Why have most people elected to believe that the only resource available to them, so they can create a life, is to project an image that is so remote from what they really are or from what they would love to be?  In other words, how much disgust do people must have of themselves to fuel this constant need to pretend to be someone else?  For what reasons do they refuse to acknowledge who they intrinsically are and what their condition or current situation is?  Do they fear the judgments of others?  Moreover, by embracing the choice to be perpetually living a lie, do they actually give themselves no other possibility but to occult the dreadful consequences that living a lie does indeed require?

Ultimately, do people really change?

::: Per this society, is it in your best interest to change, anyway?

We live in a world where most interactions are based on an act.  Honesty and genuineness are virtues that are mostly inexistent, and the creation of a superlative relationship with oneself is not a possibility.  It is even categorically proscribed.  Basically, you do not have the right to enjoy who you are and feel good about yourself, simply because such choices would prevent you from having the ability to relate to others.  Most individuals are miserable, so why would you want to be different, anyway?  You have to be relatable and palatable, at all costs.  Therefore, you are highly encouraged to have a mediocre relationship not only with yourself but also with others, including those so-called “life partners.”  This is your duty and your responsibility, if you want the group to accept you.  Now, if you persist on having a mediocre relationship with yourself, can you really have grandiose, expansive and rewarding interactions with other people?  If you cannot have a tiny bit of love and appreciation for what you are, are you likely to meet someone who will?

There is one major rule in this society: to embrace blindly the common denominator and its “hegemonic” thought, so you are safe at all times.  Basically, you must belong, conform, and do whatever you need to do, so ultimately you can fit inside the mold.  Does this sound attractive to you?  Maybe it does, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Ultimately, it is your choice.  However, if at any point in time you become aware that such a mind-frame turns out to be way too limiting, what else can you do?  How about embarking on a pro-active journey that consists in applying to your life all those changes, which you know are utterly necessary?  Are you tempted by the adventure, even though it may scare so many “loved ones” away?

Inside this society, most elements represent an aversion to creating the life that you would like to have.  Fortunately, from time to time, there are a few people who choose to wake up and recognize that what they are experiencing in the moment is far from being adequate and satisfactory.  They suddenly become aware that so much more has to exist out there.  As a result, they elect to change, and they do so by empowering themselves to eliminate what is confining their lives.  Sadly, a great majority of them tend to go back to the place where they originally started.  Some even choose to regress in even greater proportions.  How can you go back, when you now know for a fact that so much better does exist?  Who would be insane enough to behave that way?  Actually, exploring new possibilities, embracing them, and then returning to an initial state of no-possibility is absolutely fine to most individuals.

::: Do you honestly deserve change in your life?

There are so many folks who have decided that they do not deserve beauty, freedom, ease, bliss and other positive dynamics for more than a few minutes throughout their entire lifespan.  Why is that?  Even though it might be quite tricky to attempt to understand such raging insanity, a few elements of response still emerge from time to time.  Remember one major fact: in this society, you do not have the right to be happy with yourself, simply because no one else is happy.  Therefore, if you shine you might very likely become an outcast in the eyes of those who refuse to shine.  And most people are certainly not willing to pay such a price.  They cannot accept the idea of finding themselves completely alone and isolated.  Thus they elect to give up on their new self, as a way to accommodate the group.  They go back, so they can make sure that they are surrounded by their peers again.

In a similar constricting spirit, the unconditional necessity to fit inside a group also brings an element of explanation.  I know a few individuals who were involved in cults for years, and who empowered themselves to get out of them, alone and/or thanks to my assistance.  After weeks, months or years of freedom, they ultimately chose to become involved in a cult or in a spiritual community again!  Are they aware of it?  My first reaction is to ask, “Who cares?”  It is definitely not my life that is going to be shattered.  They chose to blindfold themselves and be weak yet another time.  Their insatiable need to be desired and accepted by others bypassed desiring and accepting themselves as free individuals.  It is their choice, and I fully respect it.  I will just be observing from (very) far away the ravages such unconsciousness produces.

It is very difficult to find moral and/or emotional support when you elect to make drastic shifts in your life.  Most individuals resent success and having to do whatever it takes to achieve it.  Thus, as soon as you share your motivations with others, you are likely to hit a wall of incomprehension and possibly disgust.  You instantly become the eccentric one and the subject of two infamous reactions, “Come on, get over yourself!” and “Who the hell do you think you are?”  This strong sentiment of loneliness that the willingness to change triggers may feel excruciating and unfair at first; however, it also represents the solid reassurance that no one will ever succeed in attempting to disrupt your plans for personal and/or professional expansion.  Only you can stop the motion and go back.  Therefore, it is all about self-empowerment.

