Looking for respect

QUESTION: Masters, what is the life lesson in feeling intuitively close to someone who is with someone else? This isn’t the kind of experience I would have sought. I have enough already to learn out of a spouse with personality disorder and two young children. I seek companionship and respect and ask you if you can see that as a life lesson I might have planned. It was heartbreaking to let go, but I fear I am getting better with accepting disappointments. I move on, and I surely love and respect myself tremendously. What is the best way to have a beautiful love lesson and experience?   ~IP, India

ANSWER: You have convinced yourself that the only thing that will make you feel good in this lifetime is a relationship with someone who will respect and comfort you. You set expectations for situations that come to you and are disappointed when they don’t work out the way you had planned. That is a need to control people and things.

The disappointments will continue to appear in your life if you continue trying to direct things. When you lust after a person who is unavailable, you are saying that person should come to you and the person’s partner should disappear. You are attempting to control two people. Control is an illusion and will work only with the consent of those being controlled.

When you say you love and respect yourself tremendously, you are lying to yourself. Souls can be disappointed only when they set themselves up for a failure. If you loved yourself, you would have enough love and respect for yourself to satisfy your needs while you work through those lessons you are already aware of—your spouse and children.

You imply by your desire to find companionship that you share nothing with your children and that they do not respect and love you. Is that true? And why is that? Will you not let them share the need for love you have because you need adult interaction? What about them? They need the opportunity to have companionship and respect, too.