Dear Sundari,
I wanted to profoundly thank you for your last advice to me. It helped me so much in ways I can’t even tell you. I’m writing to you because I cannot find advice anywhere on the state of my relationship with my husband. I searched and read hundreds of Shining world satsangs, relationship books, pondered on this for years… But I am just as lost as I was 9 years ago after my husband and I had our first daughter. Should I leave him, or should I continue my duty as a householder, that life put me in…?
I never told this story in all the details I’m going to tell you, to anyone… But I know I have to be absolutely honest in order to try to make sense and make a decision. I’m so sorry if it turns out too long and please don’t feel that you have to reply to me, there are probably hundreds of people writing to you with more pressing issues. I think writing this, even if you don’t reply, will somehow help me. So here it goes.
10 years ago, my husband and I met and started dating. He was 16 years older, had significant savings, drove a sports car and lived in a luxurious apartment. I was 20, a poor full-time student working 3 jobs to pay for school sharing a bad apartment. We had sex after a month or two of dating. He insisted I start birth control, which I did because I wanted to please him and wanted him to be comfortable with me. I was careless and naïve about birth control. Short story long, I got pregnant. He and his family thought I got pregnant on purpose, that I was a gold digger and tricked him. He was appalled at where I was living and asked me to move in with him, which I did.
I was fascinated with Pier from day 1, and of course, it was my dream that he would want to marry me one day. I found him incredibly smart, wise, and confident. I admired him and still do tremendously admire him. He came to this country when he was 11, learned the language, studied so hard, he got a full scholarship to University. In 5 years, he earned a bachelor’s and 2 master’s degrees. He has had high paying executive jobs ever since then.
After I fell pregnant our sex life changed almost right away. He said he didn’t want to hurt the baby and so we weren’t having much sex. He didn’t want to cuddle or touched by a mere finger when he sleeps because it disturbed his sleep. He asked me to leave all my jobs and stay at home, which I gladly did though I kept up my studies.
I graduated a year after my daughter turned 1 and have not worked since I became a full-time Mom. After giving birth Pier still did not want to have much sex.
He was never emotional like me. He did not say “I love you” until after our daughter turned 1 year old and I threatened to leave unless I knew that he loved me. I started taking birth control after giving birth, but our sex life didn’t improve. I grew very resentful of him. I got to my prebirth weight in 3 months, took care of myself. Everyone told me I was very attractive, but I just could not get my partner to have sex with me. I flirted with him, I even remember getting under the blanket and touching him one night to initiate sex, as relationship books suggested, but I still remember how coldly he took my hand off, looked at me disapprovingly and said, “What are you doing? Not right now…”
In my culture, women don’t initiate sex and don’t show interest in sex, it’s considered very low class. Even on the rare occasion we had sex he never cared about my needs, only his own. He never kissed, or cuddled, or hugged me, or expressed physical care. I did not complain for fear that if I did he would stop having sex with me altogether.
I struggled with depression off and on during our relationship because I felt that he didn’t love me. I was extremely insecure. I used threats to leave him to get reassured that he wanted me in his life. Every time I threatened to leave, he asked me not to and told me he loved me and that he will marry me and so I stayed, reassured for a while. Until I would break down again. My emotional breakdowns were severe. I tried to kill myself more than once, but I never really wanted to die, I just wanted his attention.
I wanted us to get married and have another child so badly. He kept saying that he doesn’t want to get married and have another child until our relationship is stable. He blamed me for our unstable relationship, and I blamed him for not loving me and my emotional outbursts. Chicken and an egg. I don’t know how I would have survived if I didn’t find Vedanta 5 years ago… I finally felt peace and resolved to live as is… Loving Pier as the Self, the Awareness that he is, and be happy with what I have and live moment by moment and not make a decision to leave him…
We’ve been to several couple counselors and I also received individual therapy. They all ended up not being objective, taking my side, telling me he was an emotional abuser, and that I needed to leave. I could not trust them because they discriminated against him because he was a man, and very confident at therapy sessions. He knew more than counselors and intimidated them. I, on the other hand, quiet, young, weeping. They felt sorry for me. As much as I want to say that they were right and yes, it’s all his fault, it’s not true and I did do so much harm with my threats and suicide attempts and depression and instability.
From the outside we were a picture-perfect family. I was filling a void in my heart with Mom activities. I studied Vedanta and thought I was doing a great householder duty. I was still desperate for another baby. And I did get pregnant on purpose the second time. I felt so ashamed for what I did but I was so extremely happy. Pier did not want to pay for my health insurance so he decided to marry me, so his work insurance would cover my health bills.
