The Rory Post I Promised...About the Different Outcomes In Your Life Showing Up In Your Transits.

PRESENT...An Astrology Post.

So, here's how I discovered this. I'm walking through Rory's transits for the next six months, and I see a lot of what I expect given mine and Chi's, and also given the fact that she is still in the position I saw her getting promoted to in her transits this time last year. 

There's something about a sudden freedom from a restriction of some sort...that she may experience the arrival of a person into her life who's going to teach her something...that she's experiencing a time of good social relations with other people...more about confronting inhibitions and restrictions placed upon her by herself and other people...a need to break away from an established order...that she's inappropriately idealizing important relationships in her life...more about receiving a spiritual teacher or guide figure...the need to work very hard to accomplish a task. All of which I expected to see, given what I see in my transits and Chi's over the next two years.

And then...right there in the middle of this mostly ominous stuff...here I find a find a great big ol' Saturn trine Venus. Right smack dab in the middle of what is at great risk of becoming Chi's affair year.

(Some background: I recognized the Saturn trine Venus right away because it was part of the reason I so badly misjudged what was going to happen with Chi and me three years ago. I had this, which often augurs the advent of a very successful and happy relationship, plus a number of other very pleasant transits that promised the same. And, at the same time, I saw several that made me blink and think, Huh? That sounds like he's with Rory! I didn't know what to think. But, Chi asked me to trust him, and I loved him and promised to, and all three therapists believed the marriage was likely to end. So, I had three pieces of evidence leading me to believe the wrong thing. I've wondered about that for three years. What were both sets of transits doing there?)

Now, when I've heard from Chi again right when Alice Portman, several important transits, and my astrology teacher saw that I would, and in the middle of a shitpile of transits suggesting we end up in a real affair...Rory has a Saturn trine Venus.

WTF? Why is that there? What am I supposed to make of that?

I pondered this for several days, and suddenly it all made sense.

Remember several posts back, when I remarked that around two years ago Rory had all these transits telling her it was a good time to dig into her childhood problems and do some very deep and cutting psychological work? That it was a very good time to straighten out some problems that were keeping her from living the way she really wanted to?

She had them, I saw them then, and I knew he was in therapy and they were in marriage counseling. Naturally, I thought they were getting top-notch help (see Avoid the Below-Average Therapist), and I assumed they would both work hard and make real progress. She had these good work transits when she needed them. I assumed she would make good use of them. Therefore, I expected they'd save their marriage (as most marrieds in this situation eventually do). I'd lose Chi forever, and I was correspondingly depressed.

Then I heard from Chi again, and I heard what had actually happened.

Rory did NOT make good use of those transits. Here where she could have entered individual therapy herself, made progress herself, and saved her marriage...she elected not to make use of this opportunity.

Now it hits me--if she had, this is where the marriage would have started to work out! This is where things should be getting easier, and where they'd start to be happier and recommitted to one another on a healthier and more honest basis.  If that had happened, she'd be living that Saturn trine Venus in her marriage right about now!


But she didn't...and I'm living all the UNhappy ones instead. The ones that are talking about the need for deep psychological work and introspection, and the need for me to stay out of power and control. The ones coming up in the next few months that are calling me a control freak and telling Rory she's about to receive a spiritual teacher in the form of an enemy whose controlling nature is going to wreak havoc in her life.

THERE REALLY ARE TWO TIMELINES DEPICTED IN HERE FOR EACH PERSON.

Holy toledo!!!

The reason this is of extreme importance in the coming eighteen months or so:

ALL of those good psychological work transits Rory just finished with, are now coming up in Chi's chart.

Now he's getting them! HE now has the opportunity to work out unresolved childhood issues that Rory just had and elected not to pursue.

