Reprioritising Relationships with Dr. Imene Benzamouche
In this episode, your host, Leandra Costa, talks with Relationships Done Different Facilitator Dr. Imene Benzamouche about re-prioritising your relationships.
Imene grew up without a model of a joyful relationship and found herself resisting the idea of relationships. As an unmarried woman, she faced a lot of judgment in her community. Through addressing her own personal judgments, going into allowance, and rediscovering joy, she transformed not only her relationships but her entire life.
Key points from this episode’s conversation
- Having Drama in Relationships
- Choosing Relationships Done Different
- Melting Your Judgments
- Not choosing a relationship in a community that considers it a must
- Going to Allowance
- How to get to a place of clarity about your choices
- Choose a joyful life
- Easy ways to find joy
- What energies do you want in your life?
- You have to be the priority.
Having Drama in Relationships
Imene’s life was dramatic before she found Relationships Done Different. She had a conflict, in that she always gave amazing advice to people and had a really good perspective on relationships, but found it difficult to follow her own advice. Whether it was with family, friends, romantic partners, or business partners, relationships were always a little bit hard. She didn’t know how to deal with people, how to be, or what she wanted.
Choosing Relationships Done Different
Relationships Done Different was one of the classes Imene resisted. She convinced herself there was no resistance, but class after class would go by without her signing up, and eventually she realized that she wasn’t choosing it. This was terrifying because she recognized she was going to have to look at where she was right and wrong in relationships. She had perspectives that she couldn’t apply to this reality according to her point of view, because she thought she was so right and at the same time believed she was so wrong.
Finally, she asked, “Okay, what would my life be like if I actually chose this?”
And she felt a sense of relief and expansiveness.
So the next class, she was there!
Melting Your Judgments
The class brought about so much change within Imene and within all her relationships. She started seeing how the relationships in different periods of her life - especially those with her parents - had affected her relationships with men and women in the present.
Facilitated by peoples’ questions in class and using the tools and the manual, she looked at what she had hidden from herself. Her judgments on relationships melted away and she started discovering how and what she actually wanted as her life and her relationships. Her whole life, not only her relationships, changed.
Not choosing a relationship in a community that considers it a must
Imene faced a lot of judgment as she is from an Arab background and being unmarried at thirty is not accepted in her community.
Growing up in this landscape, she didn’t have a model of a joyful relationship and the relationships she looked at were not very appealing. When she asked herself what she actually liked in a relationship, whether she wanted kids, whether she wanted to be married, or whether she even wanted to commit or not, it didn’t sound joyful for her. Not only was she being judged, but she was also judging the relationships she was seeing.
Going to Allowance
Imene used to feel resistance to others’ point of view, because she didn’t know what she wanted and what her point of view was. As she started getting over the rightness and wrongness of being or not being married, she realized it was just choice.
When you get to the space of acknowledging that everything is just a choice and you don’t have to choose something just because it is the accepted thing to do, you can go to Allowance.
For example, people used to pray for Imene to find a husband, and eventually she recognized that they were saying what they were saying from what they thought was a place of kindness. When you acknowledge what is true to you and you know what you want, you get to be in Allowance and can receive whatever other people say about your marital status as a kindness, without any charge or any significance.
How to get to a place of clarity about your choices
Start using the tool of indulging!
Take three days (or as many days as you choose), and indulge in a choice, and then take three days and indulge in the opposite of that choice. For example, Imene was not sure if she wanted to get married. She took 3 days and dived into the space of being married and what her life would be like. Then she took 3 days and indulged in the space of not being married and what that life would look like. Usually, before the end of the second three days, you KNOW which choice to choose.
Choose a joyful life
For Imene, a choice should make you feel joyful, and the tool of indulging will help you know what is joyful for you. She went back to what makes her body joyful and it became so clear what energy she was looking for. With a joyful life, you live better, your health is better, your money flows are better, and your relationships are better. if you have the space of joy and you are creating that space of happiness, life is fun!
Easy ways to find joy
Look at what you enjoy most, what you like having in your life, and what you would miss if it was gone from your life. If you struggle to know what is joyful to you, try something simple like going for a walk, cooking, or getting in nature.
We don’t consider choices to be easy, and we consider being in a relationship such a serious choice, to the point that we can lose the priorities that we have and the things we enjoy in life.
What energies do you want in your life?
If you would like the energy of gratitude in your life and you’re in a relationship with someone, are you thankful they exist? Are you thankful they are choosing to be with you? Are you thankful for the joy they bring into your life?
If you don’t have the energies you desire in your relationship, perhaps ask yourself why you’re with that person and whether or not you’re simply fulfilling society’s point of view about relationships.
You have to be the priority.
Many people are brought up to make other people happy, and everyone ends up losing.
When you don’t have a relationship with yourself, you unconsciously expect it from someone else but can never receive it, because you haven’t gifted it to yourself. When you gift yourself that energy, you remove the lack, and allow yourself to receive it from other people.
Create a relationship with yourself and discover what makes you tick, and take it from there.
What can you gift to yourself today that you have been expecting others to gift to you, that if you gifted to you could change your whole reality?
Relationships Done Different
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relationshipsdonedifferent/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RelationshipsDoneDifferent/
Website: https://www.relationshipsdonedifferent.com/
Book: Relationship, Are You Sure You Want One?
Guest
Dr. Imene Benzamouche, Certified Facilitator of Access Consciousness, Relationship Done Different Facilitator
Dr. Imene Benzamouche’s website
