Why Is there Conflict In Relationships

This is a transcript of this Video

As human beings it is impossible for us to live in isolation. We are in relationships not only with people but also with nature, with society and everything that touches our existence.

But our relationships have become a battleground, full of frustration and conflict.  Our elders have told us, be accepting, don’t get angry, respect each other. But these are just empty words, for we have seen the same conflict in their relationships, they themselves were conflicted and they suffered. And children don’t learn by words alone, they learn by the actions they see around them. If our relationships are full of anger and frustrations, we are passing on the same conflict and suffering to our children, even though we verbally tell them all these wonderful but empty words about harmony, peace and love. Society is nothing but a reflection and collections of all these conflicted relationships.

But we can change that.  We do not have to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can bring in a new consciousness, a new meaning to our relationships. For this, we need to go a little deeper into the whole complex of relationships.

We have a relationship with someone when we like them, when we feel the other person understands us. You probably won’t like to be around someone who makes you angry or doesn’t make you feel good.

So the central core of relationships  is self-fulfillment. It is selfish. Let me repeat it again. The central core of relationship is selfishness, the need for self-fulfillment. But you might be thinking, wait a moment, I am not selfish, I am a very giving person. Stay with me for a while as we uncover this illusion together.

I need a lover, a partner, because I feel lonely. I don’t feel good about being alone, I want to feel loved and all that. So I need another human being to fill in this emptiness, this vacuum  in my being. I am totally invested in myself, and how the relationship has to make me feel. For example- Open any match making site and read what people want in their prospective partner. You will find a long and ridiculous list of what the person wants from their partner- he/she needs to be loving, has to be funny, has to be this has to be that.

I need all that fulfilled from a single person. But the problem is, the other person also enters the relationship, with this long list of self-centered desires. So in the end, it is just a relationship between all these wants and desires, this selfish needs to feel good, to fulfill ourselves with the other person. And what happens when the other person doesn’t fulfill you? Doesn’t give you want you want? Doesn’t make you complete and happy and good? You start feeling frustrated and suffocated in the same relationship. Its because your self-centered wants are not met, you are angry and upset.

So you see people have just become tools for our own self-gratification and nothing more. Though on the surface we say all these wonderful things like respect and love, but deep down we are just using people as objects, and when they stop making us happy, stop fulfilling the need, stop helping us feel good about ourselves, we discard them like objects and move on to the next.

Of course there is a glimmer of love in relationship, but that glimmer is totally obscured by self-fulfillment . we are so utterly lonely and incomplete in our own selves, so full of possessiveness and desires, that we hopelessly cling to whatever we have and destroy it.

Now can I enter into a relationship, keeping aside all this? I am with someone, not because he or she fulfills me, makes me complete, makes me happy. I am not looking for desires and expectations to be met, I am not after anything that the other person can give me. Then that glimmer of love can transform into rays of sunlight. Then love will be the basis of that relationship. Only then can true relationship arise between you and me. Out of that deep love, which is not looking for self fulfillment, not looking for gratifications and expectations, a different kind of relationship can come into being.

 It is only then for the first time we truly meet the other person, we truly connect with them. Then that other person can’t hurt me, can’t make me suffer any more, can’t frustrate me, because the very basis of the relationship has changed. Can you see how beautiful this whole thing becomes?

Take some moments to reflect on your own relationships. Is your relationship with your partner, children, parents, in-laws, colleagues, full of love and understanding or there is immense conflict and turmoil!

It is because you do not feel complete and fulfilled in yourself, you look for others to fulfill you. But this has to change. You need to start with yourself and understand that you are ever complete, no one in the universe can fulfill you, except your own consciousness, you own inner being. Stop using people as tools for your own self-fulfillment and gratification. Then your relationships will blossom, they will have an incredibly quality about them. In that relationship, there is spontaneous joy, spontaneous love.