The Legacy of Divorced Parents.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Dear Deepak, I have recently rediscovered your wonderful wisdom about spirituality and I’m glad I did. I need your advice on something that has been bothering me for a while. I’m in an 8 year old relationship with a wonderful man. We met in college. He’s 27 years old and I’m 26. When we first met, we both had lot of emotional hurt to heal. Both our parents had incredibly bad relationships which had affected us to a great extent. Through the love we found in each other, most of the issues got resolved. Except for one thing- his parents got divorced recently and this has made him totally against marriage. All throughout these years, he used to keep changing his mind about marriage- occasionally committing to marry me and changing his mind on and off. He has seen his parents almost divorcing from the time he was around 14 years old. But until the divorce actually happened, he was slowly accepting the idea that marriage with me is what he wants. But now he seems to have gone back to square one. I don’t know what to do. He needs to heal a lot and I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to deal with this. He keeps telling me to move on. But I know he loves me so dearly that he wants to be with me. He has always been very loving and caring. We both haven’t had any other relationships. We’ve grown together and closer to each other over these years. I don’t want to let him go. He isn’t even spiritual for me to guide him into healing his pain. He constantly advises his friends not to marry. I can see he is badly hurt. Please tell me what to do. I’m so confused. Lots of love.
Response:
If he is reluctant to commit to marriage or even think positively about getting married to you in the wake of his parents’ divorce, then you are just going to have to allow him the time to heal and come to his own conclusions about what this means for his life. It’s not unusual for children of divorced parents to generalize and take a pessimistic view of all marriages. But eventually, if they continue to mature, they will realize that their parents experience does not apply to all marriages and it doesn’t mean they can’t have a successful marriage. Your boyfriend needs to arrive at his own determination in his own good time.
What you need to decide is whether that open ended time frame is acceptable to you, either in the short term or the long term. It is important for you to make your own decision as a way to clarify what is important to you and as a way to assert your choice in the matter. Otherwise you may feel disempowered later and feel resentful about just hanging on a year or two hoping he changes his mind. Because if he doesn’t, you may feel you wasted your youth, your time and affection on a lost cause. On the other hand, if you choose to stay around for some time because of your love for him and a self-knowing that this process he is going through connects to some growth in you as well and that there is nothing else or no one else that you want to be with besides him anyway, then you are in a strong position and will be able to move forward in life without regret regardless of what happens.
Love,
Deepak
