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In the past few issues of this paper I have used excerpts from my newly published book in this column space. I was hoping to get away with using excerpts for a few more issues because I hate the process of getting started on a new piece of writing - I love it once I'm into it and things are rolling - but getting started is a pain. But my publisher put her foot down and demanded some original work, so here I am writing a column for this issue whose theme is relationships and Valentines Day. In other words Codependence City!

Now, don't misunderstand me there is nothing wrong or bad about relationships or romantic love or Valentines Day. What is dysfunctional - what does not work - is our definitions and expectations of these things, and ourselves in relationship to these things. If you will read the quotation above and substitute 'love' everywhere it says 'life' you will have a perfect quotation for this Valentines season.

The reason that so many of us have a very hard time with relationships is because we are judging ourselves against the fairy tale of what relationships 'should be.' We have unreasonable expectations of ourself.

We are all romantics. (I would guess that most anyone reading this would fall into the category of cynical romantic by this time.) We are all, on a very deep level, yearning to be reunited with our twin soul. We were taught that when we find our prince or princess we would live 'happily ever after.' So, it follows that since we haven't gotten to 'happily ever after' there must be something wrong with us. (This applies not only to those who are alone at this time, but also to people who are in a relationship and are feeling down because it is not magical all of the time anymore.)

There is nothing wrong with us! What is dysfunctional is what we were taught. We were taught a concept of love that is an addiction - with the other person as our drug of choice. We were taught (listen to almost any song, 'I can't live without you,' 'You are my everything' etc.) to make the other person our Higher Power. We were taught that we needed the prince or princess to make us happy and whole.

(Traditionally in this society women were taught to be codependent on - that is take their self-definition and self-worth from - their relationships with men, while men have been taught to be codependent on their success/career/work. That has changed somewhat in the past twenty or thirty years - but is still part of the reason that women have more of a tendency to sell their souls for relationships than men do. Codependence is all about giving outside or external influences power over our self-esteem. Everything outside of our 'self' - rather that is people, places and things or our own external appearance - has to do with ego-strength not self-worth. We all have equal Divine worth because we are transcendent Spiritual beings who are part of the ONENESS that is the Great Spirit/God-Force - not because of anything outside of us.)

Love is magical! It is wonderful. It is not a state of being which we can get into and stay in. It is a dynamic, changing process.

One of the biggest problems with relationships in this society is that the context we approach them from is too small. If getting the relationship is the goal, we will end up being the victim. If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment - it is a lesson. As long as our definition of a successful relationship is one that lasts forever - we are set up to fail. There is nothing wrong with wanting a relationship that will last forever, expecting it to last forever is what is dysfunctional.

We are in a time of massive, accelerated Karmic settlement, it is necessary for many of us to do many relationships. It is not bad or wrong - it is part of the Divine plan.

On this Valentines day if you are in a relationship, if you are in love, enjoy it. It is a wonderful feeling - just don't expect it to stay the same. Everything changes. Enjoy the moment and don't mess it up with dysfunctional definitions of what it 'should' become.

If you are alone, don't judge yourself and beat yourself up. Be kind and compassionate with yourself. Own the sadness that may come with being alone, do the grieving, but understand that you are on a journey - you are not trying to reach a destination. When we stop judging ourselves then we can begin observing and learning why we have a fear of intimacy, why we have dysfunctional relationship patterns, why it is so hard to connect with others. The more we can be conscious of our own personal 'whys' the more we can heal those wounds so that we can open up to receiving the Love we crave and deserve. But it has to start at home - it has to start with being Loving to ourselves, not judging and shaming.

What has helped me, more than anything else, to start learning to be Loving to myself is to stop and remember that there is a Loving Higher Power, a God/Goddess Energy that Loves you and me Unconditionally right in this very moment, no matter where we are, no matter if we are alone or in a relationship. {Play}

This is the first original column published by Robert Burney in February of 1996.

The issue of how we are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships is so complex - multi-leveled, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional - that instead of writing an individual, fully contained article here I am going to make this Web Page a collage of different facets of this issue - individual vignettes with quotes from my books and articles.

