Perhaps in your relationship you keep coming back to the same feeling: that you give more than you receive, that your partner does not see you, or that your arguments follow the same script again and again. Perhaps the relationship is over, yet your thoughts keep returning to it.
In the books of Dr Jelena Đorđević, a partner relationship is seen as a place where two family systems meet. What happens in a relationship rarely belongs to just two people, because it often carries traces of the relationship with one's parents and of patterns passed down through the generations.
That is why, in this approach, affirmations for partner relationships are not meant to change your partner, but to relieve what we ourselves bring into the relationship. Below are the dynamics the books describe and the sentences that arise from them.
The relationship as a mirror of our inner contents
The book Decoding the Soul says that the relationships we enter are often stages on which our psychosomatic burdens find their “actors”. Other people, and our perceptions of them, are in fact projections of our own inner emotional contents.
The key challenge, as the book describes it, is accepting ourselves as we are, our bodies and our natural needs, and accepting our partner in his or her own reality. That is why the process of relief does not begin with the partner, but with our relationship with ourselves.
The balance of giving and receiving
One of the most important rules in partner relationships, according to Bert Hellinger, is the balance between what we give and what we receive. A partner who constantly gives may feel unimportant and unloved, while the one who receives more may feel guilty and inadequate, and so withdraw emotionally.
When we receive, it is important to give a little more than we were given. Only then does love have a future. (from the book Decoding the Soul)
The book adds that true balance does not mean that each gives exactly as much as they receive. Behind the imbalance there sometimes lies one partner's belief that they do not deserve the love they are given, or a giving that serves as a way to manipulate.
When we give our partner the role of a parent
The book Decoding the Soul describes daddy's girls and mummy's boys: people who unconsciously expect their partner to fill the parental role that was missing for them or was overly pronounced. Then the equal exchange is lost, one partner becomes emotionally saturated and the other overburdened.
To recognise these projections, the book suggests a few questions. How did your partner treat you at the beginning of the relationship, and how at the end? Who else in your life has treated you in a similar way? The answers often lead back to childhood and to an experience that repeats itself in the relationship. The book suggests that you sum up the relationship at its end in a few words, because it is precisely these words that reveal what you are really repeating.
Affirmations for partner relationships
The following sentences come from the book Decoding the Soul. They are spoken as conscious intentions, silently or softly aloud, and your partner's name goes in place of the brackets. Stay with each one for a few minutes and follow what is happening in your body:
- I wish to optimise giving and receiving with [partner's name].
- I wish to eliminate destructive concepts about [partner's name].
- I wish to eliminate destructive concepts about myself.
- I wish to increase my awareness of my own worth.
- I wish to eliminate the fear of closeness.
- I wish for the field of marriage and family to mature in me.
When it is hard to set boundaries, the book suggests sentences such as “I wish to eliminate the fear of separation from [partner's name]” and “I wish to heal the limiting concepts that prevent me from setting boundaries with [partner's name]”. The aim is a relationship in which both partners are protected and respected.
If in your relationship you recognise an experience from your relationship with your mother, your father or another important person from childhood, the book recommends working in parallel on relieving your relationship with that person. Work on the partner relationship then goes hand in hand with work on what came before it.
When the relationship is over
A relationship may be formally over, yet still open energetically and emotionally. Among the healing sentences for partner relationships in the book Decoding the Soul are these: “Thank you for everything, it is time for me to move on”, “Through my forgiveness, I free up space for new beginnings” and “I open my heart to new experiences”.
As the book suggests, you can turn each of them into an exercise in self-exploration, using the opening ‘I wish to become aware of’, ‘I wish to heal’ or ‘I wish to let ripen in me’. When strong pain, sadness or fear are present after a break-up, systemic work does not replace professional psychological or medical help when it is needed.
In the book Codes of Love, the partnership is described as a spiritual journey on which both partners discover their full potential. The most important contribution they can make to each other is to take responsibility for their own emotions, which mirror one another. Affirmations are one way to take on that responsibility, quietly and gradually, starting with yourself.