Voltage Matching: The Mistake Most People Make in Love
Why we choose partners who love at the level we love ourselves
So here I am in the Wildflower Café at Sanctuary Ireland. I flew over Friday, early doors - I like to avoid the M25 traffic, so the taxi picked me up at 4.30am. It was raining. I was in Ireland by 9.10am. It was lashing. My friend Brenda met me and we ran through the rain to get the car. It was pelting it down all the way out of Dublin.
Driving through the tree-lined fields either side, everything was beautiful and wet and glistening. Then the sky lightened and by the time we reached the Sanctuary, unbelievably, the sun was out.
As we drove down the lane we passed a man on a white horse, which made me laugh because my last Substack had just gone out noting that love does not arrive on a white stallion, ahead of Valentine’s weekend.
And so here I am, Sunday morning, having survived another Valentine’s Day post a twelve-year relationship that I ended a while ago. Valentine’s Day raises all sorts of questions. Did I choose the right person? Did I leave the right person? What even is love anyway?
Growing up in the 80s I fully expected to be married with 2.5 children by 26. When that didn’t materialise I didn’t bat an eyelid, because amongst my twenty-something friends we were all ‘living the dream’ - working and partying in London. When my 30s came round, tired of London and pre-empting the dream taking a full turn towards nightmare, I jumped. I jumped out of London and into a completely new life. I trained as a Shiatsu practitioner, which led me on and on to what I do today.
And still the myth of ‘meeting the one and living happily ever after’ kept circling the drain.
Moving out of the rat race and into the countryside opened up a new awareness and perspective. I became more interested in discovering the real potential of life beyond who I thought I should be, so that I could evolve into who I actually was. There were relationships along the way, but never the hallowed knight in shining armour.
Then I met someone who was going to be a keeper, at least for a while. Through that connection I realised that relationships are where we do the work. Soon after we met we went to a friend’s wedding and the celebrant said something that really stayed with me - relationships are designed to bring us closer to God.
I took this to mean that relationships will show you all the places where you do not love. All the niggles, all the foibles, the loud chewing, the incessant snoring, the perceived selfishness of either party. I took it to mean that relationships deepen our capacity to love - not only our partner but perhaps more importantly ourselves. I say that because it is my experience, both personally and with those I have worked with, that we are only able to love another to the depth that we love ourselves.
It is like a beam of light, or a torch. If our torch is low on battery we can only shine a dim light onto another. If however our own self-love is fully charged and ready to go, we can put the ones we love in the centre spotlight and shower upon them a level of love that radiates unconditionally.
If the object of our affection has a torch low on battery, they are only used to a dimmer light of love and will find our beam too much - and vice versa. Shining the torch of love brightly onto someone who does not love themselves can make them feel exposed, in the spotlight, under scrutiny, with nowhere to hide their shame or self-loathing. They may in turn want to run and hide.
So for ease, we often choose partners whose torches are of a similar voltage. Neither feels exposed. There is perceived safety in that. If you choose someone who loves you more than you can love them, you may feel yourself shrinking, cringing, shying away from something you do not believe you deserve. If you love someone more than they are able to receive, they may act out, sabotage, even cheat - almost as if to say, “See, I wasn’t worth your love after all.”
So the truth, it would seem, is that we need to be about the business of tending our own torches, charging our own batteries to the maximum, shining the light of love on ourselves and stress-testing our system. Where am I feeling shame? Where do I feel not good enough, or even in self-rejection? How can I love those parts of myself and heal old wounds?
When we can vibrate at the level of self-love, then we can share and we can receive, and we will be drawn to those who are equal to us. We stop looking to rescue people because we no longer need to be rescued. We have rescued ourselves. And love becomes partnership, shared experience, mutual respect and support.
That is the Holy Grail.
And we do not need a knight to bring it to us.