Everyone is looking for a loving "relationship" with another. Some people get what they are seeking which is the almost unconditional love and understanding of another person. However, what starts out as our need to be loved by another, can end up as being a "needy relationship". And nobody wants that, because that is when blaming and resentment become issues, and then "the relationship" is definitely no longer a truly loving and understanding relationship.

So how can we have a loving understanding great relationship with another?

Mindfulness teaches us that our first responsibility is actually to be able to love ourselves unconditionally. This means to love ourselves fully, accept ourselves fully, even if we sometimes do not understand ourselves fully! When we do this, we can then begin to love another fully, accept another fully, and even if we don't understand always, at least sometimes understand the other person fully!

Loving ourselves fully, all of the time, is a very hard practice. One of the reasons is because we sometimes take on the responsibility for how other people feel. However, when we are not fully responsible for our own feelings, for our own thoughts and for our own actions, then we are actually being irresponsible to that other person. And that is when we start to blame the other person and feel resentment. Taken further it leads to upset and anger in the relationship

We have to learn the difference of being only responsible for ourselves and only being responsible to others. Responsibility for ourselves and to others is a concept that is very difficult for many of us to understand.

I know that for myself I grew up at a time when it was the accepted norm that "my prince would arrive in shining armour and we would live happily ever after" and that he would be responsible for me forever! This of course made me believe that someone else was going to be responsible for me! For my happiness!! I was also taught that I was responsible for my children. I thought I was responsible for my children's feelings, thoughts and actions. It was a great way to take away anyone's self-worth!

Later in life, after years of thinking that someone else was responsible for my happiness, when a major crisis in my life came along I had to relearn how to be totally responsible for myself and relearn how to love and care for myself before all others. I soon realised that my children were perfectly capable of being responsible for themselves and that I was only responsible to them - to love them, to teach them good values and to accept them totally for who they were. So, to have a great relationship with another we have to first take full ownership and responsibility for our feelings, for our thoughts and for our actions in any relationship, before I can be responsible to another in a relationship.

I am truly blessed and very grateful, as I now have a wonderful love relationship firstly with myself and then with my partner of 36 years, John, with my adult children and their partners, my extended family and many wonderful friends. Isn't this what all those children's fairy tales told us? "Someday my prince or princess will come along and they lived happily ever after"?

The Mindfulness Practice Community of Bermuda meets every Sunday at 5.14 to 6.44 p.m. at the Manchester Union Building in Hamilton. Over the holidays we shall not meet on December 29. Meetings however will commence in the New Year. Please contact us at iamhomeibl.bm or visit www.plumvillage.org for more information on the mindfulness teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.