We went to a lawyer and signed a prenuptial agreement. He had money and I didn’t, and he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get what he earned before marrying me. I was happy to sign everything he wanted. I just wanted to be married and be a real family. We didn’t have a wedding; we didn’t even celebrate. He just wanted to get it done and over with, he was in a bad mood. But I was happy. For a while everything was great. I was happy and satisfied, apart from the constant moving for his work. He refused to buy a house because he believed he saved money by renting.
That’s when I had an Internet affair with an old admirer of mine, who was in love with me before I met Pier. In the beginning, it was harmless enough, the man was married with kids and lived in France. There was no way I could fall in love with him or see him. But I felt as I was alive again. He listened to me and my little everyday problems, supported me emotionally, encouraged, and praised me daily for stupid, unimportant things. He told me everything I needed to hear and was craving for years. There was someone who cared about me and knew my little everyday struggles was comforting beyond belief. It was his attention that I was important and his thoughtfulness of me that I appreciated so much.
But then he started pressing to visit me. While I enjoyed his compliments and attention, the thought of sexual cheating was disgusting to me, apart from the fact that he was married and I wasn’t going to break his family or become his lover. Either way, when he started pressing for more than caring, sometimes flirty, interactions, I broke it off.
After that, I fell into the deepest depression to date. Pier and I have been living like housemates for years but after experiencing some attention from someone, I was missing it. Even though we didn’t have anything beyond what I told you, when I broke it off, it felt as a major love breakup and I experienced a tremendous loss.
I lost interest in everything. My home and life became a disgusting, dysfunctional mess. I neglected my kids basically only making sure they were alive and safe.
Currently, I feel as my depression is almost gone. I’m slowly getting back to my children. However, I don’t care about Pier any more as a man of the opposite sex. We haven’t had sex for a year or more and I don’t want sex with him. Actually, lately, he has been showing more interest than ever, but I cannot go there with him. I love him as a human being, as the father of my kids, as a friend and family member, but I completely withdrew myself emotionally from him. I would feel dirty if I had sex with him because I resent him as a sexual partner completely now. He noticed the change in me. Now he’s been offering to go to couple therapy, but I don’t want to. I don’t believe in change between us anymore, but more than that, things I was craving from him before – emotional and physical intimacy, I cringe just thinking about, even for the sake of our kids.
The issue of sex in our relationship is just one of many. He never took me seriously, treating me like an irrational child, not a partner, especially in public. While I agree, I behaved irrationally in our relationship, trying to get to feel loved, but I’m not naive or silly as he jokingly represents me when we are in the company of others. Many people respect and value my friendship advice and opinion. For the past many years, more than anything, I wanted to live in a house like all my friends, but surprisingly, I no longer want to.
My year of depression changed me, Sundari. While on the outside, I’m a sweet, kind, soft, and gently spoken person, as I was before with my older daughter, I am now bitter, resentful, and angry with her, who I love more than anything. I hate myself for being such a bitter angry mother, I’m crying as I’m writing this to you. I wonder if the damage I give my daughter by screaming and insulting her would damage her less if I was not around. I’m not like that with my 4-year-old, even though she has a very hard temper and is way more difficult than my older child. I am sweet and patient and understanding with her, though my absent-mindedness and luck of educating her, I’m sure affects her in negative ways.
I don’t know why I turned this way with my older child. I want to blame my husband, the fact that he was never a united front with me, always questions my actions, and doesn’t trust me… My older daughter questions my decisions all the time, too. I constantly feel that she doesn’t respect and doesn’t appreciate me, and I blame Pier for that because my daughter repeats the behavior of her father. While I stopped arguing with Pier 1,5 years ago because I emotionally gave up on our relationship and there was no more need to fight because when you no longer believe that the other person can change their behavior, the fighting becomes pointless… I argue and fight with my daughter because I want to change her behavior. I don’t want her to turn out like her father.
For the first time in 10 years, I want to get a divorce, Sundari. It’s no longer a threat to get Pier’s attention. I’m just so tired of living in isolation at home. I don’t want to get divorced to get into a relationship with someone else… I want to get divorced so that I don’t have to endure living a lie.
I don’t want any of his money. I plan on filing an online divorced form and I don’t even want a lawyer. If he decides to give me child support, he can, if not – not, I literally don’t want anything from him, except my belongings, I want to avoid all fighting and part peacefully. I don’t have anger towards him, nor resentment for “all my young years” wasted. I am just deeply disappointed, disillusioned by all relationships, and tired.
