(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Q & A: “What do I need in order to be happy?”

To read the previous Q & A’s about William and Terry, go to the “William & Terry” Category in the left bar.

We’ve been following the life drama between William and his wife, Terry, from the perspective of William, who is a client of mine.  The relationship had nosedived a number of months ago, when Terry went into a deep depression and started relating to William in an increasingly more controlling and infantile manner, becoming completely dependent on him and unable to function in life on her own.  This resulted in Terry (at the advice of her therapist) entering into a month-long residential program, which she just recently came back from.  From William’s perspective, the attributes in Terry that have always made the relationship difficult for him have taken over, leaving none of what attracted him to her in the first place.   He has been struggling with what his responsibilities are toward her and how to cope with this situation, which has brought up major emotional triggers in him, sometimes resulting in him losing his temper and being hateful toward her, and often resulting in him feeling deeply unhappy.  During this process William has been having weekly TimeLine sessions with me in which we have been clearing the limiting decisions* that have been brought up in him by this situation.

The implicit question from William has been: “How can I stand this situation?”

But the real question now emerging is: “What do I need in order to truly be happy?”

Jane: It’s impossible to tell how something is supposed to end up being.  It could have been (which is what you hoped for) that Terry is somehow going to get significantly better, and things will be alright, and life will go back to the way it was.  Or it could be you end up being so fed up with Terry, because life is so miserable living with her, that you end up leaving her.  But what’s actually happening is you are going through a major personal transformation, bringing yourself increasingly more into your enlightened self-interest*, which doesn’t match either of these obvious outcomes.  The form it’s currently taking is you realizing that you have been avoiding expanding your world beyond your immediate home life because of unhealed issues in you.  But in order to be happy you have to expand your world, so your life is not limited to your relationship with Terry. It is you limiting the scope of your life which is what has been causing you to feel trapped. So right now, you moving toward happiness doesn’t require you leaving Terry.  Following enlightened self-interest* is leading you down a path that we couldn’t have preconceive of.  This shows how irrelevant our preconceptions are about how things are supposed to end up looking.  The challenge is being willing to stand in the confusion and discomfort of the unknown until things become clear, rather than jumping into an immediate solution so you can stop dealing with it.

The solutions in life require staying in reality.  And in order to stay in reality you have to follow what your enlightened self-interest* is.  Limiting decisions* block you from accessing your enlightened self-interest*.  And so when you come up against a brick wall blocking your enlightened self-interest*, you heal the unhealed issue (i.e. clear the limiting decision*) in you, and then a way forward becomes clear.  And as we’ve seen, what is in your enlightened self-interest* generally doesn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be before the limiting decisions* were healed.  And so you then take the next step, and it’s adjusting and changing.  It’s allowing things to unfold as they do.  It’s really quite a marvelous process.

Limiting Decisions*:  Limiting Decisions*: Unconscious decisions made in early childhood, such as “I am stupid,” “I am bad,” “People can’t be trusted.”

Enlightened Self-interest*: That which truly benefits you and connects you with reality, as opposed to selfishness, which is an emotional defense system and separates you from other people and reality. To read more about enlightened self-interest, go to: http://blog.janecohencounseling.com/2010/03/the-importance-of-self-interest/

or

http://blog.janecohencounseling.com/2010/06/how-do-we-know-life-is-actually-for-us-and-not-just-random/ .

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

(Previous dialogs with William are under the
“William & Terry” category in the right side bar.)

Continuing the journey of William (an NLP TimeLine client of mine) and his wife: As you may recall, a number of months ago William’s wife of nearly 30 years went off the deep end emotionally, recently ending up in a residential program at her therapist’s recommendation.  From William’s point-of-view, it was no longer possible to be in relationship with her, as she was relating to him increasingly more as if she were literally his child.  The longer she was living with him, the worse she seemed to get, and the more impossible the situation was for William to tolerate.

His wife always liked being in charge, and was very vocal and insistent on things being her way, according to what pleased her.  Although she was so non-functional she was totally dependent on him, William was letting her make her own decisions about how she spent her time and how she conducted her life. The result was she kept getting worse, and the situation kept getting increasingly more painful for him.

