A Letter to Neale: Relationships: our greatest opportunity

Reader Question:

Dear Neale...I am about to get divorced from my husband. I only started to read your books last summer and I realized I am not happy with him. That is, I don't make him responsible for my happiness, but I decided to accept his negative attitude and his choice to be depressive, but decided I can't and I don't want to live with him anymore.

At the moment we both have psychotherapy and both our individual therapist advised not to get divorced straight away, but have a so called trial divorce/ time out. We are living apart and take turns to look after the children. He is supposed to let me go, but he doesn't, he keeps messaging and emailing me that he cannot live without me, he cannot go back/reintegrate to work without me. This makes me even taking more distance from him, because I feel that his dependency is putting too much pressure on me, and so my desire to break free is growing.

Do you have any advice how to deal with the situation? I do feel sorry for him, but I need to take/keep a certain distance from him in order not to be overwhelmed and to protect myself. Is this real love from his side, or just manipulation, not accepting any change?

Thank you, Sas

Neale Responds

Dear Sas...I try very hard never to give personal advice about what to do or what is going on in specific life situations, because that is not my purpose here. My purpose in this space and in this life is to help others to fully understand the deep messages of Conversations with God --- what they mean, and how to apply them in their day-to-day experience. I would never begin to tell you to either (a) stay with your husband, or (b) divorce your husband. I can tell you, however, what Conversations with God says about relationships.

If you will turn to Chapter 8 of CWG-Book 1 you will find everything you need to know on this subject. There we are told that...

"...The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you’d like to see 'show up,' not what part of another you can capture and hold.  There can be only one purpose for relationships -– and for all of life:  to be and to decide Who You Really Are.

"Most of you enter your relationship-forming years ripe with anticipation, full of sexual energy, a wide-open heart, and a joyful, if eager, soul.  Somewhere between 40 and 60 (and for most it is sooner rather than later) you’ve given up on your grandest dream, set aside your highest hope, and settled for your lowest expectation –- or nothing at all. 

"The problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood:  your grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self.  The test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or hers.  Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours. 

“Relationships are sacred because they provide life’s grandest opportunity –- indeed, its only opportunity -– to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of Self.  Relationships fail when you see them as life’s grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of another.

"Let each person in relationship worry about Self –- what Self is being, doing, and having; what Self is wanting, asking, giving; what Self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationships would magnificently serve their purpose –- and their participants.  Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, and only about Self. 

"This seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form of relationship, one worries only about the other.  Yet know this:  your focus upon the other –- your obsession with the other -– is what causes relationships to fail.  What is the other being?  What is the other doing?  What is the other having?  What is the other saying?  Wanting?  Demanding?  What is the other thinking?  Expecting?  Planning?  The Master understands that it doesn’t matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding.  It doesn’t matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning.  It only matters what you are being in relationship to that."

There is much more that is offered on relationships in this chapter, Sas. I urge you to open Book 1 and read Chapter 8 thoroughly.

I send you my wish that you may experience God's presence in you and working through you all the days of your life.

Love,