I am thinking of this web page as if it were a crystal with multiple facets. Each facet reflects a little different perspective on the issue of Romantic Relationships. I am going to limit this page to seven of these different but very much interrelated facets.

I was very touched and honored when Theresa and Lisa asked me to speak in their ceremony today. Theresa asked me if I would read from something I had written or maybe write something new - and Lisa who knows me a little better and knows how passionately I feel about my beliefs and how ready I am to share them - let me know very clearly that I had a strict time limit as to how long I could speak.

So, as I was preparing for this, I was torn between some of my published quotes that are meaningful and would communicate what I believe is important about why we are here, and some things that were bubbling up inside of me over the last few weeks in relationship to this topic.

And at about 3 this morning when I got clear that what was bubbling up was what I wanted to say to Lisa and Theresa. What became very clear to me this morning is that it really doesn't matter if anyone else here today understands what I am saying. I am here now to speak directly to my friends Lisa and Theresa from my heart and soul - out of my beliefs, out of the mystical knowing that has guided my path.

What I know is that you two have been together many times before in other life times. You made a sacred pact to come together in this lifetime to help each other heal the wounds you need to heal - to serve as teachers and guides and support for each other as you go through this school of Spiritual evolution that we are all in.

It doesn't matter what you call that - twin souls, soul mates, whatever - what matters is that you honor the power of the connection that you feel. And that is why you are here today. To stand here in front of the people you care the most about, to stand here in front of God/The Goddess /The Great Spirit/The Universal Source - and make public Acknowledgment and Affirmation of the sacred commitment that already exists between you.

This is kind of your Soul's way of tricking yourself into agreeing to what your Souls already agreed to. In other words, you were powerless in this lifetime to do anything but end up at this moment.

And someplace along the way, I agreed to show up today to remind you, that this is not the ending where the music swells and the romantic couple rides (in this case on the biker chick's motorcycle) off into the sunset to Live Happily Ever After. This is just the beginning.

Because Yes you are "gifts from heaven" to each other - but like all gifts in this multi-leveled paradoxical experience of life - there is good news and bad news. The good news is that you have found your soul mate and you are going to touch ecstasy together - you are on the path to learning about the True meaning of Love. That is great news because LOVE is all there Truly is and the only thing that is important.

The bad news is that you have a lot of stuff to work through. You have lifetimes of history. You have Loved each other intensely and wounded each other grievously. You each have specific wounds from your paths in this lifetime that are reflections of the ways in which you have been wounded in other lifetimes.

You each have emotional "buttons" that trigger old defensive reactions, fears and insecurities - and you are sitting next to the person who was specifically prepared and trained to be a specialist in pushing your buttons. The gift you will give each other by pushing those buttons will help each of you uncover the wounds that need to be healed.

You have come together to teach each other, to help each other heal, to support and encourage each other in your quest to find your True Self.

If you keep healing, working through your stuff - then you do not have to do the dysfunctional cultural dance of toxic romance here. This does not have to be "the 'I can't live without you, can't smile without you' addictive, make the other person your Higher Power, be the victim, lose yourself, power struggle, right and wrong, trapped, taken hostage, poor abused me, Two Step."

What you are doing today is making a conscious commitment in the Light, to support each other on your healing, Spiritual paths. That's paths plural. Your paths are going to run together - hopefully for the rest of your lives - but they are not going to become one path. You are individual, unique, Special, Magnificent, Powerful Beings who are choosing to become allies, to become partners in the journey to each of you being and becoming all you are meant to be.

You are together because you resonate on the same wave lengths, you fit together vibrationally, in such a way that together you form a powerful energy field that helps both of you access the Higher Vibrational Energy of Love, Joy, Light, and Truth - in a way that would be very difficult for either one of you to do by yourself. You are coming together to touch the face of God. You are uniting your energies to help you access the Love of the Holy Mother Source Energy.

You are not the source of each other's Love. You are helping each other to access the LOVE that is the Source.

The Love that you see when you see your soul in the others eyes is a reflection of the LOVE that you are. Of the Unconditional Love that the Great Spirit feels for you.

