Status Updates From How to Be an Adult in Relat...

It hurts to be so afraid that we are always on guard and yet always wounded. It's painful to have to hold our reins tightly. It is stressful to constantly try to control others. It hurts to face the conditions of existence without the promise of an exemption from them.

When I feel
Fear
Love
Attached
Entitled

I choose instead to
Let go
Controlling
Grant freedom
See myself as equal

It is understandable that vulnerability is scary. After all, it involves not only showing our wounds, our need for others, our limita-tions. It also requires entrusting all those into the hands of another.

Our boundaries protect our commitment and ourselves. A person without personal boundaries make her commitment to the maintenance of the partnership whether or not it is working. With clear boundaries, on the other hand, we see when a relationship is not working and invite our partner to work on it with us. If he agrees and joins us, we are in both feet. If he declines, we move on with grief and also without blame.

May my assisting forces (angels, bodhisattvas, etc.) be with me as I face my fear, live through it, and let it go. May all those I love and all those I find difficult face their fears and be free of them. I join in the loving intent of the universe. The universe cradles all of us already and always.— pt 2

Here are affirmations that may help: I let myself feel this fear.
I handle it now by holding it and letting it pass. I am holding both my fear and my power in one embrace. As I hold this way, I feel more compassion for others. — pt 1

How do I avoid closeness with those I love? (Ask them for help in answering this ques-tion.) How does my style resemble that of my parents and the ways they related to me or one another during my childhood? Can I say this to my partner: "If you give me space, you see my love because I relax and give it on my own time and in my own way. Otherwise, the best you get is my acting dutifully and not from my heart"?

The rambling is real.

We men have been taught to concentrate on being brave and strong. But the fear that gets in the way of our being strong doesn't
matter as much as the fear that gets in the way of loving, because love
is the most precious strength a man can have. May we care about
becoming loving more than anything else in life.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Sometimes we act upset, and it is not the shadow or ego or even early material. Upset sometimes means grieved. We are sad because something has not gone our way or something or someone has hurt or disappointed us. Grief is a reaction we often fail to recognize, admit, or feel. We prefer to use anger to cover it up.

Ask yourself: Does he upset me because I am projecting my shadow onto him and seeing the worst of myself in him? AmI reacting this way because my entitled ego is outraged? Am I having all these feelings because something from my early life is being resurrected?