His wife has now just gotten home from the 5 week residential program, and William is determined to not let the situation with her revert to the way it was previously.  He was feeling depressed about her coming home, basically in the same emotional state she was in before, until it crystallized for him what he should do.  And that was that he should just take charge of everything about her life, telling her what she should do and making all of the decisions for her, as it has become clear she is incapable of making decisions for her own benefit.

William feels he can’t really move on with his own life until he’s take care of his responsibilities for her.  He’s trying to sort out what she is and isn’t capable of, and let the responsibility for what she is capable of fall on her.

Jane: People are always doing the best they can, from the position of where they’re standing.  So that is why one of the cornerstones of the Life is Meant to Work thought system is that it’s never about what the other person is doing.  You can’t judge them, as you’re not in their shoes.  You can’t take on that responsibility.  There are too many factors.  All you can know is your own experience.  Your only guidance for what to do is your own enlightened self-interest.  That’s why it’s so crucially important.

Enlightened self-interest is what truly benefits you and connects you to what is true.  Enlightened self-interest is what really matters to you.  It is a fact, not something that can be manufactured or manipulated.  It is not necessarily the easy path, as it often requires personal transformation.  It is very different than selfishness, which avoids what is true, causes separation between people, and is a part of an emotional defense system.

That’s why you felt better when you took a stand on making all of the decisions for your wife’s life yourself, as it has become clear to you that leaving it in her hands makes life for both of you impossible.  Your decision to do that was based on your own enlightened self-interest.  It has been a breakthrough for you to do that because you didn’t trust yourself.

For any relationship to work, each person must be coming from what truly matters to them, or there is no solid foundation for it.  Ultimately the only relationship we are in is between ourselves and a larger or Universal Truth.  If you try to make up for each other’s limiting decisions* to try to make things between you work on the surface, you just get mired in deeper and deeper untruths, which ultimately creates impossible situations where there is no way out, which is what you have been finding out.

On a soul level, your wife has made a decision to put herself in the difficult position she is currently in.  All you can do is be in reality the best you can in relation to yourself and her.

* Limiting Decision:  An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

(Previous dialogs with William are under the “William & Terry” category.)

As has been described previously, William’s wife went off the deep end emotionally several months ago, and has been relating extremely irrationally toward him.  Her therapist hasn’t been able to make any progress with her and she is currently in a residential program.

During this time William (an NLP TimeLine client of mine) has been working through the limiting decisions* in himself that have been triggered by his wife’s behavior toward him.  His pattern had been to at first endure it, and do things and respond in ways he really didn’t want to, in order to placate her.  Eventually when he got to his limit, he would end up exploding at her. He can now respond honestly to her without being in defensive mode — with compassion, but fully being truthful and staying in touch with what matters to him.

In working through his issues, it has become clear that this experience has been just as much for and about him as it has been about her.  He has also realized that he has not been in reality about what a relationship actually is about.  And so William asked me how I would describe what a real relationship would be like.

Jane: It has to do with finding love through coming into what is actually true.

Relationships are about relating.  And any form of real relating is participating in the human evolutionary process.  That is because when you do that, you are tapping into something you don’t control — something beyond where you have previously been.

In the ideal relationship, people reveal the truth of how they are responding to each other, which means not coming from a defended place.  We don’t control how we respond.  How we respond is just a fact.  We are so busy trying to control the results of our effects on each other, we never find out what the truth is between us, and how what is really true turns out to be what we really want of each other.

When you get to the bottom of what is true between people, it always is love.  That is what is underneath the separation, the fear, the anger, and the pain.  But most people are so daunted by the dragon at the gateway to coming together with the other, they never find that out.

When we are truly relating to each other, allowing things to be what they are and reveal them without trying to control, manipulate and distort them according to what we think will work — we find that life really does work and we find love.  But relating to each other is also likely to bring to the surface every limiting decision* you have that is in the way of love.  And so it can move you very rapidly along your own transformational, evolutionary path.

