#93 Married woman still thinking about old boyfriend

Post a comment or ask a question about any of the new letters being considered as replacements for the less often viewed 50 Original Letters. See index of new letters
Post Reply
Gabby
Site Admin
Posts: 455
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2005 11:24 am

#93 Married woman still thinking about old boyfriend

Post by Gabby » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:01 pm

#93 Married woman still thinking about old boyfriend / Am I training my children to deceive?

Dear Annie: I am a 35-year-old woman, married 10 years to an attractive dentist, and we have three children. I am physically healthy and have retained my youthful figure and appearance. My life should be perfect, right? I've learned to live in silence with a secret.
I fell in love with a young man when I was only 18. "Tommy" and I were very close, and though we were intimate and affectionate, I never expressed how I truly felt. I left my hometown when I was 24 with hardly a goodbye. Not a day has gone by that I have not thought of him, including my wedding day. Tommy is the last thought before I go to sleep and the first thought when I wake up.

I have not seen my high school sweetheart in at least five years, but when I moved back to my hometown a year ago, I called him to say hello. He sounded overcome. He blamed his father for drilling into his head that he should not allow himself to fall in love in order not to be hurt. He is now in an unhappy relationship but has never married and has no kids. I haven't spoken to him since.

What do I do with these feelings? It seems unfair to my loyal and generous husband that when I place my head on the pillow, I am thinking of someone else. My husband has NO idea. I would have to be an idiot to leave him, but how do I cure this? If I meet Tommy in person and talk maybe these feelings would wash away once and for all. Or is that something I should completely avoid? Give me an antidote. - Lost Love in California

Dear Lost Love: You see a lost love. We see a guy who needs therapy. You think the relationship ended because neither of you could confess your true feelings. We think he is unable to commit and doesn’t have the emotional maturity to form a lasting relationship. Don’t romanticize Tommy to the point where you destroy your family. It's OK to see him - but only if you bring your husband along. —Annie

Gabby’s Reply

Dear Lost Love: I’m betting that if your husband died and you and Tommy got together that you would soon start treating him as you do your husband, quite possibly you’d be moaning (to yourself and columnists) about being unable to stop thinking about your dead ex.

You are in fact committed to being incomplete, to dragging around problems. "NO idea" stop kidding yourself. He knows something is missing. Your face belies your deceit. It's missing the experience of joy and happiness that comes through communication. It’s not the face of a loving person who is whole and complete, in service, and happy. You unconsciously dump your problem, your incomplete, in the space of everyone with whom you interact. You dramatize your problem around those whom you’ve trained to be as unconscious as you. It doesn’t speak well of your friends, none conscious enough to ask, "What’s going on with you? You look like you’re not here, that you’re worrying about something." Those that might experience your pretense of being with them don’t have the integrity to mention it. I suspect others have tried to get into communication with you and found it to be impossible and they have since stopped interacting with you. Such a withhold serves as a barrier to the experience of communication. All that you have been doing these past years is merely the imitation of communication.

What keeps one incomplete is that they aren’t telling the truth. Notice that nothing has changed. You weren't telling the truth to Tommy back then and now you aren't telling the truth, sharing your thoughts and feelings with your husband. You are aren’t telling the truth to yourself—about what was so for you at the time with Tommy. Given that you are still unconscious it's for sure your memory is inaccurate. Now you daily deceive your husband, sneakily carrying on this warped relationship behind his back. You arrogantly think that he’s not capable of getting and understanding. You present yourself to your husband and children as an honest person while deceiving all of them. None are having a relationship with the real you because you have hidden the deceitful sneaky part.

You can’t begin to imagine the damage this has done to your children. They are confused. They are brilliant and perceptive; they know that something’s wrong and they can’t figure out why mommy isn’t in present-time. They believe that this mental estrangement has something to do with them. They honestly believe that they are the cause for your detachment.

I know you believe that you’ve hidden it well and don’t dramatize your incomplete with them but that’s just part of your whole denial package.

You are so unconscious, so preoccupied with this incomplete and its possibilities, that you haven't looked at the consequence of ripping off your husband. Can you imagine what life would be like for him if he had a wife who absolutely adored him and only him—someone who coveted no one else? You selfishly hold on to him thereby keeping him from having what he knows at some level is possible. He thinks the distance, which you have not allowed yourself to experience, has to do with his own inadequacies. To have perpetrated this fraud on another accidentally has had its own set of consequences, hereafter, to chose to withhold, the consequences will be compounded.

Now here’s the kicker: Just as your parents taught you to deceive, to withhold thoughts, so too are you teaching your children to withhold their choice of thoughts from you and others. Because you have yet to discover that telling the truth not only works, it creates an even deeper, more profound experience of love no matter the person, you cannot teach your children—except to espouse truth hypocritically, which by the way, can’t be completely gotten except as a concept.

Notice that you cleverly, albeit unconsciously, chose a husband whom you could control, one who was so unconscious that he couldn’t see that you were, and still are, dragging around a huge incomplete. What this reveals is that he also is hiding something huge from you. That’s the implied contract withholders bring to their relationships, permission and support to withhold thoughts of choice. This withholding behavior condemns a relationship to mediocrity from which it can never ever escape if both keep using the communication model they were taught when young.

The solution? Keep doing what you’ve been doing until it begins to affect your health and the results those around you are producing. You are the leader; no one can win big time around until you decide to communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously. You might wonder why I don’t advise you to tell your husband the truth? It’s because you not only won’t, you simply can’t—such is your addiction to being incomplete, to deceit. It usually takes a circumstance to motivate an addict, an illness, job-loss, divorce, or another’s death.

Yours is a great letter because most everyone is withholding some comparable thought from his or her loved one.

With aloha, Gabby

Last edited 10/1/18

Post Reply