What If Your Commitments Conflict With Your Desire?

Aquarian Answers Existential Helpdesk, this is Adrienne.

What should you do if you have committed to something that is no longer on the path of your desire?

Sometimes we feel that a relationship we are in—whether with a spouse, family, career, employer or friend—has dragged us so far off the path of our own desire that we see no way to tend our own wellbeing without ending the relationship. And yet the relationship is so fundamental to our understanding of who we are that ending it feels like killing a part of ourselves.

These situations feel impossible because we try to solve them the wrong way around. We think we’re facing a decision about whether or not to be in the relationship. Actually, we have no choice about being in the relationship. To exist at all is to be in relationship with everything that is, all of the time. The question we are actually facing is HOW to be in the relationship.

In these impossible-feeling situations, our relationship with our loved one has become adversarial. Without anyone meaning for it to happen, the things we are doing to take care of the other person—things it may have once delighted us to do—have become painful or damaging to us.

This happened step by step—one choice and one agreement at a time—and the way to change it is the same. Not a categorical decision about the relationship itself, but one choice at a time about how to conduct the relationship. Love got us into this mess and love can get us out. But it helps to understand something about love.

The human ego naturally divides everything into Self and Other. So we think of love as something our self feels for someone other. But love in its purest form exists at a higher level than the ego, where there is no distinction between Self and Other. At our most loving, we feel at one with our loved one. When we understand that this is how love works, we realize that it’s impossible to show love to another person in a way that is unloving to ourself. This is what all the advice about practicing self-love is about, and this is why sacrificial love and martyrdom are not forms of love at all, because they involve cruelty to the self.

When we get hopelessly tangled up in a situation where we feel we can’t love someone else without hurting ourselves, understanding the nature of love gives us a place to start, which is with ourselves. We start by honoring our own emotional response.

Here’s how that works. When we act from love, the action is easy and brings us pleasure to do and we feel no need to be repaid. The things we do from love are our gifts to give. They cost us nothing and in fact replenish us to do. So the moment we catch ourselves feeling reluctant, resentful, or calculating what we’re owed in return, that is a signal that whatever we are trying to do is not our gift to give. You can imagine your heart as a treasure chest, and your reluctance is the signal that whatever treasure is being sought—cupcakes for the class party, helping with that move, yet another loan to the family member who never pays you back—is not in your chest.

There is nothing unkind about saying no when we are asked for things that we don’t possess. We are simply living within our budget. And we are not breaking our commitments by doing this, either. None of us committed to going spiritually bankrupt for the sake of another person (or career, or pet, for that matter). We committed in various ways to treating them with love and also with integrity. So when we start saying no to giving things that are not ours to give, we are not violating our commitment. And we are, at the same time, taking steps along the path of our own desire, simply by not stepping off of it for the sake of the Other.

So this answers the original question, what if our commitments are preventing us from walking the path of our desire? But it doesn’t address the unspoken part of the problem, which is: Very often we feel we can’t say no, because we’re afraid of what the other person will do. And what that tells us is that the thing we are doing for or because of that person is an attempt to manage or control their behavior. You may be aware that managing and controlling are not forms of love. So what we have to accept is that, when we say no to giving something that we don’t have to give, the other person is free to seek elsewhere. When we stop stepping off our own path for their sake, we also accept that their path and ours are not converging. And treating them with love means accepting their desire for things that are not on our path, and also accepting their freedom to walk their own path, even if we can’t accompany them.

No, I’m not claiming this is easy… What if the thing that is no longer on your path of desire is sex with your husband? You have no idea how common this is.

Okay, say you take the first step, admitting that sex with him is not in your treasure chest. It is no longer your gift to give. You don’t want to do this because you’re afraid that his response will be: you’re in violation of our marital commitment, therefore I want a divorce. And you believe that divorce is not on the path of your desire.

Most people stall out here, and sometimes, depending on how stubborn everyone is, that stall can last decades. But let’s be clear about what this means. Two people who can’t get what they want together but refuse to get it any other way start to fantasize about death. Theirs, the other person’s, or both. They get depressed. They get physically ill. The more they fantasize about death, the more they draw it to them. And we are mortal creatures. Death is a highly achievable goal. But also, death is coming whether we make a goal of it or not. And isn’t there something you would rather do with your time?