Navigating a Twin Flame Relationship

What I’ve learned so far, most of it the hard way

“If you took a single spiritual flame and split it in two, and then placed it into two souls who reincarnate together over and over again, this is a Twin Flame. It’s like being two sides of the same coin. You are very different in many ways, but you are also inexorably connected and the desire to be together is both primal and magnetic.

This level of connection and pull to be together can be both intoxicating and overwhelming. It’s common for Twin Flames to move in and out of each other’s lives because it’s such an intense relationship that it’s tough to maintain. Not only is the connection intense, but the main purpose of your Twin Flame is to show you the places within yourself that need to heal. It’s not an easy relationship although it is wonderful in many ways.”

That is what I wrote about my Twin Flame (TF) relationship with Nat not quite a year ago. All of it is still true, but in the past several months I’ve come to a new place of understanding and accepting what a TF relationship is and how to navigate it better. Perhaps other people have a different understanding or belief about TFs and that’s OK. In many ways, it is a highly personal thing.

A Twin Flame is a primal love relationship, but it’s not a pair-bond one. In fact, quite often TFs are married to other people or there is some other impediment to embarking upon a typical romantic relationship. You are not meant to have a standard experience, where you date, move in together, get married, and have children. That’s not what your TF relationship is intended to be. You may have some kind of joint mission, but even that probably won’t be what you might initially imagine it is.

Nat and I have been together for just over 4 years, although we’ve only understood that we were Twin Flames for about the past 2. We are both married with children living at home, and we are both deeply devoted to our mates and our families. Fortunately, Nat and I are in a situation where our mates know about and accept our relationship, and that makes things infinitely easier, although still not always easy.

Because a Twin Flame relationship takes place over and over again through many lifetimes, it essentially exists outside of time and consensus reality. But we are humans living a corporeal existence. We don’t easily know what it means to have something take place outside of time, although Nat and I seemed to understand this intuitively, even before we knew what a Twin Flame was.

I can remember feeling frustrated when a couple of our dates in a row needed to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, and although I was disappointed, part of me also knew that we had all the time in the world. I remember saying that to Nat and he agreed that it felt that way to him as well. Although I knew it, I guess I didn’t yet trust that knowing, because we broke up a few months later. The pressure of wanting so desperately to be together combined with the fact that this kept getting derailed in various ways was too much to bear and I ended the relationship (or so I imagined). At the time, I thought it was what was best for us both. A few months later James and I moved across the country. It was only when I let Nat know that we were moving that we began to find our way back into active relationship again.

At the time, this whole thing was extremely painful. I told James that breaking up with Nat felt like cutting off my own arm. I didn’t realize at the time how true that actually was. I had met someone who was almost like a fraternal twin — we are not exactly alike, but we are from the same stock somehow — and I was trying to pretend like it was just like any other relationship. And that was actually the problem. I was trying to have a regular, polyamorous relationship with Nat. I believe now that we kept getting blocked in that because it wasn’t the direction we were supposed to be going in.

One of the common characteristics of a TF relationship is an on-going push and pull. You’re close, then you don’t seem to be; you’re getting along great, and then there seem to be all kinds of obstacles. It ebbs and flows like the tides, and this has been one of the toughest things for me to come to accept. I crave consistency in relationships, and it’s taken me until recently to really come to terms with what looks like a lack of that.

The surface part still ebbs and flows, but what I’ve finally come to see if that it is not where the relationship primarily exists. It’s in the deep place, that place that exists outside of the temporal, where our connection is strong and has always been. Your TF’s main job is to help you see where you need to heal. This was certainly the case with this dynamic. My need for consistency came from an old wounded place. Learning to let that go for the kind of consistency that really matters was very healing.

I speak of Nat as one of my life partners, and he absolutely is, but not in the same way that he was once my boyfriend when we lived nearer to each other. I tried hard for a long time to maintain a modified version of that, accounting for the physical distance, of course. Things would go well for a while, but then the ebb and flow would start, and I’d be back to feeling the pain of not having that boyfriend relationship in the way that I wanted it.

What alleviated the pain was in letting go of that piece. Nat is a part of my family. He is a part of me. Nothing can alter that, and because of it, what happens at the surface this week or this month is largely irrelevant. Whenever I check in with the deeper connection, I feel him strongly, just right there for me, as I am for him. That never alters. A while back I was getting ready for a difficult meeting, related to leaving the organization that I’d been with for a long time. I messaged him and asked him to please think of me at a designated time.

“You always have my best thoughts and support,” was his answer.

And I know that this is true — he’s always in my corner, just as I am ever in his. We only communicate about once a week these days, and although we share some of what’s going on in our lives, and still talk about music and what TV show we’re watching, that isn’t the real way that we share our lives. We do that mostly by continuing to acknowledge that they cannot be unshared. Even if for some unforeseen reason we were to never speak again, we’d still be sharing our lives.

I’ve been with my husband James for more than 30 years. Our lives are completely intertwined and he’ll always be a part of me as well, but it’s in a different way. I choose James over and over, every day. We create our bond through our love and intention to share our lives. I don’t really have any choice in the matter with Nat. He is a part of me whether I want him to be or not.

This was something that both comforted and stymied me when I was feeling upset about some of the hard times that we’ve been through. There is no getting away from this relationship. As already demonstrated, breaking up has no real impact. At least it didn’t for us. The magnetic pull was too strong and there were times when I just felt him even when we weren’t in touch. Because I couldn’t really walk away when things got hard, I had to figure out a different way to do this.

What that entailed was a complete acceptance that this is not a temporal relationship and that it was never meant to be one beyond the initial coming together. I still miss the physical aspects at times, getting to look in his eyes in particular, but fully embracing the energetic components as the real manifestation of our connection has made that so much easier. When I stopped trying to force our relationship to be what I wanted it to be, based on what it had once been, and instead let it be what it actually is, everything changed for the better.

I have to admit that when I hear about people who claim to be married to their Twin Flame, or otherwise in a more traditional relationship, I am skeptical. I don’t think that is the point or the purpose and it’s taking something that is primarily energetic and trying to make it fit into everyday life. Both parties would have to be pretty self-actualized and committed to the on-going work of making a non-corporeal connection make sense in a temporal world and I don’t think that is very common.

Nat and I have an everyday connection in that we talk about real people and real events in our lives, and it’s not that this part is unimportant, because it means a lot to experience the caring and connection that comes from doing that. But what I’ve finally come to understand is that this is the secondary part of a Twin Flame relationship. The primary part is a lot bigger and deeper. Accepting that is what has made this whole journey together a lot less frustrating and painful and it’s left me free to just completely embrace the beauty of what is right there and has been there all of the time.