And I know, from reading ahead in his transits and mine--confirmed by everything I know about codependency and enmeshment in relationships--what happens if he does not do the work, and I've already detailed it before in this blog. He stays hideously codependent, flip-flops between two women for some FIVE YEARS (tearing the living shit out of everyone involved), as I detailed in The Missing Piece One and Two. He finally leaves the marriage, but his next relationship (unfortunately reflected in my transits) is unhealthy. He begins codependent behavior almost immediately, and in a few short years finds that, once again, he's agreed to things in the relationship that he doesn't really like, and once again is afraid to speak up for himself.

Then crisis hits the relationship. His relationship partner has something going on in her career that takes her eyes off the relationship for a time. Chi, being emotionally fused and still codependent, goes into a tailspin. "I KNEW I wasn't lovable!" He finds someone else and has another affair, and the relationship is never the same, and ends HORRIBLY about ten years later, when we're 71 and 81.

IF you follow his leg of bad transits.

In actuality, starting right about now and picking up steam after 2019, there's a good leg of transits, showing a person who uses the opportunity coming up in the work transits this year I've just told you about. This leg shows a person who works hard and makes a good recovery, and whose life goes much, much better from then on.

Now, what makes the difference between Bad Leg One, and Good Leg Two? In Bad Leg One, why doesn't Chi take advantage of those good work transits, dig in, do the work required, and get the fuck well??
 
Because he's having an affair with me instead.

Because I didn't put all this together, didn't get over my childish need for emotional fusion with someone else (see the post that's coming next week for details), and didn't hold off, hold his feet to the fire, and absolutely refuse to be with him if he doesn't take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to free himself of codependency and low self worth, work his little ass off, and HEAL.

Because I was afraid I'd lose him if I did that, and decided to have the affair and see if I could tempt him away from Rory.

I wasn't farsighted enough to see that if I did that, all I'd get was a very sick, STUCK codependent who would turn around and hurt me the way he does himself (and, eventually, everyone else.) Just like my mother. Just like Jane. I didn't fucking learn anything, and turned around and picked yet another one...when I could have put my foot down, and maybe he'd have worked and gotten well!

And, whaddya know?? Look at MY transits right now!

Another split!

Out of six big transits going over the next six months:

One talks about being noticed in a career.

One talks about having big ideas tempered with common sense, and knowing what I can and can't do.

Here's Robert Hand writing about the third one on the good leg:

Pluto trine Pluto: Up to you 

Beginning of February 2018 until mid-December 2019: This is a period of stability, in which very deep and perseverant energies lend themselves to you. Whether you make use of them or not is completely up to you. However, if you do decide to use them, there will be potential for inner growth. From this position you can gain deep insights into the functioning of your psyche which might have shocked you at other times. This is a time for simplification and for finding out what is really meaningful to you. It is a period when you are not only able to, but should, make changes. It is a time when you are able to eliminate the old and outworn elements of your life with relative ease because there will be little in the way. It may even seem so easy that you are not aware of its being an issue, but you should not rest on your laurels. Take an inventory of your life, your friendships, your possessions and other attachments and involvements. See which of these support you and at the minimum allow you to grow. These should be preserved. But do not struggle to preserve anything that does not serve you, especially if it seems to want to pass away. This is most important, because whatever you do not eliminate from your life now that does not serve you could become a cause of difficulty during more stressful times that may come along later.
 

And the last three, the bad leg, is talking about a spiritual teacher that will come into my life, who doesn't look like a spiritual teacher, and a transient, bad relationship that's very challenging and likely to end fairly soon. Right through the middle of 2020, which is when Rory's transits sound like Chi is back, and mine sound like I've been very painfully dumped, and more brokenhearted than I've ever been.

(And considering the last four years I've spent, that's really saying something.)

Now: Astrologers typically read only two or three years of transits at a time. If I had done that, I would never have been able to make sense out of all of this. To make sense out of all of this, I needed all three charts, and I needed to look at ALL the transits over a period of some twenty-five years!

But now that I have, look what I've learned!

