Dr. Karen Kan,

I wonder if you can help me with this. I know everyone is telling me concentrate on myself, he not worth it etc but its not helping. 

I have a very good male friend, and although we used to have a romantic relationship it didn’t work out, and it turned into a very good friendship.  Then I went away to a detox monastery in Thailand to get off tranquilizers etc. and I am now facing the world after 25 years without drugs in my system. 

When I came back, I learned from my best friend that this man came onto my step daughter, both of whom are in their 20′s.  He told her that I need not know about it.  She had no interest in him.  I doesn’t bother me if he dates other women since we are not romantically involved, but I am coping with the pain of his betrayal of trying to get it on with my daughter. 

I have blanked him from my life and I am left with a huge gap and quite heart broken that he would do this to me. I can cope with not having him in my life anymore but I am so sensitive and take things so personally, what I am not coping with are my feelings of how little he must of thought of me.  I have been so positive and have changed so much of my life recently, this setback is tearing me apart.  Please if you have any tools on how to cope, I need help. 

Audrey

Dear Audrey,

It sounds very painful what you are going through. I hope what I am about to tell you will be helpful. Are you willing to be open? Are you willing to be open to letting go of the pain? If your answer is yes, then read on…

Understand that everything that happens in our lives are actually “neutral” events (in the Universe). It is only when we place judgment on what happens do we call it “bad” or “good”. If you’ve been reading any of my other posts, you will often note that I almost always put the words, “bad” or “good” in quotation marks. Why? Because I want you to note that “bad” or “good” is not a TRUTH.

Let me give you an example. If one of your friends suddenly died, you’d feel sad probably, right? And more than likely, we’d consider this event a “bad” event. But in the grand scheme of things, no one but us humans judge it as “bad”. The rest of the Universe is neutral.

Now, back to you.

The reason for your pain is that you have judgments about what you feel should or should not happen in your life. Your thinking goes like this: “he shouldn’t have come onto my daughter” or “he must not respect or love me if he came onto my daughter” or “it was improper and inappropriate for him, my good friend, to try to court my daughter…especially without my permission or knowledge” or “he should have told me the truth, that scoundrel!” etc.

Is your mind saying some of these statements to you?

I wouldn’t blame you if your mind did. Mine would, at least if I let it go on automatic pilot!

But you have a choice. You can remain attached to your thinking and justifications and continue to feel pain OR you can make up a different story that serves you (or makes you feel better). None of your judgments or assumptions are TRUE. You can’t prove them to be true. In fact, nothing is really “true” or “real” for that matter, because we are all just made up of energy. Our perceptions distort this real truth because we see the world through our own unique eyes. In other words, as the law of attraction states, we “create” our reality.

So let me give you another perception to try on. You don’t have to buy it or believe it. Just try it on and see how it feels. See if it feels better at all than what you perceive.

So this man was romantically attracted to your daughter, right? In your mind, you’ve decided that he was wrong to pursue her. In your mind, he was betraying you because he courted her. Can you conceive that it is possible that in pursuing your daughter, that he was in no way TRYING to hurt or betray you? The only way he could betray you is if you and he had an explicit contract or agreement that he would NOT romantically pursue any of your family members. And even then, he has the perogative to change his mind.

Why don’t you assume that he wasn’t meaning to hurt you? He may have been scared of your reaction, but obviously that fear did not prevent him from pursuing the object of his attraction. If I were you, I would be less concerned that he would pursue your family member and more concerned that he told her not to tell you. The latter is a red flag that your friendship is not as authentic or as close as you would have imagined…or it could just be that he’s too scared. He respects you enough to be scared. Think of it that way.

Let me ask you a question. Have you EVER done anything that you regretted later? Have you ever kept something from someone because you were too scared how they’d react? maybe you were trying to protect them from feeling bad? Have you ever done something that wasn’t meant to hurt someone and yet they chose to feel hurt nonetheless? Most of us would have answered YES to one or more of the questions above. We are human. We make mistakes.

Are you willing to forgive your friend for whatever mistakes you think he made?

So again, you have a choice. You can choose to drop your story that he should have done this or shouldn’t have done that and just accept WHAT IS. Or you can remain attached to your story and suffer the consequences (including a lost friend). What’s your choice?

For further study, I highly recommend the Audio book, Loving What Is, by Byron Katie. You can find it at the Law of Attraction in Love bookstore and you can download the accompanying worksheet at www.thework.com

Audrey, for your own sake, I hope you get up the courage to have a heart to heart conversation with your friend. Tell him that you felt hurt and betrayed and allow him the space to tell you how he felt. Forgive him. He’s human. He’s a man with hormones (joke). Be compassionate. Life is too short to lose a dear friend.

Love,

Dr. Karen Kan