The following is an excerpt from my upcoming guidebook, Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy, which I will release exclusively on this site in May:
Chapter 2.) We are not who we think we are.
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The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.
- Alan Watts
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Many people believe that they represent nothing other than a compilation of their personal experiences. These same people also believe that they are fixed, stagnant, a more or less consistent physical and/or spiritual entity from the delivery room to the crematorium. A whole person. “John Smith, born 1934, died —-.” There is only one problem with this type of thinking — it’s entirely inaccurate. I could expand on this to include the fact that we represent, in fact, the entire universe, constantly changing and realizing itself, but I don’t want to scare you off quite yet.[1]
For the moment, simply consider this: from a scientific perspective, there is no being on the planet that exists as a fixed entity. Our cells are generated, transforming, and being destroyed at such an unimaginably rapid pace that there is never a single moment in which all of the cells in our body form a stable, consistent pattern. There is not a single millisecond in which John Smith is not being born, evolving, and dying in some way.
We may recognize Mr. Smith growing older, older, changing, changing, and decaying over a period of several years. We may even recognize him to be the same person, years between meetings. Still, if I meet Mr. Smith today, and then meet him again tomorrow, he will be a completely different person than he was when I met him today.
Picture a whirlpool. Water is constantly running in, running out, and circling furiously so that there is not a single moment in which the whirlpool is static. Although it may appear to form a consistent pattern, every single moment we are actually witnessing a new whirlpool, completely different from the whirlpool that preceded it a moment earlier.
It is useful to consider ourselves, and the people around us, in this way. We are so much more than a compilation of our experiences: we are all constantly being born, constantly changing, and constantly dying, in a very real sense. Thus, I ask that you consider your partner as a whirlpool, constantly changing, always in motion, and evolving by the second.
In all likelihood, the people who once touched your partner’s life left only a fleeting impression. Though memories may (or may not) linger on, every moment these memories fade and become distorted, so that barely a trace of a memory of the original experience remains. Furthermore, as I once saw someone write on an internet forum, “it’s not like a piece of their vagina fell off.” That is to say, try to move away from the idea that your partner’s past lovers left some type of indelible imprint on your partner: they didn’t. It is necessary to accept this premise if you want to get better.
The matter is simple: we cannot be the partners we want to be, we cannot move into the present moment, and we cannot be a part of our partner’s future if we are wedded to their past.
[1] If you’re curious about this perspective on life, please refer to the works of the late English philosopher Alan Watts, who wrote widely on Zen Buddhism, metaphysics, and the universe. His aptly-titled 1966 book The Book is a very good place to start.