And, I hate to point this out, but everything in everyone's bad transit legs has happened so far, right on schedule, from 2014 up until October of last year.

Will it happen again?

Stay tuned...

Yep. I think there really is something to the idea of doing a Whole Life Progression. There really is. 

Years ago, when I didn't know crap about astrology, and used to scrimp and save to buy one yearly transit report off astro.com at a time, I used to notice that half my transits always sounded lovely and half sounded bad. That I always lived the bad ones, and never the good ones. It got to where, if I saw a transit that sounded wonderful, I knew that one wouldn't happen. And I always wondered why.

It happens because we're unconscious, we're fucking SLEEPWALKERS, and we don't fucking LEARN. A classmate said it in the last class I took: "Astrology is only predictive when we don't learn anything. Astrology is only predictive because people do the same things over and over."

After this, you can't tell me astrology is bunk, or that it's not useful!

How I Used Astrology To Figure Out My Relationship

PAST


Note: Sorry if this post seems redundant. YourTango has a large astrology section, and this post is sort of an "audition piece" for them.

I promised y'all a Rory post--about seeing the outcomes of major decisions as two different timelines in your horoscope transits. That one IS coming...next week.

Three years ago, I found myself unceremoniously dumped.

My heart was shattered, lacerated, ripped into a million pieces. I didn’t think I’d live. Worse, I didn’t want to.

The person in question was married; however, he’d moved out, consulted a divorce lawyer, and told me the marriage was over. From what he told me about the way she was behaving, and had behaved for the past twenty years, I could see why. For the past four months, he’d described an emotionally cold and distant marriage, with a woman who alternately bossed and belittled him. It was clear why he’d taken this long to finally move out: he was darling, but he was an adult child of an alcoholic, and I knew everything that meant. (See my article on YourTango, 13 Signs You’re An Adult Child Of An Alcoholic, for more information.)

It was one of those situations where you just know you’re going to be happy together, just like when I got together with my late husband. And then … and then …

*POOF!* He was gone.

Most of us are familiar with those horrible feelings of desperation, those times we’d do anything, and I mean anything, to get our old love back. This is when the desperate turn to astrology.

I didn’t know a thing about astrology. I had surfed the free parts of astro.com, and I had even bought some of their Liz Greene yearly transit reports on occasion. But I had no idea what those little symbols scribbled in the margins meant, or how on earth Saturn could “trine” Jupiter, much less how Pluto could ever “trine” itself! And I’d never bought more than one at a time, because they aren’t exactly cheap, and my money had always been tight.

But now, in the midst of this huge personal crisis, I was at least doing better at work. With that came the ability to buy more than one yearly transit report at a time, and for multiple people. I started snooping. Everything I knew about me, him, her, and their marriage told me it wouldn’t last. He’d have to come back to me; I just knew it. 

Thus began the education of this budding astrologer, courtesy of astro.com.

For those who are as bewildered now as I was then, “transits” refer to where the planets in the heavens are now, in relation to where they were at the moment of your birth. Every time a planet makes an exact angle with the position it or another planet occupied at the moment of your birth, it reflects a mood, a feeling, a quality of time in your life. A crack professional astrologer who reads literally thousands of charts a year notices repeating themes, and will be able to tell you, “Typically when I see this aspect come up in someone’s transits, these kinds of events are what’s been happening in these people’s lives.” When you’re consulting a professional astrologer, or you’re buying a computerized transit report, this is what you’re paying for.

I bought transit reports for myself, him, and his wife for the next few years, buying dates three years apart to save money, as I’d noted that many of the transits spanned over one year and they overlapped one another. I began to read. The first thing I noticed was that everything that appeared in one chart reflected in the other two. That gave me the creeps. Then, as I read on … it happened! Reflected in all three charts was his leaving her and returning to me. In about three years!

Overjoyed, I bought one more set for three years from the last date I’d read. I expected to see that he’d left her for good, and we were happy ever after. 

