Connect The Rings
20. Connect the rings.
It’s not about meeting the right person; it’s about being the right person. I have added this Tool to the box to help you if you are having relationship challenges and to strengthen your will to work on who you are. In the movie, Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise comes home to tell his wife, “You complete me.” The thought in the scene being that without her, he is not whole. In other words, what many of us want is to be “needed” by someone else, because if the person we are with “needs” us, they are less likely to leave. In addition, if they need us badly enough, we can get away with things because there is little risk of being left or facing consequences for our actions because we need each other to make one whole.
Well, I am here to tell you Cruise was wrong. The statement should have been, “You complement me.” Not very romantic, I know. The problem is you shouldn’t be looking for someone to complete you; you should be looking to complete yourself. Herein lies the problem, we spend all this time looking for the perfect person rather than trying to become that perfect person, a Tool developed from my reading of The Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield.
If you look at a relationship as a ring, when you complete someone, you are part of the ring and they are the other part. That is how the connection is made. It is based on the need for one another to make something whole. Let me show you another way. If people work on making themselves one complete ring, then you can align yourself with others and make a chain. The beauty in this is that the chain makes a strong bond where each ring complements each other and is required by the other one for strength. So each ring is complete in its own way and does not require the other to complete itself.
Now in all honesty, our rings are never totally complete because we are always working on making ourselves complete. Looking at the first model, those don’t resemble rings but C’s or a half eaten doughnut, and that leaves too much room for self-improvement.
The primary flaw in having someone complete you is that their strengths are your weaknesses, giving you very little incentive to work on these areas because you don’t have to. Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I truly believe that a couple is a team and teammates help each other to succeed in areas where they need help, but they do so by raising the other one up to success. Also, if something does happen years later and we lose the other half of our completed ring, we are lost.
We have done little to improve our weak spots and now we are thrown right into the fire to try to improve them. Most often improving these areas takes time and we do not respond well to this immediate need. Keep in mind we all have strengths and these are important. We will have stronger and weaker portions of our ring. The greatest fault is when we have someone complete us, there is a risk of becoming weak in those areas.
This is why I believe the statistics are higher for divorce if you are married before 30. Before we reach 30, we barely have rings to connect with someone else. On or around this time we possess the ability to make a chain with another person but continue to work on our own. What is so great about this is the person has made a union with someone else and still maintained who they are and where they hope to go. When you connect the rings, you are on a journey with someone else. You grow your bond to become stronger while being headed in the same direction, all the while making your link stronger while making your INDIVIDUAL ring stronger.
By continually working on yourself you grow together. Best of all, when you celebrate what you like most about the other, you help their ring become stronger, as opposed to always harping on their shortcomings which in turn weakens that part of their ring. Don’t get caught being weak and looking for someone to make you whole. This is once again looking outside of ourselves for happiness and success. Focus on being the right person and when you find someone else who has done the same, you will connect the rings and form a strong bond that complements, not one that completes.