QA221 QUESTION: In my relationship with a man, I’ve come to a very stuck place. After over a year, we’ve stopped. I’m in the process of blaming him for it, because he keeps telling me he doesn’t want to go deeper. I have the illusion that I do want to go deeper, and we don’t go deeper because it’s his fault. So I blame him and I heap a lot of contempt on him for being so shallow in contrast to my being much deeper. And we just keep going back and forth like this. I feel that I’m in truth because I attack him with my honesty with my negative feelings. I use that as an attack rather than honesty.
And then, I came to a point where I thought, well, it can go no further; it’s hopeless, and I’ve got to give it up. And then when I stopped seeing him, I have a lot of pain. I miss him very much. I miss the pleasure of him, of his company, and of the sexual relationship I have with him. And what I would like to ask you for in help is, is it worthwhile to be patient and to continue this relationship even though to me at this moment it looks hopeless? Or should I try to suffer the pain of missing him and get over it – cut it – and open myself to the possibility of growth and attracting another man that I can go deeper with as I grow in myself in honesty?
ANSWER: The question really cannot be answered in the terms you asked it. I will answer the question in the way I see is meaningful for you, and that is in the following way. You have to find in what way you avoid commitment and profoundness. You do it in a very subtle way that is not really so subtle even.
It has to do with your own approach to your inner being. You avoid the deepening process by spreading yourself out in too many areas, for example, by not really giving yourself totally to the one process. You start other processes or continue other processes that are often sufficiently contradictory, or even if they are not contradictory, they take the energy away from the one-pointedness of the process. And that is where you remain on a superficial level, even though you’re dealing with spirituality, as it were.
Then you do not see this. You do not see how you avoid commitment. Then you project that aspect of yourself and you blame. You do not see that that attitude is in your way for every one of the experiences of your life, whether it is the problem of partnership or whatever else. That is where it now manifests.
To answer you that “you should do this or you should do that” is hardly the point, because you could do either, and it could come from a healthy and strong as well as patient and humble attitude. You could do either alternative, either stay in that relationship or go to another one in a spirit of escape and avoidance. It is not what you do, which one of the alternatives you choose, but from what part in you the choice is made.
That choice, that decision, can only be secondary. The primary one is a total commitment to yourself and to going all the way and giving all your energies to a specific process, whichever it is you choose, that will help you best to get to know yourself and to be with yourself on all levels, and not to disperse yourself. Do you understand? {Yes}
There’s always a holding back; there’s always a denial. But always there are reservations and a back door, and this is what you experience in the relationship. It is just because you project something you do yourself in a different way and use it in order to fortify your pride, that you must elicit a resistant reaction like that.
You might not elicit the same kind of reaction if the words of truth you speak would not be misused to get away from yourself.
