Friday, February 4, 2011

Letting Go.....to Life



Are you ready to let go? Let go of the mind set which has given you pain and suffering, your opinions which are stale and manner which is full of pretense. When I hear people saying, “I never lie, there isn’t a bigger liar than you, beware of what you say! It may just give you away.

Do you have the courage of speaking the truth? Thinking truthfully and fruitfully helps to overcome any fear. Most people lie and cheat because they are so filled up with denial.  Children say, “I love my mother and subliminally they are cursing her.” The boss says, “My employers love me, they speak so highly of me.” Why can t he just own up to his unpopularity? The wife says, “My husband is at home and we are going to spend time together.” Of course she hasn’t said that he has been sleeping the whole day. White lies all of them! Just to hide behind them and pretend you are better. For how long is this sham going to last? Not too long !!  

Truth seems to have become an expensive virtue. All around me I keep seeing that people are unable to own up to what they want. My husband has an affair and I just say, “But he loves me... he only slipped.” The growing number of estranged women who come for psychotherapeutic help is rising. Out of ten women who come to seek professional advice 3 of them need guidance for their parenting,  but the rest 7 are unhappy with their life, bored and lost. This is a large percentage and do you know where they seek solace? You have it right, on the internet. The net bug has ruined so many homes and this time around, it is the women who want excitement, titillation and sexcitement.

All of them do not blame their husbands for this fixation. They may complain of inattention but when asked to explain, they come up with hollow reasons. Most of them do not want to leave their nest and hide it from their spouse. They say their husbands are encouraging them to be independent and modern and also brag about their wife being active on face book. This FB.COM wife is slowly building a virtual world of which the husband knows nothing. This is where trust is broken and truth ends.

Recently Laila  ( name changed) came to see me. She had digressed on FB and for the last nine months had been chatting with a friend of her husbands’. This FB male friend had been having trouble with his wife. He wanted a shoulder to cry on and off load his pain. Laila felt she was equipped to help and would talk to him for hours and chat with him giving him some tips to keep the marriage together. She started talking to him when her husband was not at home, texting him with help aids but all the time never told her husband about this new developing friendship. This would have gone on forever until possibly both of them either would have got bored or moved on into a full blown affair. But generally I find that these travails are nipped in the bud because they are discovered by the spouse. Laila’s husband found her chat transcripts for the cheater always leaves clues. It is a way of being found out as the guilt is increasing and God helps by getting the cheat to make a mistake. In this case the computer was not logged out from and Laila was nailed. She said it was nothing and her husband was making a big deal out of her friendship. She had not even slept with the man. So what was the big hullahoop she could not understand. The husband felt cheated but was made to feel that he had done a grave injustice by exposing her lie. The lie wasn’t a lie …. It was the truth.

Samaira a forty year old was in a happy marriage. Her long desire of having a happy family was at last fulfilled. She had two beautiful sons and a doting successful husband. She had just bought a house and her work was going great. There was nothing to complain and this sometimes gets you into a slumber. She may have felt too stable and secure. She had a life anyone would die for but then that’s when some women feel suffocated. The pace of life must be hastened. It must be revisited so that there can be a revival of exhilaration. Samaira needed to feel restless and tension. She wanted the thrill of a lie to be experienced. The stimulus had to be forbidden for it to create a rush of serotonin. More the deceiving continued, more the thrill and more serotonin. This made her feel euphoric. Her mind was spinning and her senses alert. There was something raising the pleasure index as she hid, lied and covered her tracks. Her unsuspecting husband got a rude shock when he too chanced upon her unlogged face book account. Like I said a liar always leaves clues. A liar can never be smart. Such women are not cunning or sly they are just drowned in their pleasure. They love their husbands and never want the marriage to break but their need to please themselves has got them entrapped.
Samaira said sorry to her husband and she was forgiven. In this case the husband arrived for psychotherapy for he was feeling like a victim but said that his wife made him out to be the perpetrator. He was blamed for making her stray. He could not understand whether he should be sorry or say sorry.


Both the above marriages are still functional. They are not going to break. They are going to survive. I marvel at them, for the partners have cultivated the amazing quality of letting go.
Amidst all the snooping and smacking there is something that is growing.. an ability to let go. Laila has let go of her chat room and found happiness in pursuing her fashion business while Samaira has evaluated her life on the scale of her past debacles and sorted herself to see what her husband has given her. Both these women have stepped back and seen their mistakes. They have felt ashamed but have not had the courage to say it openly. They have made amends but not wanting to speak of the slips. In such a situation, the aggrieved spouse must let go. Let go of the constant ridicule and shouting . Let go of the blaming- shaming gamble for it never pays. Allow your wife to express herself without sitting in judgment. This may sound difficult but it is not. Your wife is your love. Just an aberration cannot make it go away. Remember it could have been you!!!

A relationship can survive and mend itself if the couple does not dissect it. Dissection is done for postmortem of the dead. If you want your relationship to survive just let go of the intense desire to analyze. The more you analyze the more skeletons will tumble. This will lead to heartburn and distrust. You will wonder at the choice of your spouse and the wonderful time you spent as a lie. This may not have been true. A short excursion must not be looked as your spouse’s future wish.
Couples will always wipe out all the wonderful years spent together as if they never happened. They only remember and mess around with the little distraction. Let go of this incessant need to dissect every detail of this deviation. This does not amount to forgetting or forgiving but just letting go of the obsessive behavior that will get you nowhere… but to hell.

Letting go is wonderful. It is a way of becoming resilient. It’s a way of gently bending, allowing yourself to veer through the thoughts and feelings without trying to will change but letting change happen. To will is being in control of something that you can’t let go. Will means repression and stacking things deep means hiding them. Thinking  that they don’t exist. This is a lie.  If you just let go there is no one you have to answer and no answer to be got. It’s so relieving, so accepting and completely freeing.

The only way to knowing yourself at a deeper more human level is to let go. Just as the birds allow their fledgling to fly , the autumn leaf skips off the branch uninhibitedly and the rivulet curves to form a new course people we love meander away; its natural; it’s real. Holding on, clinging on to an error is insane. How many times have you caught yourself saying, “My partner has changed. My partner is not the same.” Remember this is natural. It’s wonderful!! Change is the only thing that is constant. Let’s celebrate the change. Let’s transform ourselves when this change is witnessed. It’s time to flower and seed ourselves. It’s time to recall a dance of life.  It’s time to dance and sing just let go! Allow the truth to surface….

               




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