TimB,
Now THAT was a hell of a response. Thank you for adding it. We've certainly come to some of the same conclusions, you and I. And yes, I believe you can love more than one person at a time, and that you can love someone that you don't want to live with just as you can live with someone you are no longer in love with. Hell, millions of people do it all the time!!
I've also been trying to understand the idea of jealousy, and here Eastern thinking, especially taoism, has been a huge help. I have often been very jealous, and I've tried to figure out why, to understand where the motivation comes from for those feelings, which are usually horrible ones. I try to live my life with as few bad feelings as is possible, so I've been looking at jealousy and trying to understand it in order to get rid of it. The better I can understand it, the less power it has over me.
In Eastern thought, it would seem that it comes from the feeling of ownership, attachment, that this other person belongs to me and must act in a certain way at all times. If they don't, I will be unhappy, therefore they must make me happy by being a certain way.
But there is a huge sense of relief when you can let that go, when you can let the other person live their own life. If they decide to live it with you, that can be the most wonderful thing, as you and your wife seem to know. But, it's a choice freely made, not coerced by fear of being alone, of divorce, of someone's ownership of you due to marriage or religion or traditional morality.
The fact that you've even examined these things while you were in a committed marriage is simply amazing. Most people would struggle with these ideas if they were single or divorced - it takes remarkable courage to do so where you might endanger a marriage. Very, very, very few people have the courage, the inner growth, dare I say the spirituality (!!) to ever face these questions in life. And like you, I've already told my wife that if she wanted out of this marriage, I would work with her to do that and would still love her and remain her best friend. And I've seen enough in my lifetime, experienced enough to know that what I said was true - and that those kind of actions are quite rare.
Why? You hit it perfectly when you wrote that when your wife had an affair you both started dealing with it as victims, with a victim's mentality. Now THERE's an insight worth thinking about! God, yes! We see ourselves as victims all the time - in America we live in the epicenter of the victim. Right now we're a fucking nation of victims afraid to fly or visit Disneyworld for Christ sake!!
We feel we're victims because someone stole our mate's attention, or desire or passion. Let me tell you one very personal thing (like I haven't overdone that already!). The only time I became angry in all of this was when my wife, in tears one night, started apologizing for what she had done that moved me to have sex with another woman. I just totally stopped her and told her there was no way she should be apologizing to me. I wasn't a fucking victim in this - I CHOSE to do what I did. I'm not a child and I know how to say no. I had done the wrong thing, not her, at least according to what almost anyone would say.
And in many ways she wasn't a victim either. She could just walk away and we'd remain friends as much as she wanted us to - but she didn't have to stay and take it. Or she could stay and lay down some ground rules - and tell me to bugger-off if I didn't agree. Or just kick my sorry ass to the curb!
This may sound callous, but it's not at all. This, as I'm sure you see, is the most loving thing in the world. It's empowering the relationship - not weakening it. It's bringing together or keeping together two people who WANT that, who make that their choice. All the time we give up our personal power - to a relgiion, to a higher being, to parents or bosses or god or someone who we want to approve of us. We have all the 12 step programs where people admit they are powerless. Well that works for some, but AA loses 90 percent of the folks who join up in JUST the 1ST year!! Why? My take on it is that seeing yourself as a powerless victim just doesn't appeal to most folks and has very limited power to help someone really transform themselves.
So, I have ranted on enough here - but these are powerful ideas and they capture my imagination. We are not totally victims of our childhood or our biology or our circumstances. They all play a roll - but they are not the total story. There is the power of the human mind and spirit, the power of love and passion. When we decide to live a life of our own choosing, and do so with all our heart and spirit, we overcome the damage done to us by controlling religions and negative emotions.
Ah, thanks for that post. Great stuff!
S4