It is very important to remember that the other person is helping you to access God's LOVE within you - not giving you something that you have never had before.

It is important to remember that so you can remind yourself that the fear, lack and scarcity messages that will come up - the possessiveness, the jealousy, the clinging, the fear of abandonment and betrayal, the feeling smothered - are coming from the wounded parts of you that got trained and traumatized by this dysfunctional society to view life from fear, lack and scarcity. Those messages are lies - that is the illusion. The True Reality of The Universal Source is Joy, Love, and Abundance.

The Abundance of Love and Joy that you can help each other to feel by coming together - are vibrational levels that you then each will be able to access within yourself. You are helping each other to remember how to access that Love - helping each other to remember what it feels like and that "Yes!" you do deserve it.

It is very important to remember that so that you can Let Go. Let Go of believing that the other person has to be in your life, has to do things in a certain way, has to feel a certain way at a certain time. As long as you believe that the other person is the source of your happiness you will feel compelled to try to control them so that you can stay happy. You can not control them and be happy.

You will need to Let Go. And Let Go, and let go again. On a daily basis. Let go of believing that the other person has to be in a good mood or has to like the same things or wants to do things at the same time. Let go of expecting that they can be there for you in the way you want all of the time. They can't. They are human. No one can meet all of another person's needs. You each need to have resources / friends outside of your relationship. You each need to have parts of your life that aren't dependent upon the other.

You will hurt each other, scare each other, make each other angry. Which will then give you the gift of being able to work through those issues to a deeper level of emotional intimacy.

You have got some stuff to work through - that is both the bad news and the good news. Because as you reach those deeper levels of emotional intimacy your love will deepen and grow in ways in which you can't even imagine. You are boldly going where neither of you has ever been before. And you have a friend and a partner who is willing to make a sacred commitment here today to go on this adventure with you.

Celebrate that!! It is an incredible gift!

Grab each moment you can and be present with it.

By being willing to be present to feel the difficult feelings - hurt, sadness, anger, fear;

by being willing to walk through the terror of embracing life - the terror that this commitment to intimacy can bring up;

by being willing to take the risk of being abandoned and betrayed - to take the risk of completely exposing yourself to another being;

you are opening yourself to Joy and Love to depths and on dimensions that you have only had the slightest taste of so far.

BE each other's sanctuary. Be patient and kind and gentle whenever you can make that choice.

The more you do your healing and follow your Spiritual path the more moments of each day you will have the choice to Truly be present the moment.

And in the moment you can make a choice to embrace and feel the Joy fully and completely and with Gusto.

In any specific moment you will have the power to make a choice to feel the Love in that moment as if you have never been hurt and as if the Love will never go away.

Completely absolutely unconditionally with fearless abandon you can embrace the Love and Joy in the moment.

Glory in it!

Loving is the Grandest, most sublime adventure available to us.

Lets your hearts sings together.

Let your souls soar to unimagined heights.

Wallow in the sensual pleasure of each others bodies.

Roar with the Joy of being fully alive.

Go for it!!!! {Play}

"We are set up to fail to get our needs met in Romantic Relationships in the same way that we are set up to fail in life - by being taught false beliefs about who we are and why we are here in human body, false beliefs about the meaning and purpose of this dance of life." {Play}

Codependence is a dis-ease of reaction. As long as we are in reaction we are being a victim. We are not owning our power if we are reacting. Many of us have reacted to being hurt in Romantic Relationships by going to the other extreme - overreacting to the point where we spent many years out of relationship. Then we try a relationship again and have another disaster because we are reacting to our childhood programming and we again react to our reaction by overreacting to the other extreme. In Recovery we are working on getting the pendulum swing smaller and smaller - finding the middle ground, the place of balance.

Overreacting to our patterns is just as dysfunctional as reacting to the wounds that caused the patterns. If we discover a pattern - say, that we leave relationships before we can be left - and we overreact and decide to stick it out in the next relationship no matter what, that can lead to us accepting a lot of abuse in the name of recovery. If we are in reaction and trying to figure out what is right and wrong - we are giving power to the disease.