I have many skills and am not scared of work. I guess I just want to see if you approve, Sundari. My Mom was the closest woman and my best friend, and I never made a decision without her. She passed away unexpectedly 8 years ago. She liked Pier a lot and was happy he took care of me.
My brother, who is my best friend, also doesn’t think I should get divorced. Though he is not an authority to give relationship advice, all his relationships were dysfunctional. He cheated on every single woman he ever was with. He thinks I have everything I need and if Pier doesn’t satisfy me in the men’s department, I should just have my needs met on a side and use other men to get the attention I want.
I’m so lost and confused. On the one side, I do have everything I need, on the other… I’m so lost and lonely and now also bitter and angry. I know that I am the awareness and that I’m full and limitless and complete. And that’s what’s been soothing me for the past 5 years since I discovered Vedanta, but I just sometimes can’t help myself and fall into samsara and its unending mess of emotions and actions and expectations.
On my last note, I’ll add… Pier’s mother was always a career woman and angry and bitter and emotional and who didn’t spend any time with her kids, only worked and partied, and was an alcoholic. His mother and father divorced after 40 years of marriage. His father lives happily with someone now, his mother is alone and an alcoholic and became addicted to marijuana at the age of 72 and struggles to live on her own. I’m afraid she might die soon, but none of her kids want to take care of her…
My father was an alcoholic too, he abused my mom emotionally and physically, who was a smart and successful architect and my father was a plumber. He cheated on her as long as I remember myself, as a child I even myself found him in bed at our home with different women. I don’t resent my Dad; I forgave him a long time ago. I love him and I know he was depressed himself and loved me as much as he was capable.
I know for a fact that Pier is capable of giving love and affection to others. He is extremely affectionate and loving and emotionally supportive of our children. He just doesn’t want to be physically or emotionally close to me. But every time I try to leave, he talks me out of it for the sake of our children. Well, the children now suffer. My older one suffers from the bitterness and anger of his mother. I can’t seem to help myself, Sundari. I know that I will never ever threaten suicide again, but one of these days, when I feel so hateful of myself for screaming and directing my anger at my poor kid, I might just leave and finish this burden of myself somewhere far in the woods, where hopefully my body won’t be found and my disappearance can be blamed on other circumstances.
I just don’t know. I’m so sorry Sundari for overbearing you with this. I poured my heart out in this letter, trying to be as objective as possible, do you think I’m nuts? Spoiled jiva with no real problems? Please don’t spare my feelings, I can absolutely take it. I love that you are as straightforward as loving and I absolutely know that whatever you tell me, I will do it because as of right now, you and James are the only two people in the world whose opinion and advice I trust wholeheartedly and fully.
I’m attaching a few pictures of us so that you can see that we are a completely normal, happy family from the outside, and that pretension hurts me so much. In front of other people, Pier is extremely caring and protective of me, calls sweet names, gives me compliments, holds my hand, and caresses me… I think if I told anyone what I told you in this letter, that when we go home, we go into our separate rooms and have our own lives, no one would believe… People constantly compliment what a good looking and happy looking family we are… Please tell me I’m crazy because when I look at us from the outside and how I feel on the inside makes me doubt myself all the time.
Thank you Sundari. I love you and James. I’m so sorry for spilling all this mess on you. I just don’t have anywhere else to turn and don’t have anyone whose opinion I trust.
Thank you again.
God bless you Sundari.
With all my respect, love, and admiration,
Sundari: Hello Sarah, lovely to hear from you again, and thank you for sharing your story with such honesty. It is not an easy thing to do, even if you know that your story is just a story, the hurt feels very real. There is no easy answer to your situation, and my reply to this is long. You will need time to digest it all. Just remember one thing: nobody is ever completely innocent when it comes to dualistic relationships, which your is. I am sure you know this as you are not looking for sympathy in this email, I can tell you are being as honest as you know how to be.
First off, you are not crazy. You are just caught up in the tangled web of duality and the inevitable disillusionment of unmet expectations—the trap most people fall into when they chase love outside themselves. Vedanta does not judge or tell us what to do; it is not about fixing our lives in the world. It is about discriminating between satya, what is real and unchanging, i.e. you, the Self, and mithya, what is apparently real and always changing, i.e., the jiva or person. That said, even though the person and their life story is not real if we want to be free of mithya, we need to understand what conditions us, how we relate to the field of experience we live in, and how the field functions.
