Question: How can one discern whether a relationship with one’s husband is primarily a learning relationship or a karmic one? Is it correct to assume that karmic relationships are necessarily complicated and more often associated with pain, or can they also be joyful and harmonious?
Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2026 New Year Webinar.
Well, in a sense, you could say that all relationships are learning relationships. Because if you have karma, part of what you need to learn is how to deal with people with whom you have karma in such a way that you do not perpetuate the karmic cycle, but free yourself from the karmic cycle so that you may either be separated from the person in this lifetime, or at least not have to re-embody in a close relationship with that person in your next lifetime.
From that perspective, you could say, as we have explained before, that karma is also a form of teacher, and that if you transcend the consciousness that caused you to make the karma, you do not any longer have to experience the physical consequences. You could say that if you learn how to not perpetuate the karma with a certain person, you may not have to be in that relationship any longer. And you can then choose to end the relationship, or you can choose to continue the relationship, but without the karma, it will be more harmonious.
The way to ascertain, the way to discern whether you are in a karmic relationship is to look at the patterns, the psychological patterns in your relationship, in the way you look at your partner, in the way you look at the relationship. What are the patterns in your mind? Your partner may very well have patterns as well, but that is not your primary concern here. Your primary concern is to overcome your own patterns, because that is what will free you from the karma. You need to use our teachings about the subconscious selves, use our teachings to expose this and look at the dynamic you see in the relationship.
Karmic relationships often have a more difficult dynamic, where you feel like you are trapped in a certain pattern, you cannot free yourself. You cannot avoid reacting to your partner. There is a compulsive aspect of the relationship, where you feel like something should not be happening, your partner should not be doing this, but in reality, it is you feel that: “I should not be reacting to my partner”, and the only way to free yourself from this is to look at your reactionary patterns, your subconscious selves, and use our teachings and tools to free you from it.
Some people have been in a karmic relationship, ended that relationship, moved on to another relationship, only to find that the same pattern repeats, because they have not fully overcome it in their own psychology. Therefore, you are to attract yourself to another partner, and it may even be more intense the second time, because you really want to overcome this pattern in this lifetime, and therefore, you continue to put yourself in certain situations until you learn it, until you overcome those subconscious selves. And that often means you can now attract a partner that is not a karmic relationship, and that can be more constructive and harmonious.
Copyright © 2026 Kim Michaels