QA171 QUESTION: A friend has a problem with starting friendships and relationships but is not able to keep it up. Whatever he starts sort of peters out. Could comment on how he could proceed?
ANSWER: Yes. The true underlying factor must be discovered. I can only give the words, but of course, the person has to make the connections through really wanting the insight, for otherwise it would just be words and it would be meaningless.
I say that to everyone who has asked me, who is not involved in this Pathwork, he or she must look for a way and for a help if he truly wants to connect with this, in order to experience the truth. Then something can be done.
Now, the reason here would be that there are blocks to the feelings: fears of feelings; fear of other people; fear of relating; inability to cope with people, be it not knowing how to accept and how to say No to people; not knowing how to be flexible, on the one hand, and how to assert himself on the other. All this is frightening. These are aspects that he escapes from.
Then there is a very rigid attitude there that would make any disappointment, any little thing, a very grave, insulting, traumatic experience. So the fear exists of any little disappointment. These are not too deeply unconscious. This is not necessarily a surface level, but it is not a hidden level either. It is there quite obviously, once attention is focused on it.
These fears and these difficulties of coping with one’s own emotions and the reactions of other people, and not being able to control the conditions, not being able to ward off certain disappointments, not being able to know how to and when to say Yes and No, and the confusions that arise, create this difficulty so that a withdrawing exists in the person.
There is also often a silent resentfulness that the person himself may not even be so very much aware of, but other people pick it up. And then one or the other will withdraw.
