It's a Guy Thing (26 page)

As a woman, your balance is to remain in your feeling but act in accordance with your highest good, your deepest wisdom. Listen to your close circle of trusted friends. They usually can reflect what is best for you. Feel deep in your heart. Ask your highest self for guidance. Even though you love a man, it may be best to actively turn away from him, even as you continue to feel love for him.

Why Can’t I Let Go of My Old Relationship?

Your heart has a memory for love. It stays in love with someone until that love is replaced by new love. Even if you have broken up with your past partner, if you really loved him, if there was a deep sharing of love even though it was also painful, then there will be a part of your heart that remains in love with him.

Your heart loves. It doesn’t make decisions. Your heart is open or not. If it’s open and in love with him it will remain so until you discover a new love of at least the same depth and intensity.

Don’t feel guilty about being in love with your old boyfriend, even though you know it’s best not to be with him. You will need to experience love as intensely as you did with him in order to let him go. That could be love of a new man, love of yourself or love of God.

People sometimes spend 30 years loving someone who has died, or loving someone who they broke up with and haven’t seen since. That’s because they haven’t allowed themselves to open up enough to feel love to that depth again.

Will I Ever Stop Fearing That I Will Lose Him?

To a certain extent, all of us have doubt, all of us fear potential loss. We fear it not only in relationships, but in our lives. There is always a little tension. No matter what we have, or how good life is, we never completely relax. Part of us knows that whatever we have we can also lose.

There are, of course, moments when we completely relax. But very often, we may have a nagging sense of insecurity about our relationship. We don’t trust it. We’re not certain.

Nothing is permanent. Everyone you know is going to die. That person you love so intimately is going to die, eventually. This feeling of loss, of feeling unfulfilled, is felt within every relationship. There is nothing wrong with this feeling.

Our practice of intimacy involves learning to love through our fear of loss. Our fear doesn’t mean we are in a bad relationship; all relationships end. It means embracing your man with the full knowledge that it isn’t going to last. Your relationship is temporary. He will die, you will die, or the relationship could come to an end for many reasons, even later today or tomorrow.

You will lose everyone you love. The practice of true intimacy involves opening your heart even while you are aware of the temporary nature of relationship.

How Can I Choose the Right Man?

First choose a man with purpose. Second, determine whether you trust his specific purpose. If you are with a man who has purpose, and if you trust his purpose, then you will feel free and relax into your own natural sexual essence. You can also freely offer him support for his purpose.

But if you don’t trust his purpose, you won’t want to support it. Then he will grow to resent you and feel you are at odds with him. Very little turns a man off more than when his woman negates his purpose. Your negation need not necessarily be verbal. You can nonverbally send your man a message that you don’t agree with his direction in life, and he will pull away from you. If you don’t trust your man’s direction, the relationship will inevitably fail.

Remember the following questions when choosing whether or not to be with a man. First, does he know what he wants in life? He must have a purpose, or he will not be able to offer you his full force of love. Second, do you trust his purpose? Choose a man whose purpose in life will serve you. Choose a man with whom you can relax because you trust his integrity, direction and strength. Choose a man whose heart’s desire is aligned with yours.

How Long Should I Wait for Him to Change?

This is a key to deciding whether a man is right for you: As he is right now, can you fully trust him? Or do you think that you could change him into a man you could trust? As soon as
you find yourself thinking that you could change him, you are in trouble.

If a man is not
already
living a life that you would wed to yours, then do not commit in relationship, hoping he will change. It is fine to desire change and growth in a relationship, but you must trust him, as he is right now, in order to provide a
foundation
for growth in relationship and a basis for the practice of love. If you do not trust him as he is now, you don’t really
have
an intimate relationship.

So choose a man you can trust. Serve him in his growth so you can continue trusting him. But if you really don’t trust him as he is, then he will feel it. If you are waiting for him to change before you can trust him, you are locking yourself into a no-win situation.

Trust is the starting point of the practice of intimacy, not something to hope for in the future. In any case, if you find yourself staying in a relationship because you think your man might change, you are making a mistake.

Is It Easier for Men or Women to Leave a Relationship?

The masculine energy always contemplates going deeper into a relationship or leaving it. The feminine, however, is always opening to love or closing. If a woman doesn’t have strong enough masculine energy, then all she can do is open or close. If she is in a relationship that causes her a lot of suffering and doesn’t have sufficient masculine energy to tell her when it is time to leave, then she can only open or close. When the loving is really good her heart opens; when it is bad
her heart closes. But she never really gets up and leaves for good. Many women in problematic relationships close down emotionally, but find it difficult to leave, once and for all.

Women in particular, and men with more feminine energy, will often stay in painful relationships longer than is healthy. Women without sufficient masculine energy might stay in an inappropriate relationship for years and years, opening and closing, opening and closing. Her friends may tell her the relationship is doomed. They may tell her the man is abusing her and that she should leave. But she can’t. She hopes that he will change, and she remains in place, suffering and then feeling loved, over and over.

Even when physically abused, it is hard for many women to leave a relationship. Such a woman says, “He really loves me, and I really love him. I know he’s trying to change.”

Someone may say to her, “But your nose is broken and your eyes are black and blue.” Yet she responds, “It really hurts. I don’t know what to do. I do love him. I don’t know what to do. He needs me. I know he loves me. He’ll change.” To other people it’s obvious what to do. “Go. Get out.”

Love is most important to the feminine. In general, as long as a woman feels love for a man and from a man, the other aspects of the relationship won’t be enough to cause her to leave. That would mean letting go of the love she feels. It requires a strongly developed masculine energy to end a relationship in which love still flows.

The feminine will virtually never let go of love. Many women who have tried—and failed—to end a relationship in which they felt love for and from their partner, even though they may have been abused by him can attest to this. It’s really difficult to leave a relationship with a man you love, even though it’s painful.

The feminine in a woman will not let go of the love she presently feels. The masculine in a woman will all too readily let go. Masculine and feminine are balanced by the other. Neither is complete in and of itself.

The masculine often contemplates leaving a relationship at the first sign of difficulty. The feminine often stays in a relationship far longer than is appropriate.

What Is the Bottom Line in a Relationship?

Each of us must decide how much unnecessary suffering we will endure. Too often a relationship goes on for years, staying in the same place of pain, only to finally break up.

To help us determine when to leave a relationship, it is often very helpful for intimate partners to make a “Bottom Line List.” At the top of the list you write, “I love you.” Then you list your “bottom lines.”