by OLGA SHEEAN
Power Vacs: Don’t Get Sucked In
Dear Olga
My wife has been diagnosed with cancer, which has brought up a lot of issues for us both. I’m trying to be compassionate and caring but am not always sure how to take care of my own needs. For example, I recently wanted to draw up a joint retirement plan but she refused to fill out the papers with me so I had to let it go, which didn’t feel good. Where’s the healthy line between taking care of my partner and taking care of myself so I don’t get lost in the process?
—Ill-equipped
Cancer is often the physical manifestation of self-rejection—and a painful reminder that we’re off track with what’s best for us. That’s easy to say when you’re healthy, but it can really piss you off if you’re sick—and feeling powerless in the face of it. Illness is designed to get your attention and it causes lots of conflicting feelings because it is, in a sense, both a weapon and a cry for help/love.
We subconsciously turn against ourselves when we feel unloveable, and yet the symptoms we create are a cry for love that we’re often unable to express verbally. In caring for your wife, you are probably making her needs more important than yours—which is exactly the kind of special treatment and attention that she’s literally dying to have. But her withdrawal from life (e.g., refusing to draw up a retirement plan with you) creates a power vacuum that sucks you in, triggering your sense of powerlessness and prompting you to do everything you can to fix it.
But no matter how much you do, you cannot fill up her “love tanks.” Only she can do that. So take a step back and look at your reactions because this is all about you! You’ve attracted the perfect partner for triggering your sense of powerlessness and you need to reclaim that power, in practical ways. (Doing so will also give your wife the space to choose to reclaim her own power—the kind that comes from fully loving herself.) Be autonomous—draw up a retirement plan of your own, take care of your needs, be proactive in your everyday decisions, don’t get sucked into inaction along with your partner—and you will break this cycle. Express your love by allowing your wife to choose whether to join you and be equally powerful or to remain disengaged, which will bring her face to face with her deeper feelings. The more you live your life while lovingly maintaining this healthy boundary between you, the more she (and you) will see that the vacuum needs to be filled with self-love. Only then will you both have something truly meaningful to live for.
Dear Olga
I broke up with my boyfriend last month and he’s already going out with another woman. I’m angry and jealous, even though I know I shouldn’t be. How can I let him go and move on?
—Green-eyed Girl
Jealousy is a symptom of low self-worth. It means we don’t think we can have the relationship, fancy car, house, or other evidence of success or love that someone else has. But this belief generates the very outcome we dread: losing what we have or never getting what we want.
The answer lies in rebuilding your self-esteem internally. Start affirming that you deserve and can have the perfect partner, and practise being happy for others who are in love. Hard to do when you’d really like to poke their eyes out, but positively focusing on love powerfully attracts love to you. Jealousy is not about what’s missing in your life; it’s about what’s missing inside you.
Olga Sheean is a Vancouver-based relationship coach and author of Fit for Love—find your self and your perfect mate (olgasheean.com; fitforlove.net). Please submit your relationship questions to editor@shared-vision.com.
