You cannot love someone who is not present

The above title could mean ‘love’ in the sense of the experience of Mutuality. It would certainly apply. But here I’m referring to a more worldly, everyday experience. In my time as a Tantra Teacher I so often had people (mostly women) telling me about how they wished their partner would change, would be more open for tantric sexuality, for spiritual matters, even for psychotherapy!

In my current understanding, the ‘problem’ was not the partner, but caused by the persons own wishes, projected onto a partner who did not match their desires. I find this type of behaviour disrespectful, even violating, not to mention pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. The fact is, this is not love, but dissatisfaction taking action.

You can only be in relationship with the person who is present now. You can’t be in relationship with the object of your hopes and desires, because it does not exist (yet). And there we have it: That little ‘yet’ builds up a subliminal or open pressure on the other person to change, telling them that they are NOT OK the way they currently are. This phenomenon has made many relationships unhappy, and caused many to break up, finally, in bad blood. So don’t do it, really, just don’t. Don’t try forcing a square peg into a round hole. Better no relationship than a stressful, reproachful one.

The unhappy partner is in a classic Catch 22: Discontent with a relationship which is unfulfilling and frustrating, but with fear of loss at the idea of ending the relationship. Whoever thinks and feels in such patterns agonises over finding the ‘right’ decision (the one with the least disadvantages). But none of the available options feel good.

You won’t find a relaxed way to deal with such situations until you have dropped the identification with your individual organism, a state which I call awakened. Only then will you be free to make clear and mature decisions, without clinging on or suppressing anything. It should be even easier in the liberated state, where quietness and peace reign and compulsive thinking has subsided.

Not quite that far yet? Take heart and dare to move beyond the old, limiting thinking anyway. This will allow you to make a new, positive experience for yourself, and at the same time make a positive contribution to the human emotional Morphogenetic Field. If an appeal to egocentric thinking may help you take that jump: Who knows what Life may bring when space for something new opens up? Give resonance a fair chance 

So don’t wait, unfulfilled and hoping for a new, better partnership. Whatever path you choose in the external circumstances: Relax down into Beingness, feel and accept it beyond all preferences for your personal situation.

Try this way of being: Existence itself is my lover, and it courts me always.