Letting go of a lover

Letting go a of a lover is especially difficult if you’re in the habit of basing your self-worth on whether of not you’re loved by someone else. Being dependent on someone for this sort of reassurance is very disempowering, because it leads directly to what the Buddhists call craving and aversion. We crave the pleasant sensations of being with our lover and having them give us affection, compliments and love, while at the same time doing everything we can to avoid having to experience the pain of separation, rejection or abandonment. 

This kind of attachment only leads to suffering. On the one hand we become fixated on ensuring that things remain the way we feel they need to be, which is very hard work! In fact it’s impossible – how can one person control a situation that involves so many external variables, including the will and desires of another person? We will only exhaust ourselves trying… On the other hand, clinging to another person is the best way to push someone out of your life, creating the classic pursuer-distancer dynamic that is guaranteed to bring an early end to your relationship.

So how do you let go of a lover? You settle back into your centre and remember that you are a divine being in a human body, eternal and wise and beautiful. You are one with all that is and despite how things may seem nothing can ever be separate from you. You remind yourself that this person is in your life for a reason, but that this reason may not be what you think it is in your romantic mindset. Then you bless your lover and yourself, letting go of any desired outcome you have for the relationship, in the knowledge that to truly learn from each other the two of you must be free.

Then you take a bath, go for a walk or treat yourself to some creative time, giving yourself the love and appreciation that you would otherwise seek from a lover. And you allow your lover to be exactly who they are, a soul on a journey, learning and growing as they go. You give thanks that this beautiful soul is in your life, or that they have been in your life, and if you can you make sure they know how grateful you are. But you express this gratitude not so that your lover will give you something in return, but simply because you are an overflowing expression of unconditional love and because in the giving of love you yourself are nourished.

Still feeling a bit muddled about all this? Then check out the great article How to get over someone over at Confustulation blog. Or if this is a repetitive pattern for you and you really need to dig a little deeper I can personally recommend the following books on the topic:

• The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships
• Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

Letting go of regret

It's tempting to look back on one's life when you're in a slightly pensive mood and start identifying all the mistakes you feel you've made. It's a trap I fall into more than I would like to... One of the things my mind likes to fixate on is past relationships. It says “How is it that your grandmother managed to have just one relationship over her whole life and you have a string of painful, fruitless failures.” Yeah, my mind's pretty nasty like that!

It also says things like:

•    You always pick men who are wrong for you

•    You're not mature enough to have a healthy relationship

•    You're going to ruin every good thing that comes along, you know you will!

What a bitch!

Looking at my past relationships in this way makes me mistrust the one I'm in now. Even though there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this love, or the man I am with, I look for things that could be signs that things will turn bad in the future. I am mistrustful and suspicious. I expect the worst.

How can this kind of attitude ever lead to anything good!?

Considering my past in a more positive light leads to a very different result. If I let go of the idea that I made mistakes, and instead accept that each and every person who has come into my life has taught me important lessons, made me stronger and led me to circumstances that helped to heal my woundedness, then I can see my present situation as the opportunity that it is. Then, instead of looking for faults and expecting things to go wrong in my relationship, I can relax and enjoy it :)

Letting go of regret allows us to trust our ability to make wise decisions in the present moment. And besides, those mistakes we think we made, they're in the past and there ain't nothing we can do to change them now! Regret make us heavy and like any burden it slows us down, makes everything more of a challenge. Letting go of regret sets us free; we become light. We move with ease and grace, even in the most challenging of situations.

What do you regret most in your life? What would it mean to let go of that regret right now?

Letting go of needs in relationship

There’s many a pop-psychology and self-help book that advocates making sure your needs are met in relationship. Many don’t go so far as to say we should expect this directly from our lover; but they do set up the expectation that the relationship itself should meet our needs.

Expectations ruin relationships. This is how it works in a so-called ‘romance’. You meet someone and because you’re both open, and there’s some resonance between you, you connect. But very soon instead of simply enjoying the other person’s company you’re asking yourself if you have a future with them. From that point on you’re constantly checking to see if the person you’re with is living up to your internal image of the person you want to ‘spend the rest of your life with.’ (Isn’t that an awful expression? Spending the rest of your life!) Many couples are still checking their internal image decades into a so-called happy-ever-after.

It’s all pretty narcissistic isn’t it? Especially when you ask yourself a few hard questions: Are you meeting all of their needs? Do you have all the qualities you assign to the perfect lover? Maybe we should become perfect ourselves before we demand it from another.