Remember that freedom from limitation is freedom FROM the jiva, AND for it. This is what self-inquiry is all about because as the Self, you are and always have been free. Self-inquiry, if you are doing it correctly, is not just a theory. It is applied knowledge. Apart from karma yoga, the first thing required for self-inquiry to work is that your life is dharmic—i.e., that it conforms to the teachings, not the other way around. Freedom is not about getting the world to work for you; it is understanding that there is nothing in the world because it is not real. This is a nondual reality, and everything is you. There is nothing to gain or lose here. All the same, the person and all their troubles are not going to magically disappear when you know you are the Self. Therefore, application of Vedanta to your life is where all the ‘work’ of self-inquiry takes place. Vedanta is not just a soothing pacifier to soothe the mind. If freedom from limitation is what you really want, self-inquiry requires qualifications, the application of the teachings, karma yoga primarily. And it requires that you face and resolve your psychology in light of the teachings. This is hard for most people, even those dedicated to self-inquiry.
Karma yoga does not work if your life does not conform to dharma. You cannot use karma yoga to make an adharmic relationship work. Your relationship is not dharmic because it contravenes the universal law of love: mutual respect. You say you respect Pier, but he does not respect you. And is your respect for him really respect? Or is it actually low self-esteem, i.e. lack of self-love, in the guise of respect? What comes through for me in your email is that you see him as superior to you in some way. Or you did in the beginning when you wanted the life you believed he had to offer you. Many women make this trade because they believe they will gain security and love from a man who is seemingly more successful in the world than they are. Even if the evidence is there that the man they have chosen is not capable of living up to their expectations, they believe their love will change them. Their need and desire blind them to the kind of man they are hooking up with. Men do this too, but generally, men with low self-esteem and psychological problems tend to gravitate towards women with low self-esteem they can control emotionally.
During the course of your relationship, you were blessed to find James and Vedanta. It sounds like you signed on as an inquirer. As an inquirer, your primary dharma is to commit to the teachings and apply them to your life. Your secondary dharma is to fulfill your obligations in the world, first and foremost to be true to yourself, and secondly to those in your care, your children and your loved ones. If you don’t take care of yourself, how can you take care of your kids? What are you teaching them by remaining in a loveless relationship that causes so much suffering? No wonder your daughter is acting out. I would guess that subconsciously, you are angry with her because she was what tied you to your husband from the beginning. It appears that there is some shame attached to falling pregnant with your first child and ‘tricking’ your husband into marrying you with the second child. Shame is usually the result of anger at ourselves. You cannot express the anger you feel towards yourself, so you project it onto your daughter. And like all suppressed anger caused by unacknowledged shame, it creates more shame and guilt, and you are already drowning in it.
Shame will play out in feelings of intense vulnerability, resentment, moodiness, depression, anger, lack of trust, defensiveness, to name a few. Shame creates a mind that is always suspicious that others are judging it and fears criticism but is also seeks criticism because it believes it deserves punishment while defending its fear of ‘being discovered’ as unworthy, useless, having no value to anyone. Shame and guilt always hurry towards its complement, punishment. Only there does its satisfaction lie. Your punishment is your husband’s lack of real love and respect.
When shame takes over the mind, our inner compass loses all bearings and we are lost in the great ocean of samsara. Even though you have the map of Self-knowledge in your hands, you cannot make sense of it. It does not work for you because there is a fundamental error in your thinking. There are many reasons why people feel shame and all of them are destructive to peace of mind, originating from and building on the lie that we are ‘flawed’ and unworthy, and we need someone to make us whole. It causes an ugly, dark, and thoroughly negative psychological condition attaching itself like a parasite to everything good about life or about who we think we are. Unknown to us it becomes the filter through which we experience life. It whispers constantly in our ear with the ‘voices of diminishment’, sucking us dry of confidence, of trust in ourselves and life, of goodness, of joy, gorging itself like a leech on our lifeblood. It keeps us stuck in punishing situations that do not speak the truth about us.
Like your husband, you had a parent who was too damaged and self-centered to love you properly. Though you forgave your father because you understand his flaws now, you are drawn emotionally to unavailable men who do not respect women because that is what your father modeled for you. Your husband was damaged by his emotionally unavailable mother who did not respect herself or her husband. When we take on these patterns from our primary caregivers, how can we learn to love ourselves properly? We don’t, so we look for love from others. How are you going to find love with someone who does not love themselves, how can they possibly love you? How can you truly love your husband or anyone if you don’t love yourself? It won’t work.
I am sure Pier is basically a good man, but his emotional coldness and unavailability are the result of the lack of love in his past, just as your need for love and respect from him is the result of what was modeled for you in your parent’s relationship. We are all victims of victims in this world. While that is sad, you cannot fix him. If he was genuinely willing to commit to an objective examination of his buried and unconscious wounds, there would be hope for your relationship to flourish. But it sounds like he is not and prefers to hide behind the façade of his wealth and education. You do not need to ‘fix’ yourself, but you can be free of the toxic mental/emotional programs that are behind the situation you are in, through Self-knowledge. You have the tools to resolve your issues. But you must use them properly or they won’t work.
