by Amina Tumi – 31 – London
I am 31, and have been in a 6 year relationship spread over 10 years that was always up and down. We had broken up several times, hence it being over 10 years. I was always wondering if he was the right one as the pressure to be with the ‘THE ONE’ is huge, and I was always finding faults with him, and in our relationship.
The pressure I felt from friends, family, work colleagues, magazines, TV etc to not just be in a relationship, but to be with the ‘THE ONE’, was always lingering around me like a bad smell: it is interesting as I never let myself stop to really feel why I was letting this affect me in this way, and why I felt so needy to be in a perfect relationship. All I knew was that if you found ‘THE ONE’, then you could be happy.
My idea of a relationship at this point was that you both must really love each other on a very deep emotional level, you must always be there for each other, and that there must be a very deep connection between the two of you from the first time you lay eyes on each other – something that you cannot explain but that would grow the more you were together; also that you should find each other funny and enjoy being with each other. I even wrote a list of all the things that he must have so I could tick the list and know that he was ‘THE ONE’. Things like – he must be good looking, have some money, like to dance etc…
After I met Serge Benhayon and listened to what he had to say about relationships, I realised that what I was looking for I would never find, as the ‘THE ONE’ did not actually exist; but that working on me (my own stuff) and my own relationship with me is what ‘THE ONE’ in fact is, not someone or something outside of me.
So, as I started this process I found it to be very hard to keep the focus on me; I kept wanting to turn my focus onto my partner as I really did not want to look at me and the choices that I was making, or the way in which I was living. I realised that I had found an easy way of not dealing with my issues by focusing on his. I was stressed most of the time, very moody and I complained a lot, so I was not very nice to be around most of the time… but I knew deep down that this was not truly me.
I would blame him for the fact that I felt down, unattractive and ugly. I would start arguments with him so that he felt down, too. Why was I putting so much pressure on him to make me feel good?
I would get horribly jealous when I saw him look at another woman, and boy oh boy! was he in trouble if he spoke to one; seeing him speak to another woman would make me feel unattractive and ugly… I would feel so awful and then I’d take it out on him by starting an argument… and then we would have a fight or just not talk to each other for awhile (sometimes days).
The list really goes on, and what was really concerning is that my relationship looked amazing on the outside, and in comparison to the people around me it really was amazing, but I knew that there must be more to a relationship than what I was experiencing.
I finally started to look at what was really going on with me, and I found that not looking after myself and being exhausted all the time had a huge part to play here, but once I started dealing with these issues I could then start to look further into deep hurts that I had been carrying for a long time; some relating to my Mum & Dad.
As I started looking at my deeper issues I then naturally started to take responsibility for me and my actions. It is quite incredible how much of my life I was blaming other people for the situations I found myself in, or for the way I was feeling: not only was this giving my power away but it was stopping me from taking full responsibility for myself and my life.
This simple fact revealed itself very clearly to me: unless I started to change then nothing else around me would change – and so I continued to unpick and expose the way in which I was living that I did not feel had been supporting me. Simone Benhayon has helped me to see that I was not taking responsibility, so I have a lot to thank her for; along with Serge and Natalie Benhayon and Sara Williams, who are amazing Practitioners not because of what they do or say, but because of the way they live and the reflections I have seen and felt from them.
As I worked on me and started to truly take care of my body and how I did things, I realised how far away from being truly ‘in-love’ I was with my partner. As I was not in-love with me, how could I be in-love with him? That, as you can imagine, presented itself as a crossroads in our relationship, which was great and also interesting, as he (my partner), totally agreed that there were in fact big problems in our relationship, and that we had been sweeping them under the carpet and focussing instead on our new home that we had just bought a year before. Unfortunately, he chose to not deal with his stuff/issues and was happy to keep things as they were, but this I could not do as I wanted to take our relationship to the next level so we could truly be in-love, and truly enjoy every day with each other.
This was not an easy time to say the least, but it was necessary, and although I also had lots of fear of being on my own (hence the pressure to be in a relationship), our relationship ended a year and half ago. It has, without a shadow of doubt, been one of the hardest but most amazing years of my life as I have started a true relationship with myself, getting to know who I am. This has been amazing and feels so lovely to give myself the time to do so, while not feeling the rush to be in another relationship.
I have found that there has been so much that I have picked up over the years from other influences that is not truly me, and is not the way in which I would truly choose to do things. For example, what clothes to wear? It has in the past been about impressing other people and/or trying to get attention from boys/men, instead of just feeling how beautiful I am already and wearing clothes to confirm me. I have found I am now playful with the way I get dressed and I give myself the time to really feel what to wear, taking into account how my body really feels. For example, I wear softer fabrics if my skin feels a little irritated or I wear slightly looser clothing if I feel bloated.
I am very much enjoying my relationship with me and allowing this to develop; for the first time I have decided to give myself some time to really get to know me and the way I want to live life that feels right for me & my body. I am open to a relationship, but not because I need one to make me feel like a woman, or out of fear of being alone and not having someone to love me, but because I feel it would be amazing to have someone to complement me, and I them, in a way that feels simple and playful.
