The Hardest Part is Letting Go

Some people just won’t let go. They don’t let go because they cannot accept the reality that contradicts their desires.

Take the woman who is obsessively in love with a man. She is determined to have him no matter what the costs. She does not stop until she gets him. Problem is, sometimes she does not get him and that encounter with reality tears her apart.

It is amazing how insistent people in love with persons who don’t love them anymore can be. It is truly difficult for onlookers to believe what they are seeing.

I know of a recent case that is classic. He courted her. She was a very difficult woman but he loved her blindly. At least for a while. After a turbulent courtship, the reality of who she really was began to sink in and he started to pull back.

This is when things got very difficult. She stalked him. She would follow him. Exceedingly and irritatingly jealous, she would not let go. The more he tried to distance himself from her, the more she held onto him. And the more emotionally violent she became. Like a pit bull that sinks his teeth into you and holds on until you kill him, she refused to believe that he no longer loved her. Even if he told her so a hundred times, she would insist that he did not mean it.

She would say she knew he still loved her. There was still hope for reconciliation even if he insisted he wanted none.

When he fell in love with another woman, he did not tell her for fear that she would become violent.

She was a woman who always needed a man. She could not live without a man. Even if he existed only in her mind, still, he was a man and that was enough for her. Even if reality told her that she had lost him forever, she could never accept that. For her, there was always at least a flicker of hope. Even if she had only one chance in a million, she would say it was still a chance and there was hope. So, she would keep loving the phantom, the fantasy that convinced her it was real.

She is the kind of woman who is used to getting what she wants by the hook or by crook. Spoiled and self-centered she has a great difficulty understanding and accepting the meaning of true love. She would feel right at home inside Disneyland but a stranger in the parking lot outside the amusement park.

When at last mercifully reality won the day and there was no escaping from the truth, she went into deep depression and blamed him and all who opposed her for the collapse of the relationship. She could not see how she was mostly to blame for the fiasco. It wasn’t, of course, her fault. She loved him even as he turned away from her. She maintained that she was the victim even if few people agreed with her.

Distraught and inconsolable she remained depressed for months without having a clue about what had happened. It was all so sad, so tragic. But that is what happens when you won’t let go, when you refuse to accept reality.

love, now and always,