Did I plan all this difficulty?
QUESTION: Masters! My first husband left me 17 yrs ago. As a result of that I had depression and 3 yrs of therapy. After divorce followed a 10 years period of very poor relationships (one man turned out to be an alcoholic, one mentally ill, one died etc.) Those years were so hard, I even lost my ability to work as a teacher. I survived all those experiences and now I`m married (7 yrs) to a loving man and everything is ok in my lovelife. BUT: I`m sorrowful, because I feel, me and my first husband should have been together for a lifetime… Did my soul really plan all those experiences for me? Or what went wrong? ~Jane, Finland
ANSWER: Nothing went wrong in your life. You wanted to experience the lesson of discernment, and the consecutive marriages gave you plenty of choices. Discernment is examining all aspects of a situation – in this case romantic relationships and living with someone – and using freedom of choice to benefit your learning by the choices you make.
Your first marriage included a lot of imaginings that it was, or should be, perfect. You so desperately wanted to be a wife and companion that you overlooked the negativity that pervaded the union. You were so intent on maintaining the marriage in accordance with your dreamed situation that your husband could not stand your being out of touch with reality and left to find someone who would communicate with him.
As people learn about themselves and go through the lessons of life, they frequently change so much that they cannot remain with the first person they wed. You reexamined your life during the therapy and believe things would be different if you rejoined your first husband. You are still in that perfectly imagined dream world, still believing that everything would be as you want instead of as it is. That would not happen.
Stop trying to live in the past, accept the wonderful man you have now, and look to the present and the future you can make together. Look around you, see how blessed you are, and drop all this about a perfect, though imaginary, fantasy love life.