Day 58: Living Life in Service of Guilt

This blog-post is a continuation of:
Day 55: Today I Broke Up with my Ex
Day 56: Letting Go of an Old Flame
Day 57: Doubting Myself after a Decision

An additional point opened up in relation to why I had still a commitment living with myself of one day going back to an ex-boyfriend. Simply put: I believed I owed it to him.

As I described, our 'relationship' was turbulent and was an emotional rollercoaster. So - in many ways it was a very painful experience, both for myself as for him. It was so turbulent because from the beginning I had this certainty that the relationship would never work, because we were just too different and barely agreed on anything. Yet, the feelings and attraction were very strong and I just really wanted to live out a love-drama of TV-soup-kalibre. So, I kept on trying to convince myself that it maybe could work, trying to focus on the few things that we did agree on/that we did have in common - and in the meantime strolling him along, while he had a different outlook on the relationship, where he appeared quite certain of thinking that this was 'it'. And this underlying point of certainty that this relationship is not really what I want caused us to keep splitting up, while the attraction/feelings always brought us back together - which is what caused most of the emotional hurting.

And on some level I was aware of this, yet I kept continuing in the same cycle. And the guilt originating from this deliberateness is what strengthened the promise within myself to eventually go back to him - to try to make up for the pain that I caused during our on-and-off relationship period.

If I had not found Desteni and started my process and journey to life, I can see it very likely that I would have attempted to fulfill my promise and try to make it so I'd end up with him - trying to pay for my sins of the past by binding myself to him. It is quite a perturbing and shocking realisation for me that I would be willing to live my life in service of guilt - where I feel I have to 'pay my dues' - where, in essence, I give up myself entirely, allowing my life to end - to try to fulfill someone else's. And if I had done this and the certainty of knowing that this relationship is not what I wanted, I would have probably suppressed it and despite myself, forced myself to remain in the relationship - banning my self-honesty and my integrity to the deepest corner of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stroll myself and J along in the illusion that maybe someday the relationship will work-out by trying to focus on the points that we agreed on/had in common and ignoring a strong

sense of certainty within myself that this relationship could never work, because we were too different and we wanted different things in life - yet, because my feelings/attraction to him were so strong as well as my desire to live out a rollercoaster love-drama, I did not make a clear decision within myself to stand by my self-honesty and not by fleeting/changing emotions and feelings, although I knew that this was the self-honest thing to do, both for myself as for J.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to keep feeding J's idea/perception/belief that maybe we were 'meant to be together' by always coming back to him, while I, in all self-honesty, did not have the intention to stay with him and spend the rest of my life with him - and within that point, I knew that the relationship was not valid and my attempts to try and make it work were not valid and that the suffering that sprung from this back-and-forth shifting was unnecessary and couldn't be justified.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to accept myself as self-certainty, but rather trust attraction, desire, feelings and the idea of eternal/true love.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compromise both myself and J through not trusting myself - but thinking/believing that if I act in the same way as characters in movies do - by simply following 'their heart'/the feeling of love - I would eventually get a happy ending.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe what is portrayed in movies, that if one simply follows one's heart, that then one will be happy, make the right decisions, have no regrets in life and fulfil oneself - and thus, rather trust movies than trusting myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to base my life-decisions on what movies/TV have taught me in terms of how I should live my life and what the best way is to true and complete happiness.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue the same cycle, always conning myself in the same points, even though I was aware that my indecision and my  self-manipulation was causing the pain within myself as well as J - and thus, knowing that if I simply put an end to the relationship and communicate clearly that this will never happen or work, that I could have saved myself and him a lot of unnecessary hurt.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold on to the guilt of knowing that I was deliberate in not doing what I saw had to be done, but rather follow my fears, desires and feelings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that the only way I could make the guilt go away is if I try to make it up to him, try to stop his pain once and for all by giving him what he wants - a long-standing relationship - and thus, I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that even within the decision to try to make things up to J, I am still doing it from a starting point of self-interest, because all I really want is for my guilt to go away.

To be continued.

Related articles

• Day 56: Doubting Myself after a Decision
• Day 85: Manipulation Character Self Forgiveness Statements
• Day 92: Guilt character Self-Commitment Statements
• Day 90: Guilt character Self Forgiveness Statements
• Day 96: Morality Character Self-Forgiveness statements