* Limiting Decision:  An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

As you may recall the last “Ask Jane” was a continuation of a dialog with William whose wife of nearly 30 years had become so emotionally out of touch with reality, it became impossible for him to live with her.  And the comfort and stability he had built up in his life with her for all of these years had been pretty much shattered.  The point of my answer to him had to do with the only thing that really happened is he learned that he was looking in the wrong direction for his source of well-being and stability.

In response to that “Ask Jane,” I received this request from a reader:  “Will you please expound next on what actually gives us stability?”

The answer to this is a large subject, beyond the scope of this newsletter, and goes to the heart of what the “Life is Meant to Work” Thought System Course I teach is about.  So, for this article, I’ll just touch on a piece of it:

The source of the deep feeling of instability for William was he had had more faith in his ability to control the outcomes in his life to result in his benefit, than he had in the inherent nature of how life works. Real stability has to do with coming into alignment with what is actually true, with what is real, the inherent principles and foundations of Life, Truth, Love, Consciousness, Intelligence — present-moment reality; and allowing it to transform your experience — and you — in the process.  It requires letting go of human control.

People generally don’t consciously relate to Life itself (or an overall Intelligence or Consciousness, or a Divine Presence….),  which is not in human control — unless perhaps when they’re in some sort of crisis that they see no solution to that they believe they can control.  This is based on the deeply ingrained, underlying belief that life doesn’t work — or that it’s just arbitrary, and not something that can be counted on.

And it is based on the idea that what is actually real is the physical world, and can be controlled by human beings.  It’s just a question of:  Who is controlling whom?  Who is the source of well-being for whom?  Who is defining reality for whom?  We either control them or they control us.

William had been trying to control the outcome of what is actually true in his life with his wife.  And he was assuming that this huge change that has been happening in their lives would end up being harmful for both of them, rather than trusting that if he followed what is actually true, the shifting and changing that would result from it would move both of them forward in their personal growth and life’s path.

Another way to put it is we generally believe truth is against us.  People often compromise themselves in relationships rather than revealing what is really true from their perspective, because they don’t believe it could possibly work out if everyone did that.  It means they don’t put themselves in a transformational — which is another way of saying “evolutionary” — process where the whole picture could shift and change in a way that they don’t control, and can’t foresee the outcome of.

From the human perspective, putting oneself in that position is counter-intuitive.  That is because it is switching survival systems.  It is relying on a whole different system for your safety, stability and well-being.  In order to be willing to do that it is crucial to really get that — when your experience of reality is not distorted by limiting decisions* — life inherently does work.  It is switching from what I call the “substitute world” to the “real world,” which is one way to describe what the shift in consciousness is that the world is in the midst of now.

* Limiting Decision:  An unconscious decision made in early childhood that is some form of that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am powerless,” “bad,” “without value;” or “The world is a dangerous place,” “People can’t be trusted,” and so on.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

As you might recall from the last “Ask Jane,” William’s wife has been becoming increasingly more disconnected from reality, and her psychiatrist hasn’t been able to help her.  She has become increasingly more difficult to live with, basically using her relationship with William to remove herself even more out of reality, by obsessively focusing exclusively on him having to be with her and do things for her every moment.  William had hoped that this was just a temporary phase, but he is now having to face she has to go into a full time residential program.  And until he finds one for her, he has to move out of the house, for his own sanity (and hers).  He has spent his whole life building up a comfortable and stable life, which he has been very successful in achieving in his life with his wife.  And now his wife has gone off the deep end and is wrecking havoc on that stability.

Jane: When people are younger they have to make their way.  They have to engage in life and put effort into making things work.  They have to try new things, which may make them uncomfortable.  When people get older and get married, many have this expectation of comfort and stability, and they build their life around achieving that.  They “settle down” and basically give up moving forward in life. The idea is that each partner has committed to staying in that relationship no matter what, in order to maintain the stability of this unit.

William: Don’t you think the majority of people look for safety and stability and comfort as their ultimate goal?

