What are new ways that we can 'do' relationships?

Question: ' I am having a lot of problems in my relationship that I have been in for six years.
It seems as if the way my partner and I have both 'done relationship' is no longer working. Do you feel we may need to learn to 'do' our relationships in new ways?

Serge: Basically my answer is yes.  Many of our old ways of 'doing things' no longer work, and I believe this applies as much to the domain of relationship as it does in the world of business and finance.We are entering very new times; we are transiting out of  the Piscean Age into that of Aquarius and so we need 'New bottles for the new wine', new forms to 'house' the new emerging energies.

Indicative of this is that more of us demand more of ourselves and of life.  Many of us feel moved to grow and explore the higher reaches of our human beingness  and  it can be  often hard to do this within the old structures of relationship, especially within the conventional framework of old-style marriages where  the aim is to 'settle down' and where there is a tacit agreement not to call one another on one's 'stuff', in order to 'keep the peace'! Well, for many couples, this repressive way of being doesn't work any more. I think one of the aims of relationship is also to grow and develop and to explore with  our partner how both  of us may become more fully human.

There is a beautiful quotation by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: 'For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult task of all....the work for which all other work is but preparation. It is a high inducement for the individual to ripen....a great exacting claim upon us, something that chooses us out and calls us to vast things.'  

I love this. We need to learn to re-ennoble our relationships, to  see  relationship as a sacred mission, as opposed to   it either being something to fall  unconsciously into, in order  to be comfortable or to legitimise our having children. When couples come to see me for counselling, I always try to help them see their relationship in this light as it recontextualises it and in my experience, allows them to work through their various challenges much more satisfactorily.