Um … not so.

Instead, I saw myself left again. Even though the marriage was still rotten, and her behavior had improved not at all, there he was, back home again. She looked supremely happy, and the two of us were miserable. If I thought my heart was broken now, apparently it was nothing compared to what I’d experience then.

What … the … hell?

Of course, after that I had to keep on reading. He was still unhappy at home! Surely, surely he’d be back! And there, two years on, he’d finally had enough, and he was. Our transits reflected a joyous reunion, and hers, frankly, didn’t know what had hit her, despite decades of questionable behavior.

Yey! I mean, normally I feel sorry for the wife, but in this case … well …. 

This had to mean we’d live happily ever after, right? I just wanted that wonderful confirmation, and so I bought one more set, three years farther ahead. And received one nasty surprise.

We weren’t happy. We were having significant problems. Only I was largely unaware of them, because … what?

Here’s where astrology has given me its greatest gift. I was raised by a parent with borderline personality disorder. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a serious mental illness that wreaks havoc not only on the sufferer, but on any minor children being raised in the home. Because my relationship with my mother was so difficult, I had spent a good portion of my twenties and thirties reading self-help books, relationship books, and adult-child-of books, and because of this, I know a great deal about codependency. Enough to recognize it when I see it described in a horoscope transit.

Astrologers are a poetic lot. Anxious not to antagonize the client, they excel at presenting clinical signs with sympathy and from the client’s point of view. Especially if they’re Liz Greene and their previous career was as a counseling therapist. 

I was reading phrases in his report such as: “If you have allowed your need for closeness with others to obstruct your need to be a separate individual, you may be challenged to assert your own values and ideals with greater honesty and openness. External conflicts and relationship issues may highlight the fact that you need to achieve a new and more creative balance between these two sides of yourself.” “Try not to turn your back on opportunities just because you don't want to upset others or are afraid of seeming selfish in their eyes.” “But somehow what you want may not be communicated properly to those who could help or support you; and you may feel very angry, frustrated, aggrieved or victimised.  You are not wrong in pushing for change and better opportunities.  You may also need to define yourself as an individual more directly within your personal relationships, and this could involve friction with family members.  But you may first have to consider the ways in which you are asking for what you want, and recognise that you yourself have created or accepted the role you are now playing, and others have assumed this is who you are.”

Huh? I thought. This is codependency! What the hell? Hasn’t this person been in therapy for years already? How could he leave her to be with me, and still be codependent?

This utterly confused me. I pondered it on and off for several days, and as I considered it, one solid fact emerged.

Codependent when we met; codependent years later when we finally get together. He’s with me, he’s with her, he’s with her, he’s with me, the family is all upset, the adult children are involved … years and years of drama, this is! 

But during all those years of drama, what was missing? This much-adored man of mine applying himself to his core problems of codependency and low self-worth, studying and healing and getting well—that was what! Look at all the progress he could have made over those five years! But he didn’t. What was he doing instead?

Having an affair with me.

Then I started to recall phrases from my transit reports, about being too needy and anxious, about the need to stay out of power and control. I hadn’t known what to make of those. Me, domineering and overcontrolling? Why, that was his wife, not me!

Apparently not.

What I finally understood, after months of poring over these transit reports, was that, even though I recognized him as codependent from the beginning—I was the one who insisted he start therapy—if I elected to pursue an affair with this man, I would be the person keeping him from what he most desperately needed to do:

Apply himself in therapy to his own problems—not everyone else’s—study healthy relationships, what went wrong in his family of origin, and heal and work and get well.

And that’s a hell of a way to treat someone you say you love.

It was about that time I figured I had better start studying astrology, and learn how to read this stuff for myself, instead of relying on a computer to do it for me, or hiring an expensive professional I know nothing about. Since then, I’ve become a good enough astrologer to cast all our relationship and natal charts, and I can pick out the aspects in ours that reflect the issues I’ve just described here.

