Energy Exchange

I’ve been thinking a lot about energy exchange in relationships and how it’s been so con-fuddled and entangled with karma.

In any form of relationship — family, platonic, sexual, partnership — we become entangled. Our timelines cross. We exchange energy, experiences, emotions, lessons, patterns, and pieces of ourselves.

Women become the carriers in most cases because we carry so much in our wombs. Men carry a lot also; it just shows up differently in the body.

There is an exchange happening whether we acknowledge it or not.

And I think somewhere along the way, we started confusing energy exchange with karma.

Not every connection is a punishment.

Not every difficult relationship is something you “deserve.”

Not every person who enters your life is there because you owe them something from another lifetime.

Sometimes our timelines simply crossed.

Sometimes we were meant to experience something together, learn something from one another, or even simply witness something in each other.

The exchange itself isn’t necessarily toxic.

It becomes toxic or unhealthy when one person decides they are the ringmaster.

When they decide they get to determine where the energy goes.

Who carries what.

Who is responsible for what.

What the relationship means.

What you owe them.

What they are entitled to take from you.

And this is where I think we have to become more conscious about the relationships we enter and the energy we allow ourselves to remain entangled in.

Because exchange is supposed to be just that — an exchange.

It isn’t supposed to become ownership.

You don’t get to take pieces of me and then decide what happens to them.

You don’t get to make me responsible for carrying what belongs to you.

And I don’t get to make you responsible for carrying what belongs to me.

We can love each other.

We can deeply impact each other.

We can share a life, a body, a child, a home, a history, or a season.

And still understand that we are two separate beings having our own experiences.

Our timelines may cross, but they do not become one.

That distinction matters.

Because when we understand energy exchange without attaching ownership, entitlement, or punishment to it, we can begin to release people without believing we are abandoning them.

We can recognize what was exchanged without continuing to carry it.

We can honor what happened without remaining entangled in it.

And sometimes the most loving thing you can do in a relationship is recognize:

This is no longer an exchange. I am carrying something that was never mine to carry.