Because few are able to practice the art of being in a relationship, fewer still can practice the art of leaving a relationship. Practiced well, the art is to leave without a trace. No angst, no sentimentality, no resentment, no revenge, no well-wishing to cover non-well-wishing, no hope, no under-the-radar communication. Not for them, not for how we look, not to avoid pain, not to practice detachment, not to practice non-attachment. Not to try to make them feel any way.
We leave because the relationship is over. We leave because the next stroke will be less sensational than the last. We leave because we would be over-stroking were we to stay. We leave because it is the honest thing to do. We leave to honor what has been. We leave because we have the courage to do so.
We leave because we have fidelity to desire and desire has moved forward and to stay behind would be to stay where power no longer remains, where we are on the fear side of desire. And we take nothing with us when we go: no hostages, no rainchecks, no rights, no accounting.
But we do not leave a moment before it is over.
This is challenging because the only way to leave without a trace is to have lived, expressed, shown up, and spent everything we had while in the relationship. Whatever was withheld is what holds us back. Whatever love was not expressed is what expresses now as grip, resentment, desire for vengeance, hope for the future.
The part of us that holds on during the phase transition of a relationship is the part that was stingy during the relationship. When we love fully, we leave fully. We don't leave with indifference because indifference has a slightly negative charge. We leave with the whole of ourselves intact and the whole of ourselves seated in the new life of this moment.
But the two go hand-in-hand. Withholding during equals being gripped after.
Loving fully means leaving fully. It does not mean that if malice is sent our way from the other, we block or do not feel it. It means we feel it and do not use it as a reason to re-engage.
We have a fear that if we spend everything in a relationship we will have nothing should it end. The tumescent mind is set on acquisition as the solution. It is so terrified of losing what it has, that it lives among its acquisitions without ever really having them.
To have a relationship is to have a process. We often say that a relationship is work. If it is any kind of work other than an artistic endeavor, it is not a relationship. Instead, it is like work we do for money. We have made relationship into an object that we work on in order to earn and fill our house with it. We can create a relationship that is art if it is a labor of love where in offering we discover our essence, then let go of what is not essence.
If we offer ourselves in this way, that is what we leave with. Rather than leaving empty-handed, we leave with hands that can craft beauty with greater skill. And yet, as with all art, there is a time when the piece is done. One more stroke and it will be less beautiful. One more stroke and it will be muddied and ruined.
The key is to ask ourselves, Why? Why are we here? Is it because there is no place on the planet we would prefer to be? Nothing we would rather do? No place where we could grow more? Or is it a legacy relationship—one of duty, one of proving we can hang in there, one of being used as a shelter or refuge from life?
The rational mind prizes life over death, staying over leaving. But it does this not to honor life, but because it fears death. We remain without fully being where we are and without listening when life tells us we should go. As we stay, we build resentment toward the very person we claim we are staying for. When life makes staying so untenable that we must go, we take all we had held back so we could be a person who could stay, turn it around, and direct it as an attack on the person we had just prior so desperately wanted to keep.
More than anything, the rational mind fears admitting it has been consumed, possessed, moved, and impacted. To the extent that the rational mind is driving a relationship, being possessed by love will look like a loss and a failure that must be concealed. Yet we are the losers, because real and true love is precisely the opportunity to lose everything.
To not admit we have been consumed or possessed—while it may save face in the world of the rational mind—leaves us locked in a tormenting conflict of our pride's attempt to look aloof, disaffected, and above it all. There is a tremendous amount of energy employed to keep the vehicle of this force away—bridges we must burn, hurt we must inflict, armor we must wear—all to avoid a gift sent from beyond.
It's not the person, but the force coming through them that can finally bring us to our knees in humility so we can begin to receive what we previously relied on manipulation to get. It is sent to pull us out of the cycle of constantly orchestrating to get what we want, only we frequently discover that when it arrives we cannot receive it; instead, we reject it, we make it go away.
We ask ourselves, how many times have we schemed and tricked and demanded we get what we want only to have it arrive and be utterly unable to receive it? Perhaps we feel suffocated or threatened by it, and then, in a state of exhaustion, we start the cycle of getting rid of it all over again. We employ the same under-the-table scheming to get the other person to leave, until finally they do, and then we start the cycle of regret and resentment.
We begin gripping desperately to promises they made or things they said as evidence that we are right and they are wrong to leave, although we did everything in our power to get them to go. Then we start again, with the intention of either getting them back or seeking a new target.
We may do this in a lifelong relationship, never touching down into actually having a relationship because to actually have it, is to let go. Or, we may find ourselves in the same cycle in relationship after relationship. It makes no difference whatsoever the form of the relationship we are in, the question is, Are we free?
Freedom is the ability to enter, to truly enter. To truly enter is to let ourselves be had.
And then to be taken. To be taken is to relinquish all—to be changed and shaped and formed by this connection. We throw everything in, knowing that what remains is true and what goes was only unnecessary baggage. We let ourselves be unalterably changed by the experience and know that this change is what we entered the crucible for.
Then we get out. Or, we change the stroke when this one no longer has sensation. From here, we open again to whatever we may be called for in this new cycle.
It is our choice. We scheme to get, and once we do, are unable to receive, so we regret, grip, and punish. Then we start the cycle again. Or, we open to be taken, get drawn in, give everything, feel the gift of spaciousness and freedom this relationship is, and get out when the space starts closing in.
Then we open again and see what draws us in next. It may be that same person, it may be another, it may be solitude. Whatever and whomever it is, it is always Eros, it is always spacious and free.
Whatever we do, we start by being kind. Being kind is being honest. And being honest is making the admission that we are taken by this force, because in truth we all are. It may be that we make the admission and the door is closed. We are not making it to enter, we are making it to practice admitting we are human and flesh and not above it all, that we are moved and affected.
Our desire is to be vulnerable and open even if it hurts. It's better than being hard, cold, removed, and eternally calculating. And the truth is, it is one or the other. We are either too gripped by the cowardice of pride to admit it or we have the nobility of heart to recognize that what we love we own and this is the way we gain the wealth we are looking for.
This is how we gain the world.
