And if my life had remained sexless for the past 25 years after my first marriage, I would have known why...it would have been on my own terms and my own choice, not necessarily someone else's.
... and that is the point about living DELIBERATELY. Living authentically. Sincerely honouring your own best interests, rather than pinning your life to an external factor (partner/marriage, job etc).
You can live authentically in relationships, but only if that relationship is made, built and maintained keeping your own highest good as a priority all the time.
The difficulty with this is that in order to be able to really consider something as esoteric and nebulous as ‘my-highest-good’ in the context of a relationship - both partners need to be at the same stage of emotional maturity. Not many people are.
Imagine the endofTEGHsexlifetalk 12 years ago if you were both sufficiently emotionally mature to discuss it really honestly in terms of your ultimate higher good and your aspirations for your relationship.
Perhaps you would have agreed, in the interest of your love for each other and the value you placed on the relationship, to compromise. If you were both emotionally mature enough you perhaps could have come to a compromise that was sympathetic to your wife’s medical conditions, but still had intimacy that satisfied you. (I still can’t really believe that wasn’t something she was prepared/wanted to do???)
Instead, rather than go to the inconvenience and, let’s face it pain, of leaving the marriage you made the decision to compromise all … your wife compromised not a bit. With the benefit of hindsight, if you had been as emotionally mature as you are now, was your decision to stay really for your “highest-good”? Or was it because you are a good, kind man and you made a decision based on a set of circumstances including your wife’s health, other family stuff etc. Sometimes the right decisions are not the popular ones. You know that.
Always remember TEGH – you are not responsible for anyone else’s happiness. You are however responsible for yours.
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