::: What good can happen, if you do not embrace who you are?

Can you have a healthy and joyful relationship with someone else if you cannot honor yourself in the first place?  “Are you kidding me, Nicolas?  There is no time for such rubbish!  I need to find a mate and have children ASAP!  Otherwise what legacy will I leave?  So, why don’t you go to hell with all your ideals and fantasies about happiness and self-empowerment?  YOU SUCK… AND WHY DON’T YOU GO BACK TO FRANCE?” [Any resemblance with a real situation is absolutely not coincidental]  How many men and women choose to entrap themselves inside this measure commonly referred to as “time”?  Everything is always about time, or rather about the consistent lack of it.  Actually, most people find the time for everything that does not include taking care of their own selves.  Isn’t it interesting?

Truthfully, what else can be so much more important than your own self?  Whose agendas does it serve every single time you choose to give up on all your aspirations?  Why listen to those men and women who affirm that abandoning yourself is indeed the only alternative?  More importantly, why are you so ready to believe it?  What price are you currently refusing to pay, that would buy you the full-on capacity to generate the life that you really want to live, independently of all sorts of pressure?  Perhaps are you totally unwilling to be alone, even if it is the one thing that is urgently needed, so you can finally thrive and proper?  Lastly, do you think that, in the long run, it is way too much of a price to pay right now?

Per this society, happiness is certainly not a state of mind, a choice or a desire.  It is a disease, a curse and an insult to mankind.  If you are happy and you dare to show it, you have got to be completely crazy.  There cannot be any other explanations possible.  Seriously, do you really think that your happiness and joyfulness have the power to be attractive to others?  That may be the case to a very few when, in the meantime, a great majority of men and women will chastise and castigate you, heavily angered by what they have decided they could not have for themselves.  So are you ready to pay the price, or will you continue to conform to what is highly expected of you?

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Most people who claim that they want to change will NEVER change.  So would you like to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt?  Now, if you know that your life requires transformation and you are ready to make the appropriate changes, please do not lie to yourself.  The consequences would be absolutely dramatic, traumatic and beyond repair.

Valentine’s Day is funny because it leaves absolutely no room for improvisation.  The entire day is carefully organized around the necessity to buy a dozen of roses.  Nothing else matters.  A mishap can have dreadful ramifications.  There is no margin for error allowed.  Any mistake carries a cost that will certainly damage the relationship beyond a point of no return.  To forget Valentine’s Day signifies the end of the relation.  It is that simple.  And unlike so many core issues that should be addressed throughout the year so the relation can improve and grow, the infamy that forgetting the rose represents will be discussed at length and most likely lead to a unilateral break-up.

::: Why does forgetting Valentine’s Day supersede any other relationship issues?

Most people choose to remain prisoners of the different programs to which they have been subjected since they were born.  And Valentine’s Day certainly is a major one.  If there is one day during which you can prove how much you love and care for your mate, this is it!  The rest of the year does not count.  Your behavior before and after February 14 is totally meaningless, as long as you are emotionally operational on February 14.  This is what society requires from you.  To work daily on your relationship is unnecessary, because it necessitates way too many efforts.  The remaining 364 days of the year are better spent constructing distractions, so you never have to look at the pertinence of your choices and how they affect your loved ones.  But on Valentine’s Day, all you need to do is line outside the flower shop, rain or shine, excruciatingly warm or icy cold, and fulfill a duty that will show your partner how much you love him or her.  It is all about proving on what is judged as the most appropriate day to do it.  It is solely about the form.  It is all about allowing your girlfriend to have something to say or show her colleagues at work, so everyone knows how loving and meaningful your relation supposedly is.

Inside the minds of those who utilize Valentine’s Day as a way to prove something, the goal is actually to conceal the painful fact that love is long gone already.  It is also used as a pretense to fit-in and conform to what most of society expects on that specific day.  Nothing else matters, as long as you elect to conduct yourself appropriately each year on February 14.  And “nothing else” compiles all the issues that constantly tarnish your relationship and are way too disturbing to be discussed freely and openly.  Valentine’s Day is viewed as a wonderful and convenient way to clean the slate once for all, but in reality it never happens.  It is a farce.  The issues always remain.  They are never resolved.  A new cycle of dismissal begins on the day the roses have finally faded.  Any action that is intended to prove anything is utterly counter-productive, because testing or checking someone or something is always motivated by an expectation or an assumption.  If you want to prove that you love her by offering flowers on Valentine’s Day, what do you expect and what do you assume?  Do you expect that she forgets how you treated her last week?  After all, you want to show her that you still love her, right?  What is it really?  Do you want her to finally believe that you have ceased to take her for granted?

