What is a Karmic Relationship?

Karma, put very simply, is the law of cause and effect. So, karmic relationships are usually meant to balance out our actions towards others from a previous lifetime.

Karmic relationships are always those that are the most difficult. The majority of us will have to deal with karmic relationships at some point during this lifetime. The relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be a romantic one, but it is usually one of the most painful and comes to teach us the toughest soul lessons. You can have a karmic relationship with friends, family members, colleagues, neighbours or even acquaintances. The relationship may be one that lasts for years or it could be fleeting.

Life is about learning and developing as a soul and that’s not always easy. It is believed that these karmic relationships come from previous lives. If you treated someone badly in a past life, this time around the roles may be reversed. It is not a punishment but a way of helping you both to develop spiritually. Many people believe these roles are planned out before we reincarnate and we each decide how we will interact and help each other on our soul journey.

So, how do you recognise a karmic relationship or know if you are in one?

Romantic Relationships

You may have a karmic relationship with a romantic partner that comes into your life. It is usually a very passionate and fiery relationship and you may feel at times that you hate them as much, if not more, than you love them. However, something keeps drawing you back and the two of you keep repeating the same patterns until one person finally breaks away.

In a karmic romantic relationship people often feel that it was love at first sight and you somehow recognised each other from the start and just knew you had a deep connection. The relationship may have started well and moved quite quickly. However, after a short while you probably found that you were putting far more into the relationship than they were and you might even have felt quite used at times. The relationship could also have been quite physically, emotionally or mentally abusive. However, there is always something almost addictive about the other person and you kept forgiving them and going back for more. In some cases, you could have become quite dependent on them, no matter how badly they treated you. Maybe you are stuck in a relationship like that at the moment.

The relationship may last for years or could be quite short-lived. It just depends how long it takes for you to learn what you need to so that you can begin to balance that karma from previous lifetimes and then finally let go.

You might feel that this person is a soulmate and, quite likely, they are. I believe that we have many soulmates and some come to support and help us through love while others come with much harsher lessons. However, this particular soulmate is not the person you were meant to be with forever. It’s important to recognise a karmic relationship and then take the lessons and move on to something better. Long-term, romantic karmic relationships don’t work out.

Familial Relationships

These are often the most difficult and painful. They say you can’t choose your family, but I don’t agree! I think the majority of our family members are soulmates and, again, we choose our roles and relationships whilst in that “life between lives” state. However, once we’ve made that choice, we are pretty much stuck with it throughout this incarnation. Also, when you think of the huge influence our families have from a very early age, these are some of the most important karmic relationships we have. You wouldn’t be the person you are today without that influence from your closest family members, whether you see their role as loving and supportive or damaging and destructive.

Remember that your mother in this lifetime likely played a totally different role in previous lives. We change and swap according to the lessons we need. When I regress people into a past life, friends, partners and family members turn up playing all sorts of roles. Mothers may once have been sisters, brothers, fathers, daughters or even servants or slaves. We recognise them at an energy or soul level, not by what they look like, their gender or the roles they play.

Friendships

Have you ever had a friend that made you feel used? Perhaps the friendship was totally one-sided and you were always the one giving your time, energy and resources. You might have found that they only got in touch when they wanted something from you. Yet, you seemed to have no boundaries and just kept making excuses for them. Maybe you recognise this and are in a karmic friendship right now. It is very likely that the two of you are soulmates and have shared lives together before. Maybe you behaved badly towards them and now you are being given the opportunity to rectify that situation somehow. Perhaps they agreed to come into your life to teach you tolerance, patience or the importance of personal boundaries. Take a step back and see what the relationship is trying to teach you. If possible, when that lesson is learned, if the relationship doesn’t improve then it’s time to say goodbye for now and move on.

Other Karmic Relationships

Acquaintances, work colleagues, bosses or someone you met at a bus stop once can all be karmic relationships. They don’t always have to be the most important people in your life. If that person had a particularly negative effect on you, taught you an important life lesson or just somehow upset you or wound you up for no good reason, they could be part of your soul group that agreed to pop in and teach you something you wanted to learn.

Are Karmic Relationships Always Tough?

I think the whole point of karmic relationships is that they are the toughest and come with the most difficult life lessons. Again, this could be because you need to see something from the other side after having played the part of the “bad guy” in another lifetime and now you’ve switched roles. I do believe that we have karmic relationships only with members of our own soul group, so they are technically “soul mates”. Other soul mates that come into our lives and offer us support and pure, unconditional love are not usually known as “karmic”.

How Can Past Life Regression Help?

If you are stuck in a difficult relationship, it can be really helpful to go back and examine past lifetimes with the intention of understanding more about the bigger picture and soul lessons you are both learning.

Remember that karma is not meant as a punishment. “Good” and “bad” are human ideas and I believe that there is a reason for everything that happens. We are just not in a position to recognise it whilst here on earth. Therefore, it is important that we don’t judge our actions or those of others but see them from a higher perspective and look at the soul lessons. It isn’t always easy being the “bad guy” and sometimes, looking at a relationship from a distance and recognising patterns and reasons for a certain behaviour can be really helpful. It can help us forgive, let go and move on.

Sometimes during regression, people are able to go into that “life between lives” state and they meet up with members of their soul group or they remember particular discussions and plans that were made before reincarnating. Again, this can really help to understand both happy and loving earthly relationships and the reasons for the more difficult ones. It helps us to see everyone from a more loving and forgiving perspective and let go of anger, hurt and frustration.