All day long we tell ourselves and others all about our needs. But are they real?

• I need a coffee
• I need to get this done
• I need him to be more affectionate

Do we really need any of these things? What about these?

• I need to change my reaction to anger
• I need to get out of this relationship
• I need to tell my mother how I feel

These latter could indeed be said to be needs. But when we use the powerful word ‘need’ we create a bond that inhibits growth; better to say the same thing in the affirmative:

• I can change my reaction to anger 
• I would like to make some changes in this relationship
• I will tell my mother how I feel

So really we can probably get rid of most so-called ‘needs’ in relationship, being careful not to throw out the real ones: safety of body, mind and soul, respect, honesty, learning and growth, connection and communication.

When you let go of pseudo needs in relationship you can enjoy a person for the qualities they have, rather than focusing on the aspects they lack. When you allow a relationship to be what it is, you free it to fulfil it’s highest purpose in your life. And when you allow your lover to be just exactly who they are, you can go on enjoying what it was that attracted you to them in the first place!

It’s a perfect system really :)

Letting go of gender equality

I know what I'm about to write isn't going to go down too well with some people, but hear me out. Feminism has done a lot to provide freedom of choice for women and that's something, as a woman, that I'm very grateful for. However in the process we seem to have got stuck in the mindset that women and men are equal and to me this is a great shame.

In both eastern and western philosophical traditions we encounter metaphors for masculine and feminine energies in their most elemental form. In the east we have the receptive and inward going Yin balanced by the active, forceful Yang. In the west the nurturing, life-giving elements of Earth and Water are representative of the feminine, while the more active elements of Fire and Air represent the outward going force of masculinity. In both traditions we see depictions of gender balance, rather than gender equality.

For me, gender balance creates a harmonious way of relating where both parties are supported by the other. It does not mean that the woman no longer expresses the creative and active elements of her personality or the man his inner feminine qualities. Remember the Yin-Yang symbol: each element contains a little of the other. However, in our culture women are no longer Yin with a little Yang; instead, most of us are full on Yang, pushed by financial circumstances or our own drive to prove ourselves into a manic, stressful busyness that leaves us depleted and irritable. Too often we no longer have time to nurture and support our loved ones.

In a partnership based on gender balance the man's natural inclination to be assertive, decisive and goal-oriented can manifest more productively with the gentle encouragement, faith and trust of his partner, while the woman's gifts of inner knowing, intuition and nurturing are able to come to the fore when she is not so caught up in the outer world of action and accomplishment.

Now some will no doubt feel ill-at-ease about the words I'm using here. Am I advocating a return to a co-dependent state where the woman is reliant on the man to protect and provide for her? Well my answer to that is 'hell no!' There is no point, or even possibility, in going backwards here. What I'm talking about is a natural transition. We women were unhappy and oppressed being dependent and so we've worked hard to become independent. However as an ecologist I know that independence is an illusion. In nature interdependence is the natural way, and as we too are a part of nature this is also a healthy state for us.

Nature also teaches that the greater the diversity within a system the more stable and resilient it will be. When women strive to become like men we lose diversity and that means less stability and resilience in relationships, families and communities. This is because two beings of the same kind must compete to survive, and this creates power struggle and conflict.

The concept of gender equality is a hard one to let go of, particularly for women but for many men too. This is because it feels like we are going to lose our power, however I believe this is an illusion. Our culture has forgotten the true strength of the divine feminine, a strength so different from the masculine power we are taught to strive for. While the masculine pushes, climbs, acts, fights, the feminine supports, contains, gives sustenance. The Yin is the source of intuitive knowing, of wisdom and of the true strength which arises from gentleness and humility.

My journey toward this way of thinking began with the books of David Deida. He's written many books but one of my favourites is Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence. It's good one to start with if you're interested.

I suggest one caveat here: some women are born very Yang and some men very Yin. This can usually be seen very clearly in their natal astrology chart where there will be a predominance of planets placed in Masculine or Feminine signs. However even in these cases I believe the principles I am discussing here remain the same. 

I for one am enjoying rediscovering the power of the feminine. Perhaps you are too... If so please share your experiences.

Letting go of Prince Charming

It's incredible how strongly mythology can affect us at the subconscious level.