I am not surprised you have been deeply unhappy and depressed in the marriage you describe. There is no blame because nobody would be who they are if they could help it. But you need to take a stand in what you want most, for your sake and your kids. Remember that the bottom line with Vedanta is to end dependence on objects for happiness. It is a good thing that you are no longer emotional about your relationship with Pier, and the needy part of you has given up on needing him. But genuine dispassion, which is non-attachment to results because you are no longer dependent on an object to make you happy, is very different from shutting down your emotions. It sounds to me like your emotional shut down is simply self-preservation, a coping mechanism. The real need, the need for love, acceptance, and admiration outside yourself, is still there, just covered up.
I can understand why you gave up on him emotionally and sexually, He was abusing you and himself, intentionally or not, just as much as you have been abusing him and yourself with the lack of self-love you both suffer from. He was not being dharmic as your partner, because the only obligation we have in love relationship is to love. Emotional neglect and indifference are sometimes worse than physical abuse. Love is paying attention, and he does not do that. His wounded persona copes by shutting out what he does not want to address, like so many samsaris do. He does not pay attention to you, and we only love what we pay attention to. Your need for love from him brought nothing but more need because nobody can give us the love we crave. Your love for him has died, which is why you no longer pay him attention.
The real issue here is not who did what to who. The real issue, which has never been addressed, is why you felt you needed him to be happy in the first place. The root cause of all our relationship problems is that we depend on love from someone instead of appreciating ourselves as love. It is not necessarily the kiss of death spiritually but may well be. Relationships are worldly preoccupations if they are based on desire and need. Unless you are a proper inquirer dedicated to karma yoga, unhealthy intimate relationships can create bondage and impede self-inquiry. If we have the courage to stand up to these tyrannical desires and face our fear of being alone, we may suffer for a while, but that will pass. In its place will be relief that we have one less fear to do combat with, the fear of loss. What is the worst that could happen if you walk away? Nobody gives us anything or takes it away. Only our own mental and emotional poverty starves us of joy.
I call the desperate need for love from others the ‘love whore’ need. It is the almost zombie-like impulse to get love and approval from others. To someone who is not needy, it can be off-putting to the point of being disgusting because they see the needy one like a leech. It sets up the polarity of one person clinging desperately and the other trying just as desperately to get away. It creates the kind of hot and cold control drama you have had with your husband. He had the upper hand on you until the time you stopped needing him. Then the game switched. How needy we are is a very good duality meter to gauge ourselves on where we stand with the powerful deluding power of Maya. When the need impulse stakes its claim on the mind our best defense is to face it with karma yoga because it won’t go away any other way. Even though we must forgo the need and it makes us feel awful emotionally, it’s a total gift that begs gratitude. Assimilating the most primary lessons of Vedanta is very hard (the joy is not in any object) and most people are not suited for it. Are you? You can’t say that you are committed to Vedanta and at the same time, chase things in the world. Bitterness and disappointment are all we find that way, as you know all too well. It is not the world or ‘relationships’ that are to blame, but our expectations of them. We look for happiness where it cannot be found.
If we see the desire for love from others for what it is, we can leave the desire firmly in God’s hands and resolutely stick to karma yoga while being OK with being flawed as a person. Vedanta is not about perfecting the person; it’s about understanding why they are not real, and what guna programs are running the mind. Whenever that hungry love whore need pops up like an unwelcome cork in the ocean of duality, whack it instantly with the opposite thought, which is: ‘I am whole and complete and need nothing to be happy’. Do not hesitate even for a second, because that you do not need anything or anyone to be whole and happy IS the truth about you.
Things were different at the beginning of your relationship and Pier must have been flattered that a beautiful younger woman needed him. But all too soon your need became a great burden he could not fulfill. You were asking for the impossible from him because he does not know what love is or how to love. How could he? He was never shown true love. More importantly, you were asking for the impossible because nobody can make us happy. While there are few things as painful as unrequited love, unwanted love and need can be just as much an imposition because needy people are only after their own needs-fulfillment. They don’t actually care about anybody else, though they feel unacknowledged self-loathing for being so weak and needy. I think that was true for you from what I read in your very honest email. At the same time, Piers’ lack of need is not true dispassion either; his way of coping with emotional issues is to deny he has them. It is no surprise that when you stopped needing him, the pendulum swung the other way, and then he was the one needing and chasing you.
