Dear Cary,
My problem is, predictably, about love; selfish love vs. unconditional love. I don't know whether to feel like a doormat or like a good person.
I've been dating and then living with my boyfriend for a couple of years. We own a house together. We're in our mid-30s and I have a child from a previous marriage. We have a lovely, sweet, respectful relationship; we are compatible in many ways and I really can't imagine a much nicer connection. Well, apart from the fact that he's considering leaving me.
You see, he moved to this town to start a new career and he's succeeded in doing that, but he doesn't' really enjoy the new career and wants to go back to the other coast to resume where he left off. He's really talented and has a lot of options.
Although it would be possible for me to move, I don't really want to separate my daughter from her father, who is a good guy and a good parent, especially to move to a place that isn't quite as nice as this place and where I would have to start over in my career. But I'm not completely closed to the idea, which may after all be an opportunity in disguise.
From his point of view, his career will go nowhere here because it's not his passion and he has to move on while he is in his "prime." He's not pressuring me to move, as he understands my situation. I also think that he doesn't want to be responsible for upsetting my daughter, from an understandably selfish point of view because our life would not be much fun living with a traumatized preteen.
So I'm stuck, trying to be reasonable, trying to practice some sort of loving nonattachment and yet wondering if I'm being way too reasonable, as at times my heart is breaking and I feel so unloved and unvalued. This brings up all sorts of awful feelings about being a mother, and how I won't be able to really have a relationship until my kid is older, and also confusion about what I should expect from love. Should this relationship end because he doesn't love me enough to wait two or three years until it's better for me to move also? How can I expect to be his priority when he cannot be mine if I choose to prioritize my daughter? From his point of view, a child is as much of a choice as a career. From my point of view, a career is a choice and a child is a part of you, like an extra limb, until he or she chooses to leave.
I want to be adult about this; I want to be loving and supportive of this man who means so much to me. I want to always do the right thing for my child, but I also want to have a tantrum that the gods will hear from the heavens.
This week he leaves for an interview for a really good job over there. He stands a good chance of getting the job. He says we should wait to find out if it's really a possibility and then make a plan. I tell him OK but inside I'm hurt and scared. I meditate and meditate, trying to feel more love than anger and fear.
What should I do? Should I just take control and tell him to leave now in order to end this ambiguous pain or should I just keep meditating and practicing unconditional love?
Holding my Breath, Trying to Breathe
Dear Holding my Breath,
Have your tantrum. Then let him go.
You are not loved enough. That is clear. You are loved, but you are not loved grandly, hugely, incomprehensibly, madly, as you wish to be loved. You are not loved enough that he would insist that you follow him, or refuse to leave you if you won't follow him. You are loved but he also has this and that and the other that he needs to do, these things that are important to his career, that he must do now while he is in his prime. You could go with him, he says, but maybe you don't want to on account of the daughter? -- who, after all, he says, is a choice just like a career.
Not hardly, methinks. Not the same at all. You agree? Daughter not the same as a career? Not the same. Good. So let him go. And in your meditation try to understand this: You have a spiritual nature, but relationships are played out right here on earth, and the gods are not much help to us. I suspect that you are pure of heart but you are also hungry; you never got enough love; you keep being the good mother and good partner, expecting that if you are good you will be loved, and when you are not loved you feel a volcanic anger that you would like the gods to hear ... no?
But the gods will not help you in this. So I suggest in your meditation you concentrate on what you want and how to express what you want.
It is terrible to be with someone who is always one step away from leaving. I think you will feel better if you let him go. It is a slow, agonizing suffocation. You get just enough to live on. It is like emotional waterboarding.
I do not feel I have great insight into this situation. But consider this: If you regarded yourself with unconditional love, would you still be with him? Or would you say to yourself, he doesn't think nearly as highly of me as I think of myself -- perhaps he doesn't really love me the way I deserve to be loved!
In other words, if you loved yourself the way you deserve to be loved, would you accept any less from a lover? Maybe think about that. You might come to see that it is best that he go off to wherever and pursue his whatever.
It may be sad to let him go, but you are relatively young. You will soon grow used to his absence and find someone new.
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