I'm an intelligent, independent woman. I've worked hard to become self-aware and I consider myself relatively emotionally balanced. And yet still I find myself caught up in what my friend calls the 'romance narrative trap', the mythology that when we find our Prince Charming (or our Beautiful Princess) we will then go on to live happily ever after.

One of the most dangerous aspects of this myth is that it gives us the idea that unless our partner is perfect there must be someone else out there who is a better match for us. We expect things of our lovers that we would never expect from any other person and we're terribly disappointed when they fail to live up to these expectations.

As a result, instead of loving our partner, we attack them with a barrage of criticisms. We focus on their faults and weaknesses, instead of their many beautiful qualities. They are not Prince Charming, and therefore they are not good enough.

The reality is that relationships were never designed to make us happy. If you really think about it, being 'in love' is generally more of a painful experience than a happy one! The beauty of relationships is that they confront us with our own darkness, they push us to work through our woundedness and they insist upon us being the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be.

Relationships exist to support the ongoing evolution of two people by providing a mirror in which we can see ourselves more clearly.

My lover is full of faults and weakness, just like every other human being on this planet. And just like me. By letting go of the need to find Prince Charming I am freed to love him for who he really is, and to see the unique beauty that is within him.

Letting go of identity

Recently, I’ve been reading this book called ‘Multiplicity: The new science of personality’ by Rita Carter, fascinating stuff for a psychology nerd like me! The premise of the book is that instead of having one steady personality most of us have several, developed in response to the dynamic and unstable contexts we encounter in modern life.

Consider how it must have been for people even just 300 years ago: with no means of getting anywhere other than by their own steam, or with the aid of an animal if they were lucky enough to have one, most people in the lower classes spent their entire lives in one locality with the same group of people, encountering the same situations day-after-day. They thus developed a very simple, stable personality that could be relied upon by the people around them.

Today things are different. We exist within multiple contexts simultaneous, with different groups of people and with complex social dynamics and expectations. Thus it is not surprising to find that most of us have a suite of personalities, just as we have a wardrobe of clothes for different occasions, one for work, one that comes out when we are at home with our family, and one that we share only with our lover.

How do these personalities arise? Just as personalities have always arisen: in response to the pressures of our environment and the needs of the people around us, and through the lens of our natural tendencies, we develop habitual behaviours that we then begin to associate with who we are.

For example a child grows up with a deaf mother and a violent alcoholic father. In her childhood she does her best to help her mother whom she loves but who also makes her feel guilty, not intentionally but in the subtle unintentional way of people who have learned to play the martyr. She also learns to fear male aggression and avoids openness with her father because it makes her physically and emotionally vulnerable.

Based on these early experiences, we could make a very simple prediction that this child is likely grow up to be a people-pleaser, working in one of the helping professions and never feeling she is good enough to be truly worthy of love, respect or status. In intimate relationships she may well struggle to be open and will likely take on either a submissive role or a strident nothing-can-hurt-me aggression that prevents her from really connecting with the other.

But because modern life is not simple, the development of personality is not simple either. Perhaps this child, so powerless in the home, learned to exert her power over children at school. Thus we may find that the woman who evolves is submissive and a pleaser at home, but an assertive, power-hungry bully in the workplace.

Carter defines personality as ‘a coherent and characteristic way of seeing, thinking, feeling, and behaving’ and this seems a good enough working definition to me. This clearly indicates that personality is not just a role we play, it’s something we identify with, we consider it to be who we are.

In my life I can clearly see three different personalities: there’s the studious responsible me who works in a leadership role within an organisation dedicated to personal and social change. Right now this is the me that’s writing this blog! Then there’s the rebellious, outrageous me, who does things my work colleagues would find very surprising indeed. And finally there’s the me that comes out when I’m with my lover and that is a very different person again.

There are also roles that I play but do not identify with: for example I used to work in a big corporation. I played the games and wore the uniform because I thought I could get things done that way, but it never suited me and I never felt comfortable in the role. So at some point in our lives we begin to identify with some of the roles we play but not others, and these became our personalities, our identities.

The trouble is that identifying too strongly with these roles can become very limiting, and in some cases can cause serious cognitive dissonance in our lives.

For example, because I’ve come to believe so fully in my most prominent personality, the responsible, good one, I sometimes feel that I need to hide the other two, both from others and from myself. In the past I even tried to deny that they existed: these weren’t really me, they were some kind of aberration, a dark-side that I needed to resolve or work to integrate or grow out of, or at the very least keep well and truly to myself. I worked to make the dominant ‘good’ aspects of myself stronger in an effort to assuage my guilty feelings about these other aspects of myself that did not fit into my self-defined identity.