This is only the beginning of my story. I plan to post more about it here, from time to time. I’ve predicted events in all three of our lives that actually happened. Last October, there were a number of signs that I would indeed hear from this man after three years apart. It happened. (Only this time, I was ready.)

Most important, I’ve learned so much about myself. It turned out that my charts and transits were pointing out aspects of my unhealed childhood that I never would have suspected still needed my attention, and that’s proven to be an invaluable resource to direct me in my own therapy.

I used to doubt astrology, but after this experience, I see what an important and useful tool it can be. If you’re searching for answers in your own relationship, it’s certainly worth a look.

THE MISSING PIECE, Part One

PRESENT

Valentine’s Days are bad.

Whether you’re single, dumped, widowed, or divorced. Valentine’s Days are bad.

I’ve spelled out here how the astrology tells a story. Put Rory’s chart, her transits, my chart, my transits, and Chi’s chart and his transits together, and they make a perfect mosaic, stretching on into the future. They all match up into a perfect story, and the events in one chart are answered perfectly with the mirroring events and feelings in the other two.

The story presents a branching path. It can go this way, or it can go that way.

I picked the path I would like to see, and I’ve worked my ASS off for three years to finish my part in that.

(Incidentally, that part is called, HEALTH. I’m going to need it whether I ever see Chi again or not. Similarly, his happier path is also called, HEALTH. He’s going to need it whether he ever sees me again or not.)

I finished these last few blogs, and it looked like I had come to the end of what I encountered the astrology and all this codependency reading to learn. Already know I, that which I need.

So, it’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m still alone. What happens next?

That’s when you go, I know the horoscopes SAY this, but the only way this could ever take place is if the person who is presented as my putative partner in this journey ACTUALLY COMES BACK and says, “I’m here! I’m ready to go on to the next bit.”

(And, yes, that could, possibly, only mean that he comes back and I kick him in the ass one more time, he applies himself in adequate therapy, and then…he decides that keeping his family intact is really where his heart is—his REAL heart, NOT his codependent one—regardless of whether Rory improves her own emotional health or not. Hard to imagine—you need a spine of steel to live with what he’s living with—but people make these decisions every day and they make their peace with them. They do. And who knows? Maybe she’ll wake up then!)

Either way, if I don’t see him again, it’s because he isn’t ready. After three years and that’s where they still were, there is NO WAY this sad situation changed substantially in three months. We KNOW that’s still the way it is.

According to the astrology (and, I have to add, simple common sense), this is the stage he was supposed to be ready by. He was supposed to be able to look at the past three years and where they’ve ended up, notice that he’s still in terrible pain, and be casting about for some answers, rather than just putting his head down again and going, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.”

If he’s not at that stage now, I won’t see him again.

And not seeing him would be a good thing in that case, because if he’s STILL thinking after forty years of this and a three-year turn through not-quite-adequate-therapy-land, that the right thing to do is keep on trying to swallow the pain and live this act everyone else is prescribing for him--when he’s so depressed by it he can barely see straight--he’s just never going to break through and get better. EVER.

And that’s no partner for me (or for anyone else, for that matter.) I need to RUN from that like it’s a tsunami.

                                                 ***

I had gotten that far. I had looked at that truth, and basically said, Okay.

I’ve been widowed four years, and I haven’t met ONE appropriate person. Not ONE. No soul mate, family-like friends, no potential boyfriend.

At fifty, I am ABSOLUTELY ALL ALONE IN THIS WORLD, and my “partner” in whatever crazy business is forecasted here may just signal, in this crucial span of time of about a month, that he isn’t ready and he isn’t coming.

So be it.

I will just stay all alone in this world. I will give up looking for people (because that’s all I’ve done for four years and it most definitely isn’t working out).

