Bolt holes

For someone who is struggling

People often wonder about the co-habiting or working on it thing in the group and for years we have tried to explain that seeing someone regularly, working towards full time and actually living together are completely different states. They aren't better, but they are different. The trouble is until the person has done it they never believe you.

See if you have a home to run back to, one that is your space with your things in it the way you like them, you have an emotional out. When things get tough, when you rub each other raw, when you are both sick, angry, upset or hateful, tucked away in your subconscious is the knowledge that you can go home. It is this comparative state of nirvana just waiting for you to run back to.

When you actually live with someone you do not have that out. You are left to duke it out in the situation, with a person whom you are not in an equal relationship with. There is no out, no back door, no safe place. There is just you and them. And no matter how much you love, care for or think they are the one for you it isn't always pretty.

People call it an adjustment phase and really it doesn't do that impending feeling of no return justice. It feels like the door is slamming shut behind you and your first, and frankly sensible, response is to fight it... quietly or hard depending on your nature. It is the time when you have to decide if you are going to run or stay, and it is the time when you find if indeed you actually can. It is in some ways the first acid test of internal enslavement.

See if you find you can't leave then you have to start letting go. You have to let go of the emotional outs, the back doors, your perceptions of how it was meant to be, your preconceived notions of fair and right... all of that has to go. And the only one who can do that is you. It is a choice and a damned hard one because you have to trust that you have made the right choice for you.

And while one would love to say that it gets easier... it doesn't. That lack of "faith" will raise its ugly little head up at every opportunity. It's like playing whack-a-mole on the board of life. The thing is though if you have achieved IE, you don't have a choice to leave so you have to find a way to deal with it or it will tear you apart.