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
It certainly appears more ‘easy’ to blame another than take responsibility for our own choices, but when we are willing to be open and observe where certain of our behaviours are stemming from and are willing to deal with this, relationships can open up and transform, even if it means the end of a relationship with ourselves that is not supportive.
It is certainly interesting to feel the pressure that exist in our society for a woman to be in a relationship or otherwise something is perceived as being ‘wrong’ with her.
Wow, Amina, what an honest and raw sharing of your experiences and how you have learned to love yourself and honour yourself more as a woman with or without a partner. When we as women share from our experiences in this way, we deepen our understanding of ourselves and offer this as a learned wisdom to all others to learn from too. These are the kinds of sharings our world needs – ones where we take loving responsibility for our choices to inspire us and other further along.
I appreciate your honesty, we learn in so many ways through TV, movies, songs, books, conversations, etc, that “The One” solves everything and as a result when we get into a relationship it forms the foundation for blame. We don’t question the fact we have been sold a lemon with the image and belief about “The One”, so we then continue cycles of disempowerment, blame and disharmony in our relationship. It’s a huge burden really to expect so much of one person, and it can be the same with putting pressure on having kids to finally bring unconditional love into our lives – ‘at last, someone to love us’, particularly as “The One” didn’t work out! The faulty perceptions colour everything and we believe that love is outside of us, when it’s actually our essence and we are filled with it if we reconnect within. Thanks to Universal Medicine that’s what I am working on – being love – and frankly it feels amazing.✨
It is very freeing to no longer abide by the conditioning that can be sold to us at a young age, especially a conditioning that does not support our natural beautiful expression to be who we are.
That’s true Henrietta and without that conditioning we are left to feel our own innate truth – which feels absolutely glorious compared to the mediocrity of societal ideals and beliefs.
All relationships come back to the relationship we have with self first, ‘unless I started to change then nothing else around me would change’.
Inspiring testimonial Amina. I appreciate your honesty in sharing your experience with your last relationship, the patterns and behaviours that prevented you to be really ‘in love’ with yourself and your partner. I can relate very much with the blaming attitude that was really comfortable to me but nothing changed, just kept me in this cycle of self-abuse, crticical and controlling way of being with myself and others. Thanks for sharing that we can be ‘The One’ for us by building a more honest, intimate, profound and loving relationship with ourselves.
I love the messy honesty in this blog – it resonates with how I feel in my relationships from time to time. The fact that in the end we are the One is a game changer and moves the emphasis onto our livingness and not blaming someone else.
Likewise it also extends to the fact that if we can all be the One then truly loving relationships are possible with all the people around us, and that can bring to life every relationship – from the checkout, to the taxi driver, to work colleagues, family etc.
That’s very beautiful to read Simon, the fact that we are ‘The One’ and we can share with everyone from the same quality of Love.
I’m not sure if any one else presents in this way the way that Serge Benhayon does
“After I met Serge Benhayon and listened to what he had to say about relationships, I realised that what I was looking for I would never find, as the ‘THE ONE’ did not actually exist; but that working on me (my own stuff) and my own relationship with me is what ‘THE ONE’ in fact is, not someone or something outside of me.”
The way that our society is currently set up has us all looking outside of ourselves to find the ‘The ONE’
Why is this I wonder? I have discovered that we are the ‘ONES’ that we do not have to look any further. Discovering my self has been difficult at times because of the ideals, beliefs, pictures I have absorbed from society. Just recently I was again shown just how much I am locked up in these ideals and beliefs, When you in the mud all you see is the mud, it takes someone who is not in the mud to say hey what are you doing in there come out. I feel society encourages us all to stay in the mud so that way we are all controlled and capped from knowing any different.
Deeply loving ourselves is the foundation that brings the same quality of love to all others, not just ‘The One’
Our return to being loving starts from understanding our gentle-ness as lost we were and then as students of that foundation self-loving ways develops.
Love is a minefield plagued with images that are very damaging. The reason why this is the case is because there are few things more difficult to cope than a briken heart, outcome guaranteed by the false and misleading images. That out there is The One for us is just one of them.
The heart is so much stronger than this emotional ‘broken heart’. My experience of it is like the cornerstone of our very existence.. and it can support us to build something truly beautiful and inspiring…. or it gets buried under the rubble of our poor choices. Either way it is not going anywhere and its always possible to go to it if we so choose.
The more we are willing to work on our own expression the more we can offer another and with that comes with knowing that all relationships are choices to say yes or no to developing the relationship with your self first!
It puts an awful amount of pressure on someone if we want them to be “The One” for us, it’s also greatly unfair on the rest of the world for us to give all our attention to only one person. What if we begun with the fact that we are “The One” and begin by developing an amazing, solid, unwavering and always exquisitely beautiful relationship with ourselves and experimented with taking that out into the world?
