11|24|21
Made something of a breakthrough around ‘relating’ this morning.
Last night, my partner shared something on social media that immediately filled me with disgust/anger. I went through various stages of feeling that I should push the feeling away (that it was ‘wrong of me’ to feel that), of feeling that I should say something to her (this one came up several times; I don’t think there’s anything bad about doing that, but I wanted to figure out my own emotions out first), and of trying to figure out how I should relate to her.
This last one ended up being the most relevant, I allowed myself to follow the thread of various ‘options’ of relating, whether it be express certain boundaries to her, or break up, or arrange for us to see each other in some situations but not others, to break up but not yet, to ‘wait & see’ (but still with an eye toward ‘determining the best relating.’
When I eventually tired myself out (at this point I had returned mostly to feeling good, thanks to allowing myself to genuinely consider the options), I fell asleep and had a very interesting and relevant dream:
I was at an event with some friends (for some reason I was being drug tested too… I forgot this element until just now, interesting), and I found myself sitting next to a pretty girl… my attraction was palpable. Our hands touched. She was shy/cautious/not showing her cards. We talked, face to face. Eventually we ended up in a context of her workplace… she was doing this & that & I was helping in some capacity. I felt ‘close’ to her.
At this stage another former-partner came into the scene (energetically this was equivalent to my current partner… interesting, because I had mentally accepted the possibility of breaking up just before falling asleep): she was saddened by my interest in this ‘new girl.’ I can still see the mournful expression on her face. I followed her to talk to her, explain, comfort her. When I returned, looking for the new girl, she had left. I actually saw her crossing a parking lot, getting into her car, and driving away. At this stage of the dream I somehow found myself hanging from some rusty machinery, maybe 30 feet in the air, barely preventing myself from falling… there was no way I could follow her, and even my survival was questionable. I let out an animal, mournful howl. Even I was surprised at that, in the dream.
On awakening, I was struck by the intensity of my emotions, the deep direct purity that was ‘me’ in the dream: all that is Henry was laid bare - I have been pursuing that type of situation since I was very young, and similarly have felt the need to comfort the sad. Both are extremely strong seductions for me.
What is immediately clear is that the archetype is in me: I desire a girl to fill that particular role for me, and similarly I am on the lookout for sad people to comfort. The ‘recognition’ happens automatically in ‘me,’ the unconscious. In that sense, to ‘me,’ my partner is only filling a role: sometimes she is the ‘desirable pretty girl,’ sometimes she is the ‘sad one’ who must be comforted, sometimes she is ‘bad’ and must be corrected, etc etc etc.
Shortly after awakening, I read Claudiu’s Journal post about Consideration, and it injected greater clarity to the situation:
‘I’ am trying to navigate the world through the fulfillment of feeling-based dream-archetypes, when here before me (technically she is in another city right now but you get the idea 
) is an actually-existing human being. It requires an entirely new way-of-being; one in which relating itself no longer exists:
“After a while I turn to my partner who is sitting in the shade beneath a wonderfully gnarled and ancient tree on the lake’s edge. There sits a fellow human being to whom I have no ‘relationship’. Any past or future disappears; she and I are simply here together, experiencing these perfect moments. The past five years that I have known her, with all the memories of good and bad times, simply do not exist. It is just delightful that she is here with me, and I do not even have any thoughts of ‘our’ future.” (Peter)
The ‘relating’ is only ever ‘my’ emotional way-of-being ‘in relation’ to another ‘being.’
The entire situation that I was trying to ‘figure out’ the night before (and to a larger extent my entire life) does not exist. As Claudiu points out, I can
“(allow) the actual body’s actual intelligence to inevitably, inexorably, with no decision-making required per se, arrive at what is indeed clearly the most optimum thing that can possibly be done given a situation”
This works in every direction: I don’t have to ‘relate’ to the pretty girl, I don’t have to ‘relate’ to a sad person, I don’t have to ‘relate’ to a friend, I don’t have to ‘relate’ to someone engaging in malice, or someone threatening me in any way. It’s just an emotional interruption of the actually-existing fact of what is happening.
Safe to say my mind is blown and I expect further repercussions of this to come out.
Our previous attempts to arrange our relationship are now clearly visible as futile attempts at mimicking the actual, though I do have a great appreciation for those attempts as they made the actual emotional interplays clearer.
I have shared this investigation with her and am excited to see what comes next!
(Additional thanks to @Andrew for asking some questions which inched me closer to clarity in seeing what ‘I’ was ‘putting in place’)