Jane: What people often associate with safety, stability and comfort is actually retreating from engaging in life, into a world they believe they can control. For example, people often make their significant others the center of their universe, rather than Life itself.   You’ve been trying to get your sense of stability from your relationship with your wife and the physical life you’ve built together, rather than having those be a part of your relationship with life.  And now, the person you have been trying to create stability with is falling apart.  And so your life feels like it’s falling apart. Your real source of stability is not, cannot, be another person.  Your real source is a larger truth, a larger frame-of-reference.  And if you’re not relating to that, then your world is inherently very unstable.

When you retreated into the comfort and stability of your marriage and comfortable life, the problem is you were sinking into an unconscious state.  The roles people have generally relied upon in marriage, business, religious life, and so on — such as how a wife or husband acts, how to advance in business, who defines what being good is — that are supposed to create stability, have been based on a lack of individual consciousness.  That is why they require you to lean on something pre-defined and set.  What is happening right now in human experience is a major shift toward increasing consciousness.  It’s a significant evolutionary change.  This means the old forms that are based on being unconscious are falling apart.  They’re losing their relevance.

William: Wouldn’t this road block that’s come along be earth shattering for anyone?  Wouldn’t anyone be upset when they’re going along a road, whether it’s a wrong road or not, when their partner goes crazy and all of a sudden you have to switch roads?

Jane: It depends on what you’re leaning on for your stability, whether you’re going to experience it as debilitating or not.  There is a huge difference between when you’re conscious and connecting on your life’s path, to life the way it really is — and when you’re invested in something that buffers you against actually engaging in life.  That is inherently unstable, because it’s an avoidance of truth.  The only thing that has really happened to you is you found out that you were mistaken about where real stability in life can be found.  And rather than continue to invest yourself in a mistaken direction, you have the opportunity to switch gears, and move toward what will actually give you stability.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

William, an NLP TimeLine client of mine, has been married for almost 30 years.  His wife (who I’ll call Terry) has been increasingly losing her connection with reality over the past several months.  She is under the care of a psychiatrist, but doesn’t seem to be making any progress.  She has lost almost all interest in life and is obsessed with being attached to William virtually all of the time, getting upset if he does anything that doesn’t include her.  William has been working through the issues in himself that have been triggered by his wife’s behavior toward him, and is responding in increasingly empowered ways.  But it’s now becoming clear that things can’t keep going the way they have been, as it’s taking a large toll on him.  He went to a session with Terry and her therapist, and the therapist said if Terry doesn’t make any progress in her behavior she will recommend William leave her, as there is no point in both of them going down.  She recommended Terry enter a full time live-in program where she can get the help she needs, but Terry is unwilling to do that.

William has been feeling conflicted over the commitment he made to his wife, about if it would be wrong for him to leave her — if he’d be failing in his commitment to her, showing lack of character.

Jane: The question is what you are committed to.  From a shallow kind of perspective, people can be committed to what makes them feel good in the moment.  And so when things get difficult they just leave.  On the other side of the pendulum, a person can blindly follow whatever they make a commitment to, no matter how they end up feeling about it, which is how some people approach their marriages.  They feel that after you make that commitment, come hell or high water, a moral person just sticks with the commitment.  Many people have stayed in very unhappy marriages on the basis of that.

Or, you can make a commitment to be true to yourself.  Now being true to yourself is not necessarily the easy route, it’s not necessarily what feels good in the moment.  It’s not a shallow decision.  It’s a decision to follow truth, and following truth may require you to go through experiences which are difficult, including transformational kinds of experience.  Truth is not the same thing as just doing something because it feels good.  If you’re truly in love with someone and really want to be with them, but the dynamics between the two of you are very painful, if you follow what’s really true for you, you’ll probably make a substantial effort to work through the issues in yourself as long as you can see a way forward.  Generally the energy will be in there as long as you feel life in the relationship, a spark in which you see or experience that there are possibilities or there is potential there.

If, however, you’ve worked through the stuff that is coming up for you, as far as you can, and if the other person is not committed to making the changes that they need to make, that are causing the relationship to not be in your best interest, then what happens is the energy starts going out of the relationship for you.

The commitment is to what’s really true inside yourself, including being committed to the truth of how you really feel about Terry.  And I believe you truly do love her.  And so the commitment might be to keep the door open for her, for now, if she can walk through it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be living with her, or that you have to relate to her in any particular way. Right now she’s got the door closed; she’s not available to be in relationship with.

