Practice Acceptance

Your practice has sent you soaring, but your partner is holding you back. Practice acceptance and you'll live happily ever after.

By Meagan Francis

Being honest and upfront with your partner can also allay fears. "It's critical to keep communication open, clean, and clear, so you're continually sharing with your partner where you are and what's going on, to help him or her feel some sense of security and safety," Miller says.

And remember: It's not fair to dictate how your partner supports you or to get angry if you don't feel supported in that specific way, Taylor says. "If you think about it, the nonbeliever then has only one choice, when in fact there are lots of ways you can get support from your partner."

A final thing to keep in mind is that your partner's resistance or negativity isn't one-sided. "People have such a hard time realizing that there's a systemic relationship between all these issues," Taylor says. "It's not just that one partner is resistant—the other is also playing a role in the problem."

With some couples, a partner might use religious or spiritual issues to create a sense of separation, because he or she is afraid of intimacy, Taylor says. In family therapy, this is called triangulation. "You have an unsolvable problem 'outside' the relationship that you focus all your attention on—drinking, working too much, sick kid, aging parent, religious beliefs—and there's no energy left for the relationship." Such a situation takes away the possibility for intimacy, Taylor asserts.

In other partnerships, one person will assume a teacherlike role and communicate the message that "if you just believed like me, or acted like me, then the relationship would really work," Taylor says. "There are many forms of teacher-student dynamics, and they mostly lead to distance and trouble."

So if you're interested in making your relationship work, try examining how your actions and emotions contribute to the dynamic. "It's like a biosystem," Taylor says. "You can't add more rain without having a change downstream."

Practice Your Relationship

Of course, spirituality is all about union; it isn't meant to be a dividing force. If you feel your practice is becoming the source of friction in your relationship, you might want to examine the intent with which you are practicing. "At the end of the day, your practice is a way to connect to yourself and open to others," Lee says. "Yoga is relationship, whether it's the relationship between the breath and nervous system, or the relationship between you and the person on the mat next to you who has B.O. If you don't like the way your hip feels in Pigeon Pose, do you get rid of your hip?"

Lee suggests viewing the challenges that come along as a way to enhance your spiritual practice and help you delve deeper into acceptance and compassion. "Obstacle is really key," she says. "Anything that's difficult is more fodder for deepening your practice—rather than trying to change anything or anybody, you learn to work with things the way they are."

And if you're intent on having a healthy relationship, by all means keep practicing! Whether your partner shares your spiritual beliefs or not, your practice can make your relationship better. "Most spiritual practices teach the components of a successful relationship: valuing compassion, forgiveness, commitment, honesty," Taylor says. "When people bond with a spiritual practice of awakening, then all these cultural and relationship issues about who's going to the right church or following the right leader disappear." Then the spiritual experience is maximized and made real; heart meets heart. "I think relationship is one of the greatest spiritual practices," he says.

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