I’ve got my blog, I’ve finally gotten some rudimentary ideas for how to do a website, and I’ve got these two novels in various stages of work. I’m no professional, but I have ideas, and I’m finally excited about them. I waited all my life to have time to write, and well…that’s the one gift of no people. You have time, and NO distractions.

Let’s see if I can do anything. 

If not, who cares? This happened to me, and I learned from it. Others could, too. If not, life will go on, and the sky will not fall in. It’s an interesting challenge. And I’m nothing if not always and consistently up for an interesting challenge!

No people in my life? FINE.

I’m there.

(Oh, and by the way? THIS is where Chi’s and my Davison says I must be if the relationship were ever to work. So, of course, it’s where the other half of the job doesn’t happen and he goes, Nah, I’m not up to it. Sorry, but bye! I’m going to be miserable and depressed instead, and keep on acting so the people I'm "close" to aren't upset by it.)

                                                         ***

And then…and then…

AND THEN…

I was wandering around the mall and stopped into this pretty jewelry/metaphysical bookstore.

ONE copy of the book, Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends sat on a shelf, beckoning to me. It was the only copy in the store.

(Get ready for something woo-woo.)

I was thinking more of Chi when I picked it up, because it’s a divorce book, and I’m widowed—but their treatment of loneliness was the best I’ve ever read and the most applicable to me of any I’ve ever seen. In four years. (We’re actually supposed to be alone? We’re actually supposed to be learning how get along without other people? We’re actually supposed to be self-sufficient?)  

Of course, they go on and on about finding friends, but I haven’t found any familylike friends. I’ve found ONE person whom we fit each other as friends, and there are limits to that friendship. Oh, well. Guess I just go on with the self-sufficiency thing anyway!

Even though I just found out I made a horrible mistake on my taxes this year, I owe money to the IRS, and I won’t be able to afford health insurance this year, I bought the book.

Even though I don’t plan on ever being divorced (how can I be? I’m not meeting anybody!), it’s still an interesting read. I leapfrogged here and there about the book…

…and happened on THE MISSING PIECE.

                                                           ***

Allow me to explain.

The authors, Bruce Fisher, Ed.D, and Robert Albright, Ph.D., explain that, when we don’t get good parenting as kids, we have pieces of our personalities that didn’t grow into an adult state of maturity. That at some point in our lives and in our marriages, those parts “wake up” and start trying to grow from that child stage they were arrested at when our parents, for example, started drinking all the time. They cite several examples of areas of the personality where people often “wake up” and start to need to grow, but the one that caught my attention was this area called, INDIVIDUATION.

Or, as the authors explain it, the need to establish ourselves as independent people by rebelling against the rules parents, family, and society made for us.

When you grow up codependent, the message from parents and family is that thinking for yourself and appearing as you really are is WRONG. We’re not supposed to be, think, need, feel, believe, act, or appear in any way other than what parents and family want.

And this isn’t healthy. We’re US. They’re them; we’re US. We were born to be us, and we need to be us.

We can’t be that perfect little automaton that looks to others and says, “What do you want? I’ll be that so you’ll love me!” forever. Little kids are like that. And this is a normal stage of childhood development.

Did you know that? Before this, I didn't! 

I remember being like that. Remember when I wrote that even my mother’s favorite color was my favorite color? I so desperately needed her approval that I became her clone. And she DEMANDED that I be her clone. (And, sheesh, so did my dad before he died! No wonder I was so fucking messed up!) And that was how I ended up in the wrong career, which I will pay for til the day I die.

A lot of authors write about this human need to individuate, but only these people actually break it down into stages, and explain why the stages are and how the stages work. (Well, you see it a lot in books on parenting, but not in books on adulthood!) 

They explain that you start out in what they call the “shell” stage, which is what I’ve just described above. The stage in which you need, need, need your parents. You need their love. You need their approval. You need them to think you’re just swell and to say nice, affirming things to you. You need it so badly you will twist yourself into ALL kinds of pretzels to get it. You’re like a puppy. 

