by Nina Medeiros

Created on: March 17, 2009

One of my dearest friends has a husband with a wandering eye (other things wander as well, but we'll leave them out of this!). In the past few years she has come to me many times seeking various things: help, answers, explanations, justifications. It has been difficult to watch her suffer.

She is an extraordinary person. Like many beautiful and intelligent women she remains in an abusive relationship that does not serve or honor her. She is without boundaries. She still loves him.

I am committed to my friendship with her. There are times when I want to reach in and grab a hold of her. I want to throw my arms around her and tell her that she deserves so much more. There are times when I want to reach out and slap her to attention. I want to rescue her, which says a lot more about me than it says about her.

I know the truth. None of us can be rescued a moment before we are ready. Becoming ready is a gradual process of surrender and awareness. First knowing, really knowing, what is; then knowing that our reality is self-created from the ground up. It's called personal responsibility and it's a lot of hard work because it entails the admission that the only person in life we have control over is ourself. If I reach in and grab a hold of her or slap her senseless until she understands, I rob her. I take away her power and destroy the blessings that waits for her as she works through this difficult situation.

Because he cheats on her she lives in constant fear and suspicion. She snoops to confirm the worst of both. Invariably when she snoops, she finds evidence to confirm what inside of her, she already knows is true. This evidence compels her to fight harder, to cling more desperately which in turn probably drives him further away. He is not a man who has it within him to be faithful to her. Wherever he is on his path, he is unavailable for the intimacy that marriage promises and the work it takes to attain it.

She makes unhealthy choices from this place, because it's impossible not to when you're living in the middle of it. These compromises affect her and her children in unspeakable and unimaginable ways. As anyone knows who has lived through this kind of betrayal, there is a crumbling inside that threatens to consume everything good in life beyond it.

People learn what they need to learn when they choose to learn it. They learn it the way they chose to learn it. There is nothing that our interference can do for them to bring about surrender and awareness one

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