It’s very freeing to recognise that none of these personalities are actually who we are at all. As all the mystic traditions teach us, these layers of identity are nothing more than self-constructed facades behind which the true self resides, the silent observer.

When you let go of identity, accepting that none of your personalities are really who you are, you bring a playfulness back into your life. You’re free to try on different roles, as you would try on different clothes, selecting the ones you enjoy wearing and discarding the ones that don’t serve you. Life becomes a big game of dress ups where anything is possible

So now I hear you say ‘that’s all very well but if I suddenly start cross-dressing or play the smart-arse with my boss it’s not going to go down very well,’ and you’re absolutely right. But that doesn’t make cross-dressing or sassing your boss the problem. If you’re a man and you really want to wear woman clothes and the people around you can’t handle that then you have to decide what is most important thing to you. Like anything this will depends entirely on the context.

The point is not to cling onto something new, that is the need to try out different roles, but to recognise how by identifying with the roles you do play you hold yourself back from experiencing life to its fullest.

Letting go of our need for 'roots'

One thing that’s always been distinguishable about me is my lack of roots. It’s not that I’m in any particular way a rootless person; it’s just that my life’s circumstances have been such that I haven’t really had the opportunity to settle down, or become attached to any place or person. I have no hometown, no childhood friends that I catch up with every year or so, no place to go back to. My mother and father both live many miles away from the area where I grew up and my brothers and sisters are scattered all over the country. I live a nomadic life, staying in a place for a year or two before moving on. At this point I’ve lived in more houses than there are years to my life!

But throughout my life there have always been a few things that remained stable, anchors in what was sometimes a tumultuous sea of experience, and one of these anchors has been my grandmother. On many occasions I’ve returned to live with her after some adventure in my life ended or went a little more pear-shaped than I could handle. Because we share many of the same values and perspectives on life we have a wonderful relationship that is very enriching and her support and unconditional love has nourished me and made me the person I am today.

Now she is 1000's of kilometers away from where I live. Letting go of her is perhaps the hardest lesson in surrender yet.

Roots are different for everyone: they include family, childhood friends, cultural traditions and customs, a piece of land where one feels at home, learned ways of looking at the world. Many would argue that letting go of these things is not desirable, that roots are essential and beneficial to our wellbeing. I agree that roots provide stability, a firm foundation. They are nourishing and grounding. But here we need to distinguish between enjoying and benefiting from our roots and needing them, which is where attachment comes in. If we ask ourselves ‘what would happen if I didn’t have that person/place/idea/thing in my life?’ the answer should be ‘I’d be okay.’ You can be happy and creative, free to go with the flow of life, either with or without that connection. 

Two situations illustrate an unhealthy attachment to roots:

1. Your roots feel inhibiting. They hold you back from following the natural flow of synchronicity in your life, from taking up the opportunities that come your way and from using your gifts. You are like a pot-bound plant that needs more space in order to grow.
2. You feel great about your roots. They provide the foundation on which you’re able to be creative, to explore and to grow. However when those roots aren’t there you fall down. You can’t seem to be happy and at peace without them.

The first situation is not so relevant to me, as my family is supportive and encouraging of my choices, never judgemental or clingy or manipulative. But for many people family roots equate to disapproval, guilt, secrets, game playing and other unhealthy attachment-based behaviour. In these cases letting go of one’s roots can be very freeing.

In my case I have learned very well to do without roots and the freedom this has allowed me has enhanced my creativity, my courage and my growth as a human being. But still I feel a great fear in my heart when I think of my grandmother’s passing. It’s as if the constancy of her presence has allowed me to explore so boldly, knowing that if anything were to go wrong I could return to her, that if I became lost she would always be the reference point by which I could reorientate myself.

I suppose that letting go of my dependence on her for this sense of security will push me to find my own inner anchor point, my inner roots. So that in dark times I may find light within, in times of tumult, peace, in times of confusion, clarity. To do I must remain aware of the petty day-to-day attachments that divert my attention, pull me away from my centre and stifle my freedom of expression. Meditation remains the best tool I know of to achieve this clarity: as I sit, allowing my thoughts to pass by without my mind grasping onto them, I learn to let go of the frustrations, the fixations, the passions that occur in my daily life.

