Rebecca's Intentional Relationship Blindness

Then she got curious.

Her name is Rebecca and she's a smart, funny, intelligent budding marathon runner and I didn't mean to upset her.

I just wanted to show her that she was lying to herself without even realizing it.

I wanted to show her how it could prevent her from having the love and the relationship that she really wants.

Rebecca had just found out during our conversation that I was a relationship and life coach who helps people create the love they really want.

I also told him about our new book, BIG FAT LOVE: THE BOOK OF POSSIBILITIES.

So, like many people when I first met them, she asked me about the book, when and how I started doing this work, and what I enjoyed.< /p>

I told her how Susie and I started and asked her if she was in a relationship.

She said she was.

She told me she thought she was going to marry this man and that it was her first real serious relationship.

In fact, she said that she wanted to be intentional in her relationship and that one of her intentions in any romantic relationship she started was to get married.

Then, moments later, when I asked her when she was getting married, she told me she was waiting for her boyfriend to ask her.

That seemed strange to me, so I said if she was trying to be intentional in this relationship like she just said, it didn't seem very intentional to me.

It sounded like she was saying it was her decision whether to marry or not, and not hers either.

Here she's waiting for him to ask the question and she's totally unsure when it's going to happen or even *IF* it's going to happen (because he hasn't asked her yet.)

I told him something like this…

"It may sound a bit bold, but if you want to have a relationship on purpose, why are you waiting for him to ask you to marry?"

I asked him if being intentional about a relationship should include when and how to get married?

That's when she fell silent and I thought she was really mad at me for asking her that question since we had just met a few minutes before and that she used to cut my hair.

My question confused her and she didn't know what to answer.

I told her that if she wanted to have an intentional relationship, that might include deciding when to get married.

This is the problem of waiting for her boyfriend to ask her to marry him…

Any questions she had in her head about when, how and if they were going to get married could easily be stopped if she did it on purpose.

Although Rebecca was really inspired to have an intentional relationship…

She lived from the tradition of the past on the idea that the man should be the one who initiates the question of "marriage".

And that was not his intention: to be intentional.

In a true partnership, there is no guesswork.

There is no mystery in the decisions.

You travel life's journey together.

And that's where curiosity comes in.

In a truly conscious or intentional relationship, you don't leave things to chance.

You become curious and explore with each other how you want your life to be and build on those desires and urges.

Rebecca didn't do that.

She was intentional in some parts of her relationship but not in others.

She just didn't see it until I pointed it out to her and so a lot of the questions she had been pondering in the back of her mind came up…

What if he perceived her holding back and waiting for him to ask her to marry as a sign that she didn't want him?

What if he thought this was a sign for him not to move on?

What if her holding back and not having a conversation with him started to cast doubt in his mind as to whether she was the only one...