Self-inquiry and karma yoga is the only permanent solution to all our problems. If we want to resolve the relationship drama dance and commit to self-inquiry to do so, we must be careful to read the fine print because we sign on to a predetermined spiritual practice. We are no longer the boss and must follow the steps for self-inquiry to bear fruit. The whole point is not to control the mind but to bring that willful self-centered ego into line with the truth for the sole purpose of ending suffering. If the needy tail is still wagging the dog, it is important to accept that fact and follow the program of self-inquiry to the letter or it won’t work. Qualifications are paramount because to succeed at self-inquiry, you need to be a relatively mature adult, not a psychological wreck. For the mind to be clear enough to submit to self-inquiry, it must be prepared and purified. Vedanta will not work for people with a great deal of unresolved psychological issues looking for a psychological band-aid or instant panacea. There is no such thing if we are talking freedom from limitation.
It can be hard for many inquirers is to see love attachments for what they are without making any excuses. But if we want to succeed at self-inquiry, we must adjust our relationships according to Self-knowledge, not according to our conditioning. It does not require (though it may) ending relationships. Usually, it simply requires acknowledging our blind spots and cutting the psychological bondage to and dependence on the people in our lives with whom we have karma, or with whom we want karma. Love always endures because it is the nature of life, it is who we are, not something we must work to gain or give. We can never ‘lose’ anyone we love, we only lose the binding attachments to them because we see them as the Self, while loving and accepting their personal program as it is and, for what it is, only apparently real.
The first place to look when we start self-inquiry is what we are attached to and dependent on. A good relationship relies on a certain amount of dependence as a matter of practicality and shared values. It is necessary to depend on your partner to keep their end of the bargain regarding your values and commitments, as well as love. If love is not dependable because unconscious mental/emotional patterns are in control of the two parties, love is based on fear, not on self-love. If fear informs love, the relationship will either struggle unhappily along or end. Or, it becomes co-dependent. This means basically finding someone who is happy to cater to your lack of self-love and damaged needy persona in exchange for you doing the same for them. A highly toxic rajasic/tamasic mix indeed.
You and Pier have both tried unsuccessfully to control the other to get what you want/avoid what you don’t want. If we refuse to relinquish control in a relationship, it is because our fear-based desires are mistaken for ‘love’. We want something from the love object they cannot give us. Of course, this produces feelings inevitably constrained by the behavior of the love object. Therefore, you need to control your lover to avoid bad feelings. Your suicide attempts were an attempt to control the situation to get what you wanted, love and attention. Of course, it didn’t work. Control is a very bad idea at any level (except self-control), for a very simple reason: the results of your actions are not up to you. No-one is ever truly in your control, no matter how hard you try to control them or how much they want to conform to what you want.
People may try to go against their conditioning to please you or themselves for whatever reason until they come to understand that it is not serving their best interest. It sounds like you have done this throughout your marriage. You tried to conform to Pier’s idea of love to stay in the relationship because you believed you needed his love to be happy. You have been abusing yourself. Maybe he tried to give you what you want and failed. Any change enforced from outside will inevitably be undone sooner or later.
Love mistaken for fear/desire holds your feelings hostage to the feelings of the love object, which is the antithesis of love because real love is free of the need for emotional validation from others. It wants nothing and fears nothing. It is self-satisfied. Desire feels like love because when we get what we want, the mind becomes settled and blissful. Desire masquerading as love produces constant anxiety; the fear of loss is its constant companion. Even if you get what you want, you often pay dearly for it, as you know you have. It seems now you have what you wanted, but you no longer want it. Such is the zero-sum nature of life.
Pier was also trying to control you, and his methods were the opposite of yours. He used emotional unavailability to control you. If we try to gain power over a partner by controlling them, we are always emotional and always at war, with yourself and with them. There may be rare cease-fires between the fights—makeup sex, for instance—but there is a constant sense of fear, like walking in a minefield. Add the constant desire to the constant fear and your mind is a cauldron of instability.
Fear of loss or fear of being alone is behind the desire to control, even at the expense of the partner and the relationship. What is not known is that it is not the fear of the loss of the relationship that is behind the need to control, but the fear of the loss of the love that it symbolizes. The relationship is meant to compensate for your incompleteness, but obviously, never does and so the fear of loss just keeps growing and the need to control intensifies.
Gaslighting, the psychological term currently gaining traction, is one of the lowest of strategies employed in the need for power and control. It is an attempt at control by sowing seeds of doubt in a targeted individual making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. The way it works is that the manipulator attacks you about your character, things said, have supposedly done or not done. When they hook you, they turn the tables denying their subversive attack with reverse psychology, eroding your self-confidence and creating doubt. It is very effective unless you have the rock-solid self-confidence that comes with Self-knowledge and apply karma yoga vigilantly to your emotions, which neutralizes and removes the power over you from the manipulator.
