Spiritual Evolution in Personal Relationships; or, Give Me A Bananna

One must evolve in order to stay happy in a relationship long term.  This ability is essential for two reasons.  Well, to be honest it's more than 2, but we'll just look at the two most important ones.
Every aspect of your relationship with others will change over time.
Every.
Aspect.
The reasons that brought you together initially may continue to exist, or they may disappear, and without the ability to let go and remain flexible, a person can begin to focus on the loss and in doing so will miss the burgeoning positive aspects of that same relationship.  Remember, continual focus on the negative brings more negative to light.

That being said, it takes a great deal of strength to let go of expectations.
I'm not talking about a level of performance you aspire to attract in others-I'm talking about those things that you know and count on happening from day to day.
There is an old proverb that goes; "Better the Devil that you do know than the Devil that you don't." , and it means, in general, that given the choice, people tend to opt for familiarity over relief.  That means that even if a situation is unpleasant; one will remain involved in it because it is familiar and all the variables are known. I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to see how this applies to relationships.
Personally, I believe that the one thing a person dislikes more than a negative quality about something, is to be surprised by it.  It is those who are able to see through the illusion of circumstance and assign other meanings (or no meanings) to them are the ones who will be best able to remain stable while disruption occurs around them.
Simply said, becoming comfortable in handling the unexpected is a sign of Spiritual Growth/Evolution. 
Personal growth makes it easier to become comfortable in handling the unexpected, which leads to your ability to remain unattached to a particular outcome, which leads to less stress when things change around you.

The other reason that one must evolve in order to stay happy has to do with the reality of any relationship with another.
Any relationship you experience is actually a single facet of your relationship with yourself.  We become involved in a relationship to study specific aspects of our own selves-be it passion, broken-ness, pain, talent; it is all related back to the self in terms of likeness (i.e. "This person is like me-I also have this quality" or "This person is not like me-I do not have this quality")  Even though we are noticing that a quality is missing in ourselves with relation to the other person, ultimately we must still focus on ourselves in order to notice that the quality is missing.
OK
That was confusing.  Let's try this:
You are green and your friend is orange.  In order to realize that your orange friend is different from the green you, you must know that you are green.
In order to do that, you have to look at YOURSELF.
That's better.
Finding acceptance and happiness within yourself is another sign of Spiritual Growth.

Congratulations, by experiencing the same/otherness of another person, you have just identified something about yourself.  Committing to a relationship is equal to making a commitment to becoming self-aware.  This is why many cultures consider marriage to be a Spiritual state.
 If we cannot learn to accept and integrate what we become aware of, we leave portions of our selves attached to a negative emotional charge.  Even without a long and involved explanation about the Law of Attraction, how long will you want to stay in a relationship that continually reflects the unliked bits of yourself back at you?  And there is a big difference between "I HATE that about myself, I won't do that anymore" and "Well, I know I have a tendency to be that way but it's who I am.  But that doesn't mean I have to stay that way."

In many ways, acceptance of self is a form of high Spiritual practice-and it encompasses the ideas of remaining non-judgmental, flexible, centered and the ability to let go of the familiar and non-productive for the productive but non-familiar. 
In other words;
Evolution.

Everything Old is New Again

NOTE:
Point of View;  "Every time I start to get a little ahead, I get hit with another expense that takes up all my savings"
Conclusion; The Universe hates me and conspires to hold me under when I want to succeed.

OR
Point of View; "I'm lucky! Every time I have an additional expense, I have just enough saved to take care of it!"
Conclusion; The Universe works to hold me afloat through uncertain times and provides what I need when I need it.

You choose.

Tell It To The Judge.

Ugly.
Stupid.
Smelly.
Sickening.
Racist.
Disgusting.

Many of you who read the above words will experience a feeling of discomfort.
When a word evokes an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling from an individual, the word is sometimes said to "carry a negative emotional charge".  Every word you speak, think or write carries an emotional charge-which is largely determined by the experiences and perspective of the listener/thinker/reader.
Writers are particularly aware of this. Just as visual artists use symbols, form and color to evoke or convey emotion, writers use things like word choice, punctuation and adjectives to evoke certain emotions from their readers-this is how they convey the meaning of the story-and keep people interested in reading their books!

When a person assigns a (most often negatively) charged  word to a situation or thing, they are often said to be "judgmental"-and this is often vilified by the New Age Community.

Are they?
OF COURSE THEY ARE.

But is this necessarily a "bad" thing?

Of all the words in use in our language today, especially among those of the New Age Community, I feel that the word judgment carries the biggest negative charge of all.  Many Spiritual Teachers teach that judgment is a by-product of the ego, and therefore is something that must be released in order to attain true enlightenment.  Buddhist philosopher, Chogyam Trungpa had this to say;

"The attainment of enlightenment from the ego's point of view is extreme death".

While I agree that attachment (another no-no among the Non-deist philosophies) stems from the ego, and that judgment is a form of attachment , I think that the attachment that is inherent in being judgmental is more subtle than just the ego trying to perpetuate itself.


Let me explain.

With regard to our New Age friends, what you are really "attached" to here are the assumptions that;
1)  A always represents B.
          and, ironically
2) To have this point of view is always a bad thing.

But let's take another look at the nature of judgment.
Many of the day-to-day decisions made by our brains, based on the input of our senses, happen automatically-and far too fast for us to really register that a decision has been reached.

(Now, for those of you who adhere more strongly to dictionary definition may feel that this continual process does not really qualify as "judgment".  But the thesaurus gives many equivalents to the word judgment, such as estimation, evaluation, decision and intelligence, which may be more acceptable to you, but still mean the same thing.  This is a good example of a judgment-that judgment is an inappropriate word based on your beliefs.  I'm not doing this to get under your skin, dear literal friends-but I am trying to make a point.)

So what this means is that a person is immersed in a constant stream of information that that comes from the outside stimulation, which, in turn, is interpreted by their senses and influenced by their own beliefs and perceptions-in other words, judgment.  They do this many times a minute-even a decision as simple as "I will sit in this chair because I judge it sturdy enough to hold my weight" is a judgment.
Forming a preference is a judgment.   
Making a decision is a judgment.
Expressing a desire is a judgment.
Taking a step is a judgment.
Being human means being judgmental.  That's it.  It's that simple.
So judgment is really not the issue here and has gotten a bad rap.

The problem comes, as I see it, when a particular word carries an emotional charge, and that causes us to attribute a value judgment (to deem better or worse with relation to something else) to it which evokes a reaction from you that does not serve you.  That is the "attachment" that the Non-deist and New Age philosophies would have you avoid, not the word itself or even the meaning.
Our preferences are not what hold us back; it is the belief that our judgments make us a better or worse person than someone with a different judgment.  It is also the fear that the opinion of those who assign us a negative value is somehow more valid than our own.
Judgment only becomes dangerous when it is used to shore up our own self-esteem or to undermine the self esteem of another.

So, what to do.....

The first step is to stop beating yourself and others up over doing what your very nature compels you to do.

The next step is to loosen the hold of our value judgments.  This allows us to examine more closely the world around us.  We are forced to examine each thing, in each moment without getting hung up on whether something is negative or positive-better or worse.
It simply is and is allowed to exist as it is-which, in my judgment, is pretty good.  :)