A woman contacted me to do The Work.
She was filled with suffering. She couldn’t sleep. She was sometimes overeating, or drinking lots of wine.
Her beloved partner, with whom she had a decade-long off and on love affair, was yet again breaking up with her. They had apparently done this for years.
Together, not together, together again.
These two people had never actually lived with one another, despite a feeling of passion, desire, intense chemistry. They lived a continent apart, so they worked and lived much of their lives separately, with visits and meetings when they could.
She shared with me that she felt like ending her life.
She felt desperate, like she had wasted ten years in this on-and-off affair, and now was in her 40s with no committed partner and a feeling of failure.
It reminded me how much suffering people bring to their lives around partnerships, attraction, lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends.
I must be with that person. I am alone. I need a partner. I need to be loved (I am not loved in this moment).
I must confess….I have had some stressful thoughts about those other people who are desperately in love or out of love.
She should see she’s totally fine without her lover. No one needs a “partner”. Good grief.
Hmmmm.
I notice a little judgment coming out of my own mind.
Time for The Work.
Is it true that someone else should stop suffering over a love affair?
Yes!
This appears to be a source of wild pain for humans. Whether with someone they want to leave, or broken up from someone they pine for, there seems to be great suffering around partnership or lack of partnership.
People write plays, and music, and poetry about love-gone-wrong.
Oh the endless crazed thoughts about romantic love.
How do I react when I’m looking at this other person who is suffering about romantic love?
I think I know what she needs. I say to myself that she should stop thinking her thoughts, stop feeling those feelings.
Wow. I’m kind of like a little dictator in my mind.
Who would I be without those kinds of thoughts? Without the belief that she should do anything differently, that she should have a different story, that she should wake up and let go of this longing for a ‘soul mate’ or ‘true love’ or long-term partner?
I watch. I sit quietly, looking at her image in my mind. Observing that person feeling big feelings, bereft, in pain, crying, anxious.
Without the belief she should NOT feel what she’s feeling.
Amazing, really.
Everyone allowed to feel what they feel.
I notice reality appears to be full of people pining about romantic love. Reality appears to have people wanting, waiting, wishing, longing, disappointed, grabbing.
I turn my own thoughts around: She should NOT see she’s totally fine without her lover. Everyone does need a “partner” or some contact with love. I should see I’m totally fine without a lover. I don’t need a partner. She shouldn’t get over it, until she does.
How strange.
How would I know what’s good, or not good, for anyone.
“Life is full of beautiful surprises. When you are happy, you are attracted to the universe. You life will stay the same if your thinking is always the same. But as soon as you break open internally, your life breaks open. You discover the wealth that your ‘beingness’ is. All this trouble is caused by your own mind….Focus on what is true. When you find what is true, the un-true will not be appealing to you. Truth knows no distance.” ~ Mooji
My thoughts about this person and their suffering are obviously un-true.
How can I be happy, here now, in the presence of this person who is unhappy with their love life?
I contemplate the great softness of being with this woman who is upset.
I notice that actually, I am not even “with” this woman in this moment. I am only with the memory and picture of her, floating in my mind, and the memory of my thoughts about her.
My heart opens to being with anyone full of tears, allowing them to feel as they feel.