratitude what they do give to me. But I also have to gauge whether what they give me nurtures the relationship enough for me to maintain it. Here, the question of basic needs comes in: What is the bare minimum that someone would give me for me to feel our connection is nourishing enough for me to continue it? If they’re willing but not able to give me what I ask for, we can work together to see if we can find a solution or compromise. But I’d also have to figure out whether this work is worth the effort: Has this person shown me that they show up for me in different ways? Have they shown me that they put in the effort to give me what I ask for when they can? This allows me to trust that the solution we come to would actually work, and also that it’s worth the extra effort to make it work.

The problem, though, is that I don’t know what my basic needs are. More than any concrete need, the need I have is perhaps a meta-need: I need someone to show me that they put effort into our relationship. But how do I gauge the amount of effort that someone puts in our relationship? How do I know whether they’re putting in enough or not? Perhaps the answer is to rely on my intuition, but I feel that I don’t have this intuition. If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this. And this is where I struggle in determining whether a relationship is fulfilling for me or not. At the same time, though, I feel that this isn’t something that I can quantify—or rather, I feel that quantifying it wouldn’t be satisfying to me. I rely on my intuition to make these kinds of decisions. If I made a decision based on a quantification, such as a pros and cons list, I wouldn’t feel that I made the right decision. It would feel like a hollow—almost forced— decision, not one I have conviction in.

I think the solution is to develop my intuition. And to develop it, I need to train it by nurturing it in the right conditions.

I need mental clarity to allow my intuition to come through and thrive. But it tends to get drowned under the anxiety and the rejection sensitivity. I tend to fixate on trying to find a solution, trying to make the person become present for me in a way that I need, to assuage the feeling of rejection, that I’m not aware of whether they’re giving me enough in our relationship to make it fulfilling for me. This suffocates my intuition. My attention drifts away from my needs. I hyperfixate on fixing the relationship that I forget to think about whether it’s worth fixing. My attention drifts away from my needs, and thus I feel decentred. My intuition doesn’t speak to me because I don’t give it a chance to speak. My intuition is my centre, but I’m always getting drifted to the outskirts. I need to train myself to stay centred, in order to give my intuition a voice and listen to it.

I’ve been taking a break from relationships and meeting new people over the past few weeks, and it has been really good for me. I feel that I am more mindful and more in touch with my needs and desires, that I can hear my wishes better. I feel that I have more control over myself. I tend to get overwhelmed with anxious thoughts, feelings of rejections, compulsions—I tend to get lost in the fray and lose control over myself. Taking time for myself has allowed me to take a step away from all the noise and let it pass by me. I can see it for what it is and disengage from it, disempower it and empower myself.

Stepping away from the noise creates space for my intuition to speak, and allows me to direct my attention towards it. I’ve been thinking of frequently taking a break from relationships, something like a mental vacation. I also think that I need to slow down regularly, in my day-to-day life, and find ways to be more mindful and listen to my intuition. Admittedly, though, I don’t know how to do that, because it takes me a long time to quiet my mind. It took me about a week to reach a point of having peace of mind and clarity. But I don’t need to be in a hurry. If I need to process my thoughts, it’s okay for me to take several days to allow my mind to settle. I need to give myself the space that I need. I don’t need to feel guilty, nor feel frantic to find the answer immediately. I will know that I have the answer to something when my intuition feels good about it.

To figure out whether someone is showing up for me in the ways that I need, and whether our relationship is fulfilling to me and worth the work to sustain it and build on it, I can take time for myself to create a distance from the relationship, as well as any other relationship that might be affecting how I’m feeling, to detach myself from any anxious thoughts, from any fear of rejection I might be feeling, any behaviour I might be exhibiting as a result of this. By doing this, I can allow my mind to wind down and reach a state of clarity. Once I reach the state of clarity, I will be able to hear my true needs and desires better—my intuition will be able to speak to me, and I will be able to hear it. When I reconnect, I will be able to show up in the relationship in a self-empowered way—how I want to show up, not how my anxiety makes me show up.