I love how you have brought simplicity and playfullness as values in a relationship. Letting our hurts and past behaviours come up is fine if we are prepared to deal with them but when we react or let them get in the way we lose the openness and spaciousness that a relationship can naturally hold
Beautifully said Elaine, for there is no perfection in relationships however, when we allow the simplicity and playfullness to be there as a foundation, we can return to that at any point and have a commonality that then allows us to recall and focus on what matters most.
Culture as it is brings up children to want attention from the other gender, not connection. I fell into this with men, the false idea they were something to get attention from, there is so much more to it than just attention. And this starts from us building a relationship with ourselves first, for sure, from there we can build true connection with others.
Being with The One is an interesting expression. It may mean (and usually does) ‘my half orange’, the person fitted perfectly for me that covers everything I need to be covered for and I do likewise. So, two half oranges together make ONE orange. But what if the expression The One is a pattern movement of us embracing another person, with beholding, divine love in the understanding that there are not two half oranges but different parts of The One, forming a specific pattern of angles that have to learn to walk in harmony with each other.
The list of attributes that the perfect partner has got to have is endless… we arrive with one set, and then of course start develop more requirements as we get to know them better. Its an impossible undertaking. Our relationship with ourselves on the other hand can so easily be ignored, under developed especially if we make the focus on everything else rather than what is right in front of us. Once we realise this is the building block on which everything else stands or falls… wow that is a wake up call.
What a gorgeous turn around. Stop looking for another to be ‘the one’, no one can be that for us. We are ‘the one’ we have been waiting for, so time to deepen our relationship with ourself. And that will be the foundation we will take into every realationship.
A foundation that is true will introduce loving movements, so our-real-ationship will deepen with self and then others!
This story needs to be retold again and again… It debunks the myth that is behind so many stories and movies and indeed the expectations of so many people.
True. If this story were to put into picture – whether as a movie or for magazines – that would be a more truthful reflection, but…that starts with us living it, cracking all the current myths still circulating in books, magazines, movies and….in us.
I love the honesty in which you share your story Amina and I can relate very much to having always found the fault in another or outer circumstances. Then to understand and admit that it all comes back to me was a big revelation and it has been ever since very helpful to simply bring things back to me and see where I am reminded to go deeper and how much there is to us than the many issues we create.
I love the reflection each relationship we have offers us, as it gives us an opportunity to see where we are at, and the more we start to care and nurture ourselves, so do our relationships change if the other person is willing to go deeper too.
Yes, so true Sally, and understanding that there are no good or bad relationships just reflections to be had and to grow from if we so choose.
“All I knew was that if you found ‘THE ONE’, then you could be happy.” The irony is that we search high and low for ‘The One’ while ‘The One’ is with us all the time because ‘The One’ is our self.
We all have ‘the One’ to fall in love with, and that is becuase it starts with ourselves. If we have that loving relationship, then we are ready for finding others to share it with.
When we are in a relationship there are so many distractions we can use to take the focus off the relationship we have with ourselves. People used to tell me this but it wasn’t until I chose to be in a relationship that I really understood what they were saying. No matter what relationship issues I may be having this blog reminds me to look at the relationship I have with myself first.
What a common situation you depict here, Amina, of blaming the other in a relationship and as you share so candidly things only change when we change ourselves. Thank you for sharing – very inspiring.
“things only change when we change ourselves”. when we take the responsibility and move in a different way we will see the change.
True movement definitely brings about change as it dissolves our karma!
It is so easy to look outside of our self to blame others and the world for all our problems; however, our problems are ours and no else’s. Hence, as so clearly shown here, we need to look inside ourselves and not out ‘there’ for the answers.
Hence when we run away from our problems, perhaps to another country looking for a fresh start, we inevitably recreate a similar situation as we pack them up and carry them with us. You can’t run away from them, but you can absolutely deal with them and let the love back in,
As always, we must develop the relationship with ourselves first. I know it sounds so simple, almost a truism, but it is so true otherwise we are just applying a bandage and Band-Aid to all the hurts that we have inside.
It’s something I heard about about for a long time and dismissed. I didn’t consider it worthwhile, developing a relationship with myself as I was too preoccupied in focusing on ‘fixing’ my relationship with me then partner as well as fixing him. So arrogant I was, I didn’t take any responsibility in the fact that what was missing was that I wasn’t loving and appreciating who I was and everything I brought to the world. That’s finally been changing over recent years, and life feels a lot simpler and there is far less to complain about!
When we realise and start to accept that we are the ones that save ourselves we start to really appreciate how much wisdom and inspiration there is in our daily lives to support us in appreciating that fact.
It is amazing how we have it all in us to save ourselves, yet we have to get to that awareness first, which comes with our willingness to let go and surrender.
Great points Amina, the most important relationship is the relationship we have with ourselves. We cannot expect another to give what we are not prepared to give ourselves.
Relationship with self is the first and most important relationship. Once we develop that we look at other relationships.
Or you look at it this way . . . once we develop a true relationship by having a solid connection with our self we can have a greater understanding of what is being reflected back to us from all other relationships.
It is such a truism… But we do have to have a relationship with ourselves before they can be anything else with anyone else… That self love is always the foundation