QA171 QUESTION: Can I justify living with a man and accepting love with the understanding that I can’t fully return it?
ANSWER: You know, when you say “can I justify,” I would like to say this: there is no outer authority. This is a human error. There is no person who sits in judgement over you, except yourself. With this I do not mean to deny, of course, the existence of God.
But God is not an individual person. God is a power and an intelligence incorporated in every single human being. And there is no general law about these things, except what your God in you tells you. Can you justify it? That is the only question. And obviously, you feel extremely guilty about it.
Obviously, you’re nevertheless drawn into this situation. Something in you, unbeknown to yourself, makes it very difficult, if not impossible, at the moment – or if possible, only at great expense of many other things – to change this. The only intelligent approach would be to find out what is it in you that makes you be drawn into such a situation, makes you attract such a situation, makes a part of you want such a situation. That would be the course.
Rather than judging you and elaborating with moralizing judgments, it would be much better to explore the true reasons for this situation. For example, ask yourself pertinent and important questions, such as: Are you afraid of a relationship in which you can truly feel and give as much as you wish to receive? Are you, because of such a fear – possibly a secret fear, secret to yourself – not capable of attracting the people whom you can love and who love you, where it is always a one-sided thing in one way or another?
These are the questions you should raise and honestly try to answer. What is there in you that makes the mutuality impossible?