It is certainly easier to spend twenty dollars on flowers than it is to be bluntly honest with yourself and your partner about what is urgently needed to change, so your relation can finally thrive.  It is definitely easier to buy something for your mate than it is to undo the consequences of your past choices.  It looks easier but it is not.  It only postpones the ineluctable.  It does not improve your life or your spouse’s.  It is a wonderful reflection of the mentality that so many have embraced and that consists in continually occulting the ugly to create a pretense of moving on with their lives.  Actually, you are only moving backward, aiming for a wall.  And it is often times too late to wake-up once you have hit the wall.

:::: Are valuing what you are and celebrating Valentine’s Day mutually exclusive?

To value yourself is certainly the best asset that you can ever own, and which is far more precious than your house, your stock options (for what they are worth today anyway…), and other material possessions.  If you do not value yourself, how can you become aware of what your talents are?  What does valuing what you are really mean, anyway?  Well, have you ever shut down at the request of your partner, because he or she was not interested in hearing your opinion on a topic that was very much relevant to the life of your relationship?  Have you ever had a great idea, which you knew could definitely contribute to change the way you operate, or even the way this society is functioning today, and in the end chose to discount it, or give it away, or simply abandon it because you were afraid to fail?  Have you ever chosen to blindly follow the herd because of an intense desire to fit-in?  If your life is all about fitting-in and functioning based on what is expected from you, then embracing Valentine’s Day depicts how much you choose to neglect what you are.  You run your life on some sort of auto pilot and you are at the mercy of what others demand from you.

To value your own person and celebrating Valentine’s Day do not always have to be mutually exclusive if you make of February 14 a fun and meaningless event.  When you are totally honest with yourself, you know when it is required to step-up to the plate and address what is not working properly in your relation.  This is the demand that you systematically make for yourself, so your life can continually expand.  When you elect to irrevocably embrace this dynamic, it becomes impossible to take your partner and your relationship for granted.  Thus love and consideration are present at all times.  And your choice to work at all times on whichever issue you may face is the gift of love that you constantly offer your spouse.  Consequently, it turns Valentine’s Day into a fun and non-eventful day.  You do not need to go out of your way on that day to prove anything to anyone.  You know where you stand, and so does your mate.  This is what being fully secure with yourself and someone else truly means.  There is no need to be reassured at any point in time.  A bouquet of roses will simply be seen as a cute gesture and not as a mark of anything more than just that.

Do you feel comfortable dragging yourself down to the level of the common denominator?  If you are wondering what the common denominator actually is, may I invite you to turn on your television and observe how American women are portrayed on this season installment of “The Bachelor?”  They are all insecure, desperate, superficial, mean, conniving and vicious.  They have no self-esteem whatsoever, and their only element of satisfaction is to receive a rose at the end of the show.  The rose is the sign that makes them feel valued and desired.  For a great majority of women, the exact same thought process goes through their minds on Valentine’s Day.  It is the need to feel acknowledged by their partner once a year.  The fact that their love life is totally miserable the rest of the year is unimportant as long as they get something to brag about around the water cooler the day after at work: the best dinner ever, the most romantic date ever, flowers delivered at the office.

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This society tends to promote mediocrity thanks to the mass production of uniformed ideas and thoughts that are incessantly shoved down people’s throats.  Ultimately, isn’t insufflating mediocrity the best way to control the masses, to put them asleep, to drug and numb them to better manipulate them?  And once people have handed all their powers over to those they see as role models, what is left of them?  Are you ready to be your own person and be accountable for all your choices?  Or should you suppress your entire life and wait for a day like Valentine’s Day, so you can bring more consistency to this lie that characterizes your existence?
As Frank Sinatra sings it so well, “Every day is Valentine’s Day…!”

Are you really at risk when you say “No!”?  Has “Yes!” become a reflex?  What can you do to finally regain control of your own life, without having to fear retaliation for speaking your mind?

::: What are you truly afraid of?    

