Relationship Struggles and Human Nature

What do relationship struggles and human nature have to do with each other? A lot! By looking at our inner nature, we can gain a different, yet powerful perspective on ourselves.

What is Nature?

Nature is the force of life, and it exists in all of us. In fact, it drives us in more ways than we want to probably admit. How so? Nature has three primary concerns: consume, stay alive, and reproduce. How a particular life form accomplishes these three things defines that particular life form.

For instance, bees gather pollen to make honey. Then they gather in colonies and defend it with stingers, and have a queen that makes more bees.

Plants, too, have the force of life. They gather as much sunlight as possible, have chemical and barbed defenses, and create seeds that go off and make more plants.

What about Human Nature? How do humans satisfy it? The simple answer is with almost anything and everything. We consume every type of food and product. To stay alive, we are infinitely creative. And lastly, humans have made reproduction a high form of pleasure.

Thus, beneath most of what we do as humans is the Force of Nature, the relentless drive to consume, stay alive and reproduce. This can sometimes work against our relationships.

Nature Doesn’t Care About Your Relationships

Human Nature cares that you eat, survive and make more humans. That’s it. It doesn’t care if your heart gets broken, your emotions are hurt, you are alone, or if you hurt others and cause pain.

Thus, if your relationship has been on the rocks, take a look at whether your relationship struggles and human nature are related. Where are you consuming too much? Do you have a pre-occupation with survival? How does your sex drive interfere with your ability to make good choices?

If you answer “yes” to any of these things, first know that there is nothing wrong with you. Your body, being a product of nature, is doing exactly what it is designed to do. Nature has you be a consumer, survivor, and reproducer. These are three very strong inner forces of life. However, as human beings, we can go beyond those forces.

Human Beings have a special ability that goes beyond inner nature

Part of our strategy for a successful life is to be in relationship with one another. To do this, our brains evolved to be big enough to overcome nature. In fact, our brains are so big and complex that we possess consciousness, a self-aware and self-directing force that is beyond nature.

Therefore, consciousness is the key to controlling our inner nature, and therefore also creating relationships.

But you may ask, if we all have consciousness, why am I struggling in my relationship? The answer is the strength of your consciousness, and how you are using it on a daily basis. Unfortunately, not every person, including myself, had the privilege of an upbringing that had them using their consciousness such that it was strong enough to control their inner nature. Personally speaking, I spent many years at the beck-and-call of my inner nature – too worried about consumption, survival and sometimes too single-minded on satisfying an insatiable sex drive.

What you can do to strengthen your consciousness

You strengthen your consciousness in two major ways.

1. Education. Learn to learn. Gather knowledge.
   • This goes for relationships as well. Educate yourself on what a relationship actually is, and how to create it with someone.
2. Daily practice. Putting ideas into action.
   • Train your brain to take control of your inner nature. You have the gift of consciousness to do this. Use daily reminders and affirmations. Most of all, be courageous to do something different.

When you put new knowledge about relationships into practice for a week, you will see a huge difference. But even with that said, it takes more than a week to become a habit. Either way, sticking with it does pay off! We know. Our struggles were the signs that we needed to grow stronger. What we learned, we practiced. And it has paid off for us.

Strengthen your mind. It will pay off for you!

• Educate yourself on relationships.

• Learn how to be in a relationship with connection, interaction and playing by the same rules.

• Practice those new ideas daily.