Being lied to
QUESTION: Masters, I’m 40 years old, and I have a daughter from the first marriage. After 3 years of relationship with a lovely boyfriend, we decided to live together. I always told him that I want to have more kids, another son is from a lovely marriage. Than he tells me that he’s seropositive. We always had sex with condoms and I’m not sick, although it’s hard to stay with someone that has omitted the truth for something so serious during 3 years. As I love him, I decided to stay together, but he became alcoholic with depression, destroying himself, our relationship and our family. He doesn’t believe in God or spirituality. I really believe that love can heal everything, but he made me sad and frightened. I left him. I think that it was the right thing to do, but why am I so sad, and my life seems so empty of love and peace? Why it’s so hard to get on with my life? ~Adriana, Brazil
ANSWER: Do you devalue yourself so much that you think it is all right for this man to lie to you about an issue that is important to you? Plus, even with condoms, there is the possibility of his conveying his seropositive condition to you, potentially endangering your life. In addition to health issues, he is now alcoholic, depressed, and destructive. Why did you still remain with him? What is there to love? Leaving him was the only sensible thing to do.
He had power over you because you allowed him to. You are the type of person who believes a man is necessary for a woman to have a normal life. You have always been in dependent relationships where you relied on the decisions of the man. You need to bring a sharing partner to your life. To do that, you have to love and value yourself. You are as important, powerful, and worthy as any man who has ever existed.
Ask yourself: Do you love yourself? Do you love everything about yourself? If you are living the spiritual life you claim, you will know the difference between loving and liking. Loving comes from making the most of this lifetime to learn the chosen lessons, and knowing that most can only be learned through negativity; understanding the way not to do something allows you to learn how to do it.
Liking is judging yourself against the way others look, think, and act. Spirituality is letting go of judgment and the beliefs of others to live life as it feels best for you—how it resonates with you. It is possible to love everything about yourself yet not like all the things you are doing right now such as permitting others to take advantage of you. Just still love the fact you can make the decision to have it occur.