Freeing Ourselves from Myths

Excerpted from Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love by Linda and Charlie Bloom

Freeing ourselves from the hold of rigid beliefs is one of the most empowering things that we can do in our lives and in our relationships. This is an essential part of the process of cultivating the kind of wisdom that characterizes all great relationships. The dictionary defines wise as “marked by deep understanding, keen discernment, and a capacity for sound judgment.” An essential step in the process of assessing what is true is to evaluate what isn’t true. While a myth may contain a kernel of truth, it isn’t true in its entirety.

Myths are attractive for several reasons. One is that by adopting them, we feel integrated within a larger community of people who share the same collective perspective. Also, they free us from the responsibility of having to assess people and circumstances on an individual, case-by-case basis. This discernment takes work, and myths provide us with a prepackaged description of “the way things are.” But the price that we pay for this “shortcut” is a loss of our ability to see things for ourselves. Another consequence is that living by culturally approved myths blunts our passion for living and diminishes trust in our own judgment.

Accepting myths without questioning them prevents us from experiencing the full measure of freedom, passion, and personal power that is available to us when we take ownership of our own inner authority.

If it is in fact true that the truth will set you free, then perhaps the first step is recognizing when something isn’t necessarily true. Believing something to be true when it may not be can be dangerous business indeed. When we act in ways that affirm such untrue beliefs, we can create self-fulfilling prophecies that provide more “evidence” that validates potentially inaccurate views. Over time, we become incapable of seeing these beliefs for what they are, especially since our larger society already holds them as true.

This can be particularly dangerous in relationships, where distinguishing reality from perception can require exceptional powers of discernment. When we act in accordance with beliefs that are unverified, we’re not operating from an accurate compass, and so we can end up in places other than where we intended to go.

Another attractive aspect of myths is that they often “feel” true. In relationships, when we experience difficult emotions — such as disappointment, anger, helplessness, guilt, resentment, or some combination of the above — we usually don’t attribute those feelings to ungrounded beliefs. Instead, we usually blame our partner or ourselves. It may never occur to us that no one is “at fault.” Rather, we may simply need to revise a belief about “the way things are.”

Seeing a myth for what it is and questioning its validity enables us to exert more influence in our relationship. In so doing, we can see our relationship not as a fixed entity but as an evolving process, one that expresses itself moment to moment in a constantly shifting dance. Having cultivated certain ideas and myths over a lifetime, we tend to resist letting them go. To overcome these beliefs, we must develop empathic understanding and respect for our partner, rather than trying to get them to conform to our beliefs. This means being more concerned with listening than with being heard, and with giving rather than getting.

Challenging an assumption requires us first to recognize that what we have held as a fact may not be entirely true. Acknowledging this possibility can be a daunting prospect, since at times it can shake the foundation of our world. No one wants to face that. Yet despite our reluctance to reevaluate the legitimacy of long-standing beliefs, sometimes life experiences trump our resistance to change.

The mind is incredibly powerful, but it’s not infallible. It provides wisdom and valuable guidance; it is how we make sense of an overwhelmingly complex world. But if we don’t check the accuracy and trustworthiness of the information we receive, our minds can mislead us. If we take shortcuts — by accepting widely held myths and bypassing the process of inquiry — these shortcuts may not lead to reliable pathways to the truth. Especially in relationships, what is true for others may not be true for oneself. Just because many people say something is true doesn’t necessarily make it so. Distinguishing belief from reality is itself a process of liberation that frees us to live in accordance with what is true for us.

One indicator of emotional maturity is the number of illusions about the world that one has given up. The process of examining our beliefs can be humbling because it requires us to be willing to detach from previously held positions. Yet the payoff is huge. We gain freedom, passion, creativity, personal power, wisdom, and fulfilling relationships. And all we have to give up are our illusions.
Some things are worth losing. Don’t believe everything you think.

Excerpted from Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love. Copyright © by Linda and Charlie Bloom. Reprinted with permission from New World Library.

Linda Bloom, LCSW, and Charlie Bloom, MSW, are bestselling authors and the founders and codirectors of Bloomwork. They have lectured and taught seminars on relationships throughout the United States and the world. They have been married since 1972. Their website is www.bloomwork.com