I don’t know what you should actually do, but it appears to me that she’s got to face the reality of the situation between you. If you sacrifice yourself for her because you feel sorry for her, it is probably not doing her any favors. Catering to her, and feeling sorry for her, and sticking with the commitment you made to a particular relationship form isn’t going to create change, and change is desperately needed right now.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

This “Ask Jane” came up during a TimeLine session, with a client I’ll call Sarah.  Click here to see past “Ask Jane” Q & A’s.

Sarah said her boyfriend usually gets home from work before she does.  The other night he had told her he was going to make dinner for her, but when she got home from work it wasn’t even started, and he was involved in doing something else.  And so she got upset about it, feeling as though it means he doesn’t value her.  And then the next night she came home and he had dinner all ready for her, and he teased her, “I learned that if I don’t have dinner ready for Sarah, it’s really a big thing.  And she said to him, “Well did you do it because you wanted to do it, or because you felt pressured to do it.”

Jane: This is the big trap that many people in relationships fall into.  There are certain symbolic things that you (like many people) require that mean to you that you are valued or loved or respected, or whatever the symbol represents.  And you feel your boyfriend doesn’t value you, love you, and so on if he doesn’t do them.  And not only do you expect him to do the specific symbolic thing, but you expect him to think of it himself and do it because he wants to.

But this is an impossibility right from the start.  Your boyfriend is thinking in terms of what you want.  He can’t possibly want to do it originating from himself, because he’s catering to your particular symbolism.  So he has to focus on what you tell him you want, rather than what’s really true for him. And what you’re asking for isn’t the real thing that matters to you any way.  It can’t really give you the knowing you are valued.

Everyone inherently starts out knowing they are valuable, loveable, worthy of respect and so on.  And they have experiences in life in which they feel loved, valued, and so on, because they’re open to receiving it.  And it doesn’t have to come in a particular form.  But when they make limiting decisions* that they aren’t valuable and so on, they close the channels for truly receiving these.  Therefore they then require certain symbolic things from other people in order to feel that they are valued, loved, and so on. And when they don’t get those symbolic things, they think that other person is withholding it from them, as in your relationship with your boyfriend.

Sarah: Then how does it work with a couple?  You have to compromise and push and pull to know what the other person wants. I thought in intimate relationships you just do things for each other.

Jane: It’s not about what the person wants that’s the issue, but what is motivating him wanting it.  If it’s substituting for some emotional need that he doesn’t have access to receiving, because he doesn’t have the channels open, it won’t work and will conflict with you.  It won’t work in terms of happiness or things really working well for both of your highest interest or joy.  The only way to accommodate someone’s substitute desires is squelching and limiting yourself, and making yourself smaller, because it doesn’t leave you free to be true to yourself.  It doesn’t lead forward.  It contracts the relationship.

If the relationship is based on catering to each other’s substitute desires, you can get into your own little world of each other’s symbolic things.  In order to do that, you have to make each other the center of your world.  And if you go down that path, it doesn’t really expand the relationship.  It insulates you from having to grow.  You get more and more comfortable in a locked-in position, cut off from here-and-now experience.  You become co-dependent on each other.  Doing that insulates you from life, rather than opening up to it and growing — which I know you and your boyfriend really want.  But with some couples that kind of compromise is the best they can do, because they’re not really into transformation.  And they’re willing to compromise what really matters to them, because they’re more invested in feeling stable and secure, which really means stuck.  And they can do that — unless or until there is something in their soul that can’t stand it.  And then they end up physically or emotionally hurting each other, and/or leaving.

The part of you that is invested in the security and co-dependency is the part of you where there are limiting decisions*, resulting in you sacrificing being the divine you — as big, and as free, and as empowered, and as creative as you really are.