If the tendency to control goes unacknowledged and not managed, the relationship will not survive, even if the partnership does not dissolve. Your relationship has died as a result. Control is the basis of all abusive relationships, and both the abuser and abused are complicit in it. Even an abuser is abused when their abuse is allowed to continue. An abuser wants you to stop their abuse because it is so painful for them too. The psychological damage on both sides perpetuated in this scenario is enormous, and it often spills over into physical violence, even murder in the worst-case scenario. Certainly, it is damaging your children and running away from them in guilt is hardly the solution. How will it possibly help them if you kill yourself? There is no escape from our karma, it will find you in the ‘next’ life, and you will have only heaped all the terrible pain that suicide causes to those left behind. They need you to be there for them as you, not perfect, but authentic. As a transparent, mature adult. Model for them what it means to be a self-loving, self-respecting parent and, person.
An abusive relationship is any relationship that seeks to control, diminish or harm you in some or many ways, subtly or directly, in big or small ways. And it is amazing how many people remain in them and justify doing so because of their fear of being alone. Many keep seeking them out. There is a very important verse in the most important Vedanta scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, where the student says, “What is that terrible force within me that causes me to act contrary to my higher nature?” The teacher replies, “It is rage, born of rajoguna.” The student then says, ‘The mind (owing to the rage) is an entrenched tyrant, impossible to control.” And the teacher replies, “Yes, it is difficult to control but it can be brought under control by repeated practice and objectivity.” This practice is self-inquiry.
Rajas, the power of projection and desire, afflicts everyone to some degree and is very strong in some people. When it is unconscious, rajas is a force that unconsciously attracts us towards unhealthy situations and relationships, like moths to a flame. And tamas, which is the power of denial always accompanying rajas, causes us to deny we are doing so. Such as being drawn to and justifying a relationship with a sexually greedy person, or to someone who constantly puts us down, or who is emotionally unavailable or abusive as in your case. Rajas makes us seek out this kind of masochistic punishment. We try to find satisfaction in the situation yet reap only frustration and suffering, resulting in suppressed anger and fear of loss, among many toxic emotions. This is what you are taking out on your kids–your own anger at yourself. It is the cause of your depression. Depression is tamas, and all the gunas build on themselves if we do not manage them. The more you beat yourself up, the more depressed you will get and the more you will act out against your highest nature (rajas). It’s a toxic cycle.
We try to convince ourselves that it is either our lover/partner who is the problem or that we are the problem. And we are unable to extricate ourselves from the web of self-deceit. But it is actually rajas and tamas that are the problem, though rajas and tamas are not actually a problem because they are just impersonal energies which can also be very helpful. Rajas and tamas are only a problem when they dominate the mind, are unconscious, and we are complicit and identified with them.
Rajas, the projecting power, puts things ‘out there’. It blames because it projects what we are feeling onto others. Tamas is the opposite power, it causes us to deny what’s going on. When projection (rajas) is unconscious and we cannot understand it (tamas), we punish ourselves because we do not love ourselves properly. If we did, we would know what true love is and not try to find it in a relationship with someone else, particularly with a person who is completely confused about their real nature and abuses us. If we love ourselves properly, we will have good discrimination and choose a partner who is worthy. i.e. a psychologically healthy person with decent values who is committed to the happiness of the relationship. If we love and respect ourselves, we will never remain in an abusive relationship for any reason. There is never any justification for abuse of any kind—it is simply taboo in a dharmic relationship consisting of two self-respecting people. The happiest relationships are those where both parties put the needs of the other above their own.
But it is not always a simple matter to get free of our deeply buried and tenacious tendencies. Just as fire is hidden by smoke, a mirror is covered by dust and a fetus is hidden in the womb, some fears/desires are like smoke, they blow away with the first winds of clarity (sattva). Others are more difficult to remove, like dust on a mirror. One needs to get out some cleanser and a rag and apply elbow grease before they yield. This is ‘repeated practice and objectivity.’ We call it the practice of Self-knowledge. The third kind is so deep within that it needs to work out naturally in the course of our life, just as a fetus needs to come out naturally on its own. We cannot reach inside the womb and pull it out before the time is ripe or it will not survive.