Once you’ve found your inner roots you can begin to nurture them, tending them with care and attention, watering them with love, so that they grow deeper and stronger, providing a stability that is far more real than any security you might find in the outside world. Such outer security is subject to change: the lover dies, the house burns down, the business fails and where are you left? Letting go of our need for roots allows us to become strong, to act with freedom and to grow into the highest expression of ourselves.

Letting go of jealousy

Jealousy is a common emotion for most people and indeed is thought by some to be a healthy expression of love in a monogamous relationship. This is because it seems to demonstrate care, that one feels strongly enough about the lover to care whether they connect strongly with others or not. To me jealousy does not signify care but merely attachment, and all attachment is based on insecurity, never on love.

Those who identify as poly-amorous use the term compersion to express the opposite of jealousy. To experience compersion is to be full of joy when you see your lover discovering a beautiful connection with another. Isn't it incredible that in order to express this sentiment, which seems to be a far more positive way of dealing with this common scenario, a whole new word needed to be invented so late in the history of human relatedness and connection!

Some people don't experience jealousy. I'm not one of those people! For a long time I struggled with this. I wanted my lover to claim me, to create a boundary and demand that I not cross it, to show me through his jealousy of other men that he cared. On the other hand I wanted him to want me so much that no other woman would make him look twice, or if they did and he enjoyed that connection that it would be no comparison to the connection we share.   

In other words I wanted to be special, and to believe that our relationship was special.

Letting go of jealousy is about recognising that our worthiness and value as human beings does not stem from our relationships with others. It's about realising that deep connectedness need not be synonymous with attachment and that despite what the media and other fairy tales tell us, true love always means freedom: freedom to create, freedom to explore and freedom to grow as human beings.

Letting go of grudges

I've always thought of myself as a pretty forgiving person because I really believe that we do not forgive for the sake of others, we forgive in order to be freed from the burden of the past. However recently I discovered that deep down I had been harbouring a bitter resentment towards someone who had hurt me many years before. Holding onto this grudge, even sub-consciously, had begun to distort many areas of my life, even down to the way in which I made decisions about my career and my future.

You see I had thought that I had forgiven this person years ago and it wasn't until I heard news that he had changed careers and was doing remarkably well in the field in which I myself worked that I found myself feeling some really intense feelings of dislike and anger towards him. 'What is he doing muscling in on me like this? Who does he think he is?' I even started to distance myself from this area of my work and to tell myself that I wasn't really interested in it anymore. I couldn't accept that I would have to come second to this person. I began to think of myself in opposition to this person by creating a separation between us that doesn't really exist. I could then turn him into an enemy. 

Of course this person had no idea I was feeling this way. From his perspective we were 'ok'. We had talked over our problems years ago and I had forgiven him. Or so we had both thought at the time. My grudge towards this person were harming only myself. I became caught up in thoughts and feelings that made me feel unhappy and incompetent, and even risked losing the work I love and through which I can make a useful contribution to the world.

So how can we let go of a grudge like this that is so deep seated as to be almost unconscious? Well I believe the first key is to see how so many of the things we resent from our past have actually been opportunities to grow and to change, or have created turns in the path that have led us to where we are now. We become stronger through crises such as these and because these people have instigated this growth and change we can choose to think of them with gratitude instead of resentment. In fact some teachers even suggest that such people are actually crucial to our life journey and without them we would not be able to evolve to our full potential.

Secondly, it's important to see where your own actions played a role in your own hurt. We are never victims in this life but active agents manifesting our reality from moment to moment. Look back at the situation and you will probably see where you failed to follow your intuition, or acted in anger or with a lack of consciousness. Maybe you should have spoken up about something, stood up for yourself, or even walked away. But you didn't. You cannot pretend that you were not involved and cast all the blame on the other person.

Finally, I think it's important to see that we can only see another as an enemy when we think of them as separate from us. Discoveries in quantum physics are showing that our idea of separateness, of independence, is really only an illusion created by the mind. We are in fact one being, we co-create our reality. When we acknowledge this it becomes much harder to hold a grudge, for who are we resenting but our self?

Letting go of our grudges frees us from our past, from our painful, obsessive and illusory thoughts, and allows us to move into a place where we can trust that everything that happens is an opportunity for growth and change. We are not a victim of life but its creator. We are not separate from each other but interdependently linked, constantly co-creating ourselves and our reality.