But you can have it all, all of it — the freedom to be true to yourself, as well as an intimate, committed relationship.  This is a process.  You go to where there is a conflict, where something is not working. And that alerts you.  “Look over here. This is getting in the way of life working.”  Compromise over something that really matters to you is never something that has to happen.  When you’re in a relationship where there is a deep loving connection, and where you are connected to the divine love and truth, then certain things that used to be important to you no longer are, because they were substitute desires.  And if there is a desire that either of you feels invested in that is causing a conflict between you, then one or both of you are invested in a substitute desire, resulting from an unhealed issue.  And so you get to what it is and work through it, which then allows you to get more in contact with what really does matter to you.

* Limiting Decisions: Unconscious decisions usually made before 6 or 7, and sometimes in adolescence.  They are always some form of life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you — such as “I am bad, worthless, unlovable ….  People can’t be trusted …”

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

William: “My wife has gone off the deep end.  She’s become very anxious, and is not willing to do the things that would help her.  She has become completely reliant on me for everything, and needs constant reassurance.  She is upset if I do anything without her.  I am reaching the end of my rope.  What should I do?  I’m afraid she might harm herself if I don’t do whatever she wants me to do that she feels reassured by.  I only see two choices:  Either go along with her — or don’t and feel responsible for the state she gets into as a result, including that she might harm herself.”

Jane: “The bottom-line is if your life is appearing to not work, there are one or more limiting decisions you have that are distorting your experience of reality.  And when they are cleared, the way you are looking at things will shift and a way forward will become apparent.  The reason you see only those two choices is because the ground you are standing on is limited and structured by limiting decisions that filter in only the information that supports the limiting decisions, and not anything that doesn’t.”

When we discussed it further it turned out that how William was experiencing his wife was virtually identical with how he felt with his mother when he was a child.  His mother was very anxious about life and felt to him to be very unstable.  He felt responsible for her emotional state, and that what he did or didn’t do determined whether she felt OK or not. He thought he had married someone who was strong and the opposite of her, but now it turns out that underneath that apparent strength was someone who was actually very weak, and now he is right in the middle of the very thing he thought he had escaped.

After we cleared the limiting decision “he is responsible for the existence of the woman he’s dependent on,” William said he felt a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders.

He was standing on the new ground of realizing that he really didn’t have the power to determine his mother’s well-being and stability, no matter what he did or didn’t do; and so he was also now realizing that about his wife as well.  He realized that he doesn’t have the power to personally solve the problem for his wife, and that nothing he can do will make any difference about it, as the source of it is only in her; and that he’s been enabling her to not find a real solution. And therefore he is no longer feeling hostage to her, or that her life depends on what he does or doesn’t do.

And so, because of this, he realized that there were, in fact, other options than the unacceptable ones he had felt locked in by.  He can now relate compassionately to her, from standing on this new ground, making clear to her what he can and can’t do, and therefore no longer being co-dependent with her.  He had felt imprisoned by his wife’s dysfunction, but what he had really been imprisoned by was his own.

(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)

Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.

Lucy is a woman in her 40′s who has never been married, although she’s been in many relationships.  She has been afraid of commitment, and generally has been in relationship with men who are also afraid of commitment.

Because of the work we’ve done clearing Limiting decisions in TimeLine sessions, Lucy is now in a committed relationship with a man I’ll call Alan.  They are living together and seriously talking about getting married and having a baby.  But some fears are coming up for both of them.  They are thinking of making a pre-nuptial agreement in case they end up divorced, as many people end up doing.  Lucy recently talked with a married friend of hers who was talking about how unhappy she is in her marriage.  She talked contemptuously about her husband, and said “Just wait, 10 years down the line after you are married, you’ll see what I mean.”  And another woman who was there agreed that was also how she felt about her marriage.  Lucy said she was afraid that will end up happening to Alan and her.

Jane’s response: Up until fairly recent times, more people stayed married than got divorced.  This was because of the social stigma about getting divorced, and perhaps even more so because women depended on their husbands to support them.   Now, as women have come increasingly more into their power, this is no longer such a constraint.

To many people, marriage is a kind of a fantasy about home, and stability, and being loved forever, and safety against the trials of the world.  They believe that in order to make marriage work, each partner has to sacrifice and compromise themselves to whatever degree is necessary.  And this is a part of what defines love.  Out of fear of losing this security, people lock themselves into a particular form, rather than paying attention to and evolving whatever is really true between them, as well as growing and evolving themselves. People, in general, don’t believe life will work if they follow the truth of what it actually is.