There are no mistakes only lessons - which are painful but not that painful if we are not judging and shaming ourselves. What makes lessons so painful is the shame the disease lays on us - in other words - the disease creates all of this fear about getting hurt until we are terrified of being hurt - but what is so painful about being hurt is the shame that the disease beats us up with after we get hurt.

The hurt itself passes - the shame and judgment the disease abuses us with is what is most painful.

We are programmed to believe that making a "mistake" is horribly shameful. We are programmed to believe that if we do not find "Happily-ever-after" in a Romantic Relationship then we have made a mistake, or something is wrong with us.

When a relationship doesn't work out we torture ourselves with recriminations about what we did "wrong" or what is "wrong" with us. We rip ourselves for the shame of "failing."

"Our intuition/gut/heart tells us the Truth - it's our head that screws things up. I understand perfectly why my friend is in reaction the way she is - I am just very sad that it means she can't be in my life. She and I both come from a place of having so much terror of intimacy that we were relationship phobic - sometimes what is necessary for someone with a relationship phobia is to jump right in, that may be the only way past the fear.

I am happy to say that I don't have a relationship phobia anymore - I welcome another chance to explore a relationship now that I know that my worst fear can come true and it can make me stronger and better and happier. The reason for that is that I did not give power to the shame - what a miracle! What a gift! I am so grateful." {Play}

Codependence Recovery is not self-help. We are being guided. The Force is with us!

Romantic Relationships are part of the curriculum in this school of Spiritual Evolution - not the place we find happily ever after. Life is a journey - it is not about reaching a destination.

It was not our fault. We were set up to fail in Romantic Relationships. It is very important to forgive ourselves - not just intellectually, but to actually go back to the wounded parts of our self and change our relationship with our self. We cannot Love someone else in a healthy way until we learn to Love ourselves - and we cannot love our self without owning all of the parts of us.

We can access our Higher Self to be a Loving Parent to the wounded parts of our self. That Loving Adult within us can set a boundary with the Critical Parent to stop the shame and judgment and can then Lovingly set boundaries with whatever part of us is reacting so that we can find some balance - not overreact or under react out of out fear of overreacting.

We need to establish Loving on-going relationships with the wounded parts of us in order to be able to stop reacting out of our wounds and our shame. The process of learning how to set internal boundaries is the single most powerful method I have ever seen or heard of for Learning to Love our self. Once we start Loving, honoring, and respecting our self then we have a chance to be available in a healthy way for a Loving Romantic Relationship. {Play}

We learn who we are as emotional beings from the role modeling of our parents and the adults around us. I have never had an emotionally honest male role model in my life. I am having to become my own role model for what emotional honesty looks like in a man.

Romance means nothing without emotional intimacy. "In - to - me - see" We can not share our self with another being unless we can see into our self. As long as I couldn't be emotionally intimate with myself, I was incapable of being emotionally intimate with another human being.

It is absolutely vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves. It is impossible to have a Truly successful Romantic Relationship without emotional honesty. (Truly successful being used here to mean: in balance and harmony between the physical, emotional, mental, and Spiritual levels of being.) Sex can ultimately be an empty, barren animal coupling - involving physical pleasure but really having little to do with Love - without emotional & Spiritual connection.

This results in one of the major problem areas of many relationships. Without emotional intimacy many women get turned off to sex and withhold because their emotional needs aren't being met - and men get angry because they don't even have a clue of what women are asking for.

"Traditionally in this society women were taught to be codependent - that is take their self-definition and self-worth from their relationships - with men, while men have been taught to be codependent on their success/career/work. That has changed somewhat in the past twenty or thirty years - but is still part of the reason that women have more of a tendency to sell their souls for relationships than men do." {Play}

It is a double set up for women in this society. First of all the men were taught that it was not manly to be emotional and that what makes them successful as a man is what they produce - and then women were taught that they needed to be successful in romantic relationships with emotionally unavailable men in order to be successful as a woman. What a set up!

It is not women's fault. It is also not men's fault. It is a set up. {Play}