Let me share a story I have heard with you. The story is called “The house of a thousand mirrors” At the edge of a small village there was a house with a thousand mirrors. One day a happy little dog was walking by wagging his tail. “Let me see what is in this magical house” the dog thought to himself. So he bounced up the stairs and looked inside. What did he see? A thousand other happy dogs all wagging their tails back and him and smiling. “This is a fine house” the dog thought to himself “I shall come back here often” A few days later a different dog was walking by. This dog was a sad dog, he was told by the other dog about a house on the edge of the village that contained thousands of happy dogs. Surely he thought one of these dogs can cheer me up. So up the stairs he went head hung low. He peered inside the house and what did he see? Not the thousands of happy dogs he was promised, but instead many other sad dogs like himself. “This will not do at all” he said to himself. “I will never return here again”

Now the moral to this story should be rather obvious, but how does it relate to the subject we are discussing? Specifically our relationship? In short it has everything to do with our relationship. In our story both dogs approached the same house but had distinctly different experiences. Why is that? What they saw in the house was a reflection of what they brought to the house. This is true of our relationships as well. Quite often an problems we may be experiencing in our relationship can be a reflection of what we, ourselves are bringing to the relationship. If we find our spouse to be unromantic or quick to anger, can we say that we are brining patience and romance to the relationship ourselves? As we have mentioned quite a few times in this series of blogs you cannot hope to change your spouse you must work on yourself. Remember, life and our relationships which tend to be a focused representation of our lives, often reflect most what we bring to them. If you hope to attract a positive and loving spouse into your life, you must be a positive and loving person yourself first. Sometimes when we do focus on the qualities we desire we can even end up attracting a different partner into our lives, one that is more suitable to the qualities we desire.

Another valuable lesson that may not be so obvious in this story can be shown by the second sad dog. If you recall the sad dog was approaching the house, which serves as a symbol of life, or in our case a relationship, to fix him. He thought if he could only find the happy dogs he heard about they might fix his sadness. However he still approached the house as a sad dog. The same holds true for our relationships. If you are going into a relationship to receive love, but do not love yourself or bring love to your partner, you will not find the love you seek, even from the most caring partner. This may sound sad, but in it is the seed of great opportunity. If you wish to attract a loving and caring partner, or even trickier, transform your current partner to a more loving and caring person the answer is easy. All you have to do to find the traits you desire is embody them yourself. You will either see them reflected in your partner or perhaps even attract a new and more perfect partner for you. So the lesson today is remember relationships, much like life, can only return what we bring to them.