What is holding this is place are limiting decisions.  If there are limiting decisions in there that cause you to lean on the marriage as a fixed form, in order to compensate for whatever is unhealed in you, it will get in the way of a true relationship between you — unless you recognize and deal with the limiting decisions.  In fact the relationship form can be used to substitute for actually relating to each other.  Examples of limiting decisions that result in this are decisions you can’t take care of yourself, you’re not good enough, you aren’t safe in the world, you can’t succeed in life, emotional intimacy is weak or dangerous, people can’t be trusted, other people’s needs are more important than yours.  Using your relationship to compensate for these will ultimately cause one or both of you to attach yourself to each other, put huge pressure on each other to be other than who you are, create a sense of emptiness or meaninglessness, and probably cause one or the other of you to pull away from the relationship.

As conflict or pressures come up in the relationship that seem to get in the way of being true to yourself, it’s an indication of a limiting decision* distorting your perception of how things really are.  And so it’s necessary to face and deal with the limiting decisions* — or you end up forfeiting a piece of yourself.  You end up compromising what matters to you.  And that’s what kills relationships.  But that’s what people do all of the time, because they don’t make personal transformation an essential ingredient in their relationship. It’s never the nature of life or relationships that’s the problem.  It is unhealed issues distorting your experience of reality that causes life to appear not to work.

* Limiting decisions: Unconscious decisions, usually made before the age of 6 or 7, such as “I am bad,” “I am not good enough.”  “People can’t be trusted.”  They are always some form of deciding that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you.

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From Sally in Solana Beach: My husband agreed to go to an event with me that was important to me.  But a few days before the event he realized that an important football game was playing that night, which he hadn’t known about and he blurted out that he wasn’t going to the event because he wanted to stay home and watch the game.  I told him that I had thought he was a person of integrity, but because of how he acted I realized that he really isn’t, if he could just blow off his commitment to me like that.  He did realize shortly after his response that he hadn’t behaved very well, and suggested we discuss possible solutions.  But I am still seeing him as a person without integrity because of how he acted.  He obviously didn’t see me as a very high priority.  Don’t you think this shows a lack of integrity?

Jane: I’d say, clearly your husband was coming from an emotionally triggered place — at least in his initial response.  But it doesn’t mean to me that this shows he is a person basically lacking in integrity.

I think this brings up something important for you to look at in yourself.  Leaning on ridged rules, as you seem to be doing, is a way to avoid relating in the moment, where you reveal where you are at, and engage back and forth about what’s really happening, such as “I’m triggered,” “This is how I’m feeling”, “This is really important to me.”  If you avoid relating in the moment, you don’t have to be vulnerable, you don’t have to reveal anything, and you don’t have to engage.  It’s just, “This is the rule; you follow it or you’re bad.”

And that’s a place that people often fall into in areas in which they have limiting decisions*, because they don’t trust life to work the way it really is. And I’m guessing a significant limiting decision* was triggered in you by this situation, bringing up emotional responses beyond what the situation really called for.  For example, the limiting decision* could have to do with you not feeling valued or that there isn’t anyone you can count on.  And you’re projecting the pain of the limiting decision* onto your husband, which is why you are being ridged about it, and why you’re drawing a broad generalization about him.

Since — after his initial knee jerk response — your husband was open to discussing this with you to find a solution, it appears to me that he’s not creating an impossibility.  But if you take a ridged stand on a judgment about what this means about his character, you have shut the door to a way forward.  When you’re really being present — engaging, revealing, and being vulnerable, you don’t need to have ridged rules, because you are interacting in life, and life does work when you’re really participating in it.

So — you recognize that your husband had a dysfunctional response, you look at the limiting decisions being triggered in yourself and in him, and you work through it.  A way forward will become clear, when you are really able to be present with each other.

* Limiting Decisions: Unconscious decisions, usually made before the age of 6 or 7, such as “I am bad,” “I am not good enough.”  “People can’t be trusted.”  They are always some form of deciding that life doesn’t work, and usually that there is something inherently wrong with you.