Evolving Commitment in Relationships – Dialogue
What questions or comments do you have?
Send it to “ASK JANE”
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
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Questions from Fiona in Oceanside and Jane’s Responses
Fiona: My husband is emotionally abusive and even though there is no reason for me to stay in the marriage, I have not been able to get myself to take actual steps to getting a divorce. Any advice?
Jane: Taking the action is not the most important thing. The important thing is to straighten out whatever is causing the conflict about the action, and then you will be clear what action to take. Even if you took the action that you’ll ultimately end up taking, it may not turn out well until you have dealt with the underlying issues that are causing your reality experience to be skewed.”
Fiona: I don’t love him any more and have been staying in the relationship because I made a commitment, and I don’t want to break the commitment. In the marriage vow I promised to love, honor and cherish my husband until “death do us part.” Everyone out in the world flits from one relationship to another, never making any kind of commitment. I don’t want to be like that.
Jane: If a person tends to be in and out of relationships and flit from one person to another person, this is not what I’m talking about. That’s not being true to oneself. It means that person can’t really come into the present moment and really be intimate with anyone. We’re talking about really being true to yourself, which means you honor your real emotions, which is the only way a relationship could possibly work in the first place. Otherwise, it’s against the laws of reality. It’s against the laws of truth. And the process of evolution is to get closer and closer to what those real laws or principles are. The rules that are developed by humanity, and the structures humanity forms around the rules, are just human constructs, and they keep evolving. For example, the traditional marriage vows used to be “to love, honor and obey.” And they no longer include “obey,” because humanity has evolved past that idea.
Humanity keeps on evolving to get more in alignment with what’s really true, with the nature of love, with the nature of truly being who you are. If your enlightened self-interest is not central in the picture, you can’t be truthful, you can’t be genuine, you can’t be honoring, you can’t be any of the things that really matter, because you have violated a basic truth. Your idea of honor seems to be to take some vow or something you’ve agreed upon and stick to it come hell or high waters. If you make a commitment to commit suicide after being married for two hours, does that mean you ought to do it, just because you made that commitment? No. There’s nothing holy about commitment in itself, if it’s not a commitment your soul is actually committed to. Commitment is about being true to what your real self is actually committed to. It’s a recognition, and acknowledgement of what is true for you. It’s coming into truth, not making it up, and then committing yourself to what you made up. It’s not sticking to a commitment when you find out it is not actually in alignment with what is true for you.
Fiona: My husband was kind and loving before we were married, and then became emotionally abusive immediately after. I keep trying to change him and get back to the loving man he was before we got married. I’ve done everything I can think of to make the marriage work, but it hasn’t helped and it’s taking a large toll on my health. I don’t love him any more, but I feel sorry for him. I don’t know what to do.
Jane: You’re not relating to the real person your husband is. You’re relating to the dysfunctional structure that he’s presenting, his dysfunctional defense system. And that is what you’re trying to reform. It doesn’t appear that your husband is in a place in this lifetime where he’s going to be connected to his real self, and that’s not your problem, and it’s not your issue. You’re together with him for your own learning. And he’s together with you for his own learning. And he’s on his own path. And it’s not the same path that you’re on. And you’re not responsible for his path. And you can’t give him the learning that he needs. He can only get his learning from his own path. And you’re on your path for your own learning. It’s a whole separate thing. And it doesn’t appear that these paths are going to come together, at least in this lifetime. But both of you can get great learning — not by accommodating each other — but by being closer and closer to who you are, and doing what you need to do for yourself. It’s the best gift you can give him.
What you’re doing right now by trying to make things be what they are not, is not honoring him. The most honoring thing you can do in relation to another person is to relate to them from a place of truth. If you are staying in a marriage because you promised to love, honor and cherish him for the rest of your life, but you find that that’s not the truth any longer — to hold in place something that is not true, is not honoring or helping that person, particularly on a soul level, because it’s living a lie. And living a lie in relation to someone else — there’s no possible way it could do them any good. It’s holding in place a dysfunctional relationship that isn’t moving anywhere, and so it’s not in the best interest for either of you.
It’s crucial to understand the importance of enlightened self-interest, in order to sort this out. And in order to understand the importance of enlightened self-interest, it is necessary to understand the bottommost goodness of each soul. This means that whatever it is that you truly want, what matters most to you, what would really be of benefit to you — is always of benefit to the rest of the universe, and is a part of divine truth. It can never be against anyone else. This doesn’t mean that it might not make you and others uncomfortable at times, or cause you or them to stretch, or be a challenge in whatever ways. The divine truth of what is in your enlightened self-interest is not something that can be manipulated or controlled. It just is. And the closer you come to living in enlightened self-interest, the closer you come to being in an enlightened state. The process of human evolution has to do with coming increasingly closer to living from what truly benefits you, as opposed to what people generally do that they think benefits them, but is actually harmful to them. Limiting decisions are what cause people to go toward what is harmful to them, as a substitute for what would really benefit them, but that they have given up on as impossible.”
