I have a person in my life who I have chosen to believe is the perfect person for me. We have known each other for over 20 years, we live over 24 hours by plane away and both have young children. He is still married. We are still in contact and when we do see each other there is a lot of chemistry, most of our friends believe we are soul mates and think one day we will get out shit together and get together.
This month I have been exploring my thoughts and feelings for him. Dominate feelings from my models have turned out to all be negative (which was an eye opener), they are:
F: Hopeful, fear, rejection, uncertain, shame, protective, vulnerable.
Thoughts I have discovered include:
1. In a perfect world we would be together
2. I shouldn’t feel this way for him because he is married
3. I don’t want him to know that l love him (how I feel)
4. If he knew I love him he would reject me (this one is not supported with any data, in fact the evidence would suggest otherwise)
5. I don’t know how he feels, if he feels the same way
The third thought has been one I have been acting out on for years, and discovering it was a massive eye opener for me. As whilst I love the idea we are meant to be, I have been actively sabotaging this (even before he was married) due to the follow up thought (4).
Through models I am seeing that I am rejecting myself ahead of time, whilst living in a fantasy world. The thing that I am struggling with is what now?
The fact that he is married and with children has led me to hold a lot of shame about my feelings for him and after a session with Rachel, she highlighted this and so have since recognised I do not need to feel shame about my feelings for him.
I feel like I should tell him how I feel, but then think how can I do this if he is married, especially if I am wishing that it leads him to come to me. Writing this I hear the thought ‘well he is extremely unhappy in marriage anyway.’ But then I think shouldn’t I just wait.
I have run the below 2 models for intentional, but they don’t really seem right. I want my result to be we are together, but know that I cant influence his behaviour. So I don’t know how to use the model to get a result I am looking for. Or rather how to identify a result I would like that would not include changing the circumstance.
T: My feelings for X are not wrong
F: Accepting
A: Accept feeling
R: I accept myself
T: I love X and if he doesn’t that is ok
F: Vulnerable
A: Tell X how I feel
R: I respect my feelings (?)
Thank you.