“Lovemelovemelovemelovemeloveme!”

That’s the “shell” stage. They named it that because the person is living out of a shell that's carefully constructed to reflect what close others want, and only what close others want.

Then you enter what the authors call the “rebellion” stage. You’re tired of being told what to do and you want to think your own thoughts. Only…you don’t know who you are yet, so all you can do is resist what others are telling you to do.

I did this as a very young child, when I was about five. My dad was a very mathematical, machine-oriented, technical type of person, and he achieved recognition and a career through this. He was determined that I would be him. My mother painted. She was an artistic kind of person who loved animals. This nature felt more like my own, so I sided with Mom and rebelled against Dad.

Unfortunately, in siding with Mom, I wasn’t really being me. She was borderline and felt very badly about herself, and she needed me to be EXACTLY like her to validate herself. So, although I thought it was me…it wasn’t. When I started to figure out it wasn’t, and I started to have likes and dislikes and want to do and think things that weren’t her, she got angry with me. I actually believed for a while that I was a bad person because I might like a different career than the one I said I wanted since I was four!!

AND I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WAS UNHEALTHY. I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONE WHO WAS BAD. LONG past the age when most people have already figured this out. I once had a professor who tried to point this out to me. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about!

Then I had to move into healthy rebellion against Mom. “That’s you, this is me. I’m different, my own separate person.”

In sick families, we’re told this is bad. And that’s what codependency is.

So those are the “shell” and the “rebellion.” You still don’t know who YOU are yet. “Shell” thinking completely ignores the fact that there is a SELF who is a PERSON, and who IS SUPPOSED to be honored. "Shell" thinking is codependency. The "rebellion" stage...well...

Then the authors describe the last stage, which they call the “love” stage.

That’s when you figure out who YOU really are and what YOU really want, and you move toward those things realizing it’s okay for you to be who you are and that there’s nothing wrong with it. That it’s healthy to be and appear as the healthy you that all people are.

Then you can make choices based on the fact that it really is YOU, and YOU really want to. 

Then you are making choices, when you do things for other people, out of true love for self and others, and you do not do what strains you. You choose what you truly are comfortable with, and can give to others out of fullness, because you're making sure you aren't hurting, and that your tank is full, too. Note the word, too. Not instead, too.

Sometimes two sets of needs can't be met at once. That's when the healthy person takes a hard look at how much pain HE HIMSELF is in, and makes the considered decision: "I can't honor both your needs and wants and my needs and wants. In this case, since you are not a child or a helpless sick or elderly person, and I would be greatly injured if I put your needs above mine, in this case I choose to place my needs above yours, and take care of myself instead of you. And I do this with regret and no intent to hurt you, only to save and protect myself."

Sorry. That was long-winded.

But it’s not the point. It’s background information leading UP to the point.

The authors present these stages with a chart that looks like this. (I’m reprinting it. So sue me.  Although, I did add a few myself, for purposes of clarity.)


SHELL BEHAVIOR

Compliant, obedient                          

Feels obligation                                  

Consistent, predictable                     

“What should I do?”                          

“Take care of me.”                            

“You’re everything to me.”             

“I only want you to be happy!”      

YOU only and never me.   

REBEL BEHAVIOR

Self-centered, selfish            

Blames others 

Unpredictable

“If it weren’t for you!”

“I’ll do it anyway!”    

Chooses an affair-like relationship outside of the marriage to discuss personal issues; doesn't really want to, but may have an affair. 

ME only and never you!

 "LOVE STAGE" BEHAVIOR

Self-enhancing AND respectful of others

Flexible and responsible

Learns from mistakes (BIG one!)

"I’ve considered the alternatives.”

Choices, not obligations.

Works at self-awareness

Works at self-acceptance

Balance of self and others in decisions.            

I CAN choose you, but only if it doesn’t truly damage me to do so.

And now…

                                                     

(The POINT, next week!)