I am struggling with how to proceed or not to proceed with a relationship with my ex-wife. We have been married twice and divorced twice over the past 20 years, spending as much time apart as together. Each of us say we love the other. She is not a seeker of the LOO and is not interested in hearing about it. I think I have been a seeker throughout this incarnation, but I became aware of it since our last divorce. It has been difficult for me to be in a relationship with anyone else because I am still in love with her. I am not currently in a relationship and as far as I know she is not as well. At least she has not verbalized to that she is. I have let her know that my desire is for us to be together. She tells me that she cannot handle that right now because she fears we will fall back in the same pattern and she is enjoying her freedom. I accept her feelings as valid and I think that regardless of how I feel about her or how she says she feels about me, given where she is at this space/time nexus, I have to find the strength to let her go, although I told her recently that I would never give up on us again. Any insight, PLEASE.
She's happy in her condition right now, then if you really loved her (unconditionally) you should be happy as well.
See her as a catalyst / opportunity for you to learn about unconditional love.
Be happy for her in the same manner as you're happy letting your children go from your home when they have became adult, or the way you let your parents / grand parents go when they left this world.
And when the time come, the way you're happy letting your self go from your current identity / body and anything that attached with it.
"Attachment is the root of all suffering"
- Gautama Buddha
I think you know what to do.
I would let her go and accept her for who she is. You already know that you can't force the situation. Be friends and don't worry about another relationship. Being in a relationship is not that important—I think we are just trained to seek a mate and there is also a survival mandate to procreate, so the urge is strong to nest. Most importantly, look at how deeply you love this person as a person, not as a mate, and from this perspective letting go will be easy though perhaps not without pain.
Work on yourself, which I suspect you are already doing. As you work on yourself, becoming your best version of yourself and reaching for your potential, if—and it seems likely from your story—there are unprocessed catalysts with your ex-wife, these things can be resolved within self and do not require the other person involved.
If it were me, I might also do things in the physical such as therapeutically write, do yoga, decide to eat differently increasing health, take a class—anything that would engage self in a new and beneficial way, thereby promoting independence and self-strength—keeping the focus shifted on self and self-growth.
If you get back together someday, it might be better not to have a too stiff framework for your relationship. Like not getting married, maybe not even living together while still being in a romantic relationship.
My wife and I were in a relationship for quite a while before we started living together and sometimes she misses the old ways. Supposedly, I treat her more like a princess when we are not 24/7 under the same roof.
So this sort of thing might be what you two needs if she needs to have a lot of personal space and headspace.
seems like you answered your own question in the post johnny
It might be for you that there are many energetic charges on many levels going on simultaneously and that these cross up with each other here or there and cause much internal confusion. You might find it useful to sort out the feelings you are experiencing on various levels, both how you receive passively as well as how you are driven to act.
I would begin with the level of survival. Scribble down the passive feelings that come over you when you think about your survival and how your former wife affects these feelings. Also record what actions these feelings drive you to. Do the same for other levels of awareness such as intimate relations, social relations, your basic sense of self, sense of well being, sense of purpose, etc. Eventually, check in with your heart to see what's resonating there.
Put all this down for awhile, then come back and read through it and try to organize what you've gotten so far. Continue the process. Then stand back look at the whole business from an overview and see what you see. This might help you sort things out a bit in terms of your own centre and how all this is actually affecting you.
I wish you good seeking.
hello JohnnyB, welcome here...
I feel that all advices above are quite interesting, and might help a lot ?
Here is another small angle you may decide to try. Imagine this is sort of the end of your life and you look back at the kind of relationship you had with her. How grateful are you for the years and moments spent with her. Considering your feelings to day towards her and the idea to perhaps be against together, it seems to me quite a beautiful experience, even if it would end now.
Now if you have time, would you read Michael Newton's journey of souls ? it has quite a few examples of something close to what you are living and it might give you just another angle to look at it and perhaps find comfort there, just where you are now.
Good seeking, too,