The ‘therapeutic’ branch of Vedanta is called yoga and it is about negating desires and fears (likes and dislikes) that disturb the mind, particularly rajas and tamas. It is ‘scientific’ in that it is not ego-based. The need for love from another is hardwired in most of us. If the desire for a relationship cannot be negated, the only option is to go into it fully. In such cases, we will have to live out the karma. Forget about freedom and don’t judge yourself for wanting it, just embrace it; leave yourself open to what comes your way. If you find must stay in this situation you should not beat yourself up because you are needy or needier than your mate.
Of course your brother would advise you to stay. He is a samsari, a materialist, and also does not know what love is because he had the same parental conditioning you did, hence his string of unhappy relationships. Whether you stay or leave is not the actual issue. The real issue cannot be overstated because it is at the heart of all our relationship problems—the real reason is the desire for love outside ourselves, which is really a desire for wholeness i.e. self-love masquerading as a desire for a relationship. If we must work out a deep desire like this, we cannot suppress it or pretend we don’t have it. Or worse, try to declare our relationship ‘spiritual’ and part of our growth, a common tendency is the ‘spiritual’ world. That will only work when you are free of the need for a relationship. There are very few people who are free.
Before you can really heal the love-starved part of yourself, you must admit your helplessness and surrender, not to your partner, to a teacher or anyone else, but to God, or the Field. Surrender to God is a lot more than just knowing there is God. God appears as the Field of Existence, an intelligently designed matrix of physical, psychological and spiritual laws. Furthermore, you need to know that it is not the person that surrenders. We surrender the person. But we cannot surrender the person if we think we are the person. If we are not ready for that kind of surrender, we leave the power over our lives in the hands of the damaged child within, and we will seek external solutions, partners and teachers to validate that identity, and, continue suffering. We act to try to fix the situation, instead of fixing our thinking behind it.
Justifying abusive relationships is a psychological problem, not a spiritual problem. This does not mean, however, that there is not a viable spiritual solution that may transform the relationship in some cases. That is to do the relationship as karma yoga. In this way the relationship can become a spiritual practice that prepares you either for freedom from the abuser and the needy person you think you are or transforms the relationship itself. But we cannot do a relationship as karma yoga unless we understand what karma yoga is, what dharma is and what liberation is. Most importantly, we cannot use karma yoga as an excuse to try to ‘save’ or remain in adharmic situations that harm us or the other person because it will not work. If this is the case and there is no other solution, the dharmic thing is to leave.
You are not to blame for your conditioning; it is just what it is: subconscious. Until it isn’t anymore, that is. If you are going to remain in an emotionally abusive relationship, or even in an emotionally dead one, do it with your eyes open and tell yourself the truth: you don’t love and respect yourself enough to find love with someone who loves and respects themselves. Hopefully, the time will come when you have had enough of abuse and have developed sufficient mind-objectivity to make the right decision for you. Whether you stay or leave, preferably, the one you find love with is yourself.
The choice is yours, Sarah. If you think you are protecting your children by staying in an unhappy marriage, think again. Children are very resilient, and they do not expect parents to be perfect. But they do need consistency, stability, and above all, mature honesty. To grow up in an emotionally unhealthy environment such as yours dooms them to repeat the patterns both you and your husband have lived out. Find the courage to be honest with them and explain to them what you need to do, that it might be hard, but it will be better all round. If you find that this situation is turning you into an abusive parent, you already have your answer as to what you must do. If you truly are committed to self-inquiry, and you are practicing karma yoga, then take the right actions for you, consecrate all your actions to Isvara, God, or the Field of Existence, however you see it. Trust that God is asking you to act appropriately in this situation, which is to do what it takes to be true to the teachings and to yourself, first and foremost. Whatever results come from the Field will be what you need to face, even if they are hard. Which they may well be.
I was in a very unhappy marriage for almost as long as yours, with one child, who was seven when my marriage ended for good. It took a lot of courage to leave because it created a lot of negative karma with many people in my life, but I have never regretted it. And though it caused suffering for my daughter, today she is so grateful. I handled everything by giving her the credit she deserved, which was to treat her as a person, not just a child. I was transparent with her and trusted that on a deep level, she understood and could trust her own feelings and knowledge. I too left a wealthy man without asking for a cent, and though it was a case of honor on my part, it also made life very hard. If you leave your husband, he should contribute towards the financial burden of raising your kids and help you to get on your feet.
I hope you find a way to live life as you we are all meant to live it, without the pain, regret, and suffering that comes with expecting the world to give us what we need. Or to expect the world by some miracle to fix us. It won’t happen. Trust yourself, you are beautiful, intelligent and capable. Freedom from limitation is your God-given right.
PS: have you read my book The Yoga of Relationships? I recommend you do.
Much love
Sundari