Do you really dare to speak your mind, or do you feel that you must refrain at all costs and at all times?  Remember, you are evolving in a society that values the status quo.  Therefore if you choose to express yourself, freely and without filter, you end-up being systematically castigated.  You are the trouble maker, who utterly refuses to fit inside the box.  You disrupt this peace that is supposedly holding this entire world together.  Each time you are reminded about this obligation to preserve the peace no matter what, don’t you start suffocating?  If that is the case, it means that you are aware of this master plan that others have constructed, and that consists in controlling all your moves and thoughts; and it must have become intolerable for you.  To function in this world, in full-on harmony with the masses, you have to preserve the peace, even if your contribution entails that you must cease to exist in the process.  Maybe have you already stopped existing?  Do you regret it, or has it become an intrinsic part of what you are today?  If it is now a part of you, would it feel way too uncomfortable to attempt to change anything?  It may undeniably disrupt your inner peace, whatever that means.  Or maybe are you aware that it is now time to wake-up, so you can rediscover your true self and regain some sense of self-worth?

Have you irrevocably decided that saying “No!” to someone was insulting this someone?  As a result, are you averse to standing by what your desires are?  Actually, who do you insult when you negate your feelings by choosing to accommodate another individual’s?  If you believe that choosing for you is not an option, it may be quite hard to answer this question.  However, if somewhere in the back of your mind you know that it is something that has already crossed your sphere of awareness at least once, then you know that it is potentially doable.  But are you ready to deconstruct all the programming to which you have been subjected and that has continually denied you of your right to decide your own fate?  Even though saying “Yes” continually is a complete disregard of what you are, doesn’t it feel so gratifying to know that your intention is to accommodate someone else?  If you are the true friend that you pride yourself of being, you must accommodate your mates.  You would not want to upset them by not showing up when they require your immediate presence, assistance and attention, right?  If you really are the sweet kid that you have consistently claimed to be, don’t you have to fix your parents’ mistakes, regardless of their degree of insanity and regardless of their absolute refusal to finally become responsible?

If you risk acknowledging such dreadful dysfunctions before making those appropriate changes that will finally place you at the top in the equation of your life, what is at stake?  Are you willing to pay the price?  It is always the same leitmotiv.  It is all about the intense fear of finding yourself alone.  Isn’t it fascinating to observe that the aversion to being alone is certainly what controls your entire life?  You may not be cognitively aware of it, but it is very real.  Do you believe that choosing for you may actually push away those who have never esteemed you?  What is there to lose here?  And what if it could simultaneously attract men and women who have also been craving to develop a stronger sense of self-worth?  Ultimately, that does not sound like a bad swap.  But it takes a lot of courage to embark on this life-changing path.

::: Can negating your own self be an option any longer? 

Jennifer had just recovered from a two-year long nervous breakdown, and she was now on her way to an interview for a very exciting on-line marketing position.  When she arrived at the location, security escorted her to a conference room where she was scheduled to meet with three people.  Her cell phone rang.  She picked it up, and told the caller that she was about to have a very important meeting.  Yet, she kept on staying on the line.  How do I know that?  I was the hiring manager for the job, and the first person with whom she was scheduled to interview.  Jennifer whispered to me that it was one of her friends who was having serious marital problems, and asked me if I could wait a couple of minutes, which I did.  Ten minutes later, she was still on the phone, trying to solve her friend’s issues.  I walked to her and said, “Thank you for coming, but this is not working for me, and I know that this will not work for my group either.  Good bye and best of luck to you”.

Before you start calling me a merciless and inhuman jerk, may I invite you to continue reading?  Jennifer had chosen her friend over her own self.  She had basically made her friend’s problems her top-priority.  As a result, she discarded what mattered the most to her at that moment, which was to successfully cruise through a series of interviews to get a job that she really wanted.  In my world, this is called full-on insanity, or maybe absolute stupidity.  How can you seriously pretend to be functional if you cannot even sort your priorities out in a way that ensures you to thrive and prosper to the best of your capability?  My behavior was a clear display of how it looks like when you live on the other end of the spectrum, a place where you come first in the equation of your own life and elect to be aware of what the ramifications of your choices are for those you love and who trust you.  In short, I am the most valuable element in my life, and there is nothing or no one who has the power to disrupt that order.

Did Jennifer call me “selfish” and “heartless” in the email that she sent me the following day?  She was actually a bit more virulent than that.  Did it matter?  Absolutely not!  But per this society, I should have been more understanding of the situation in which she had put herself.  I should have negated what I knew was honoring me and the people with whom I worked at the time to accommodate her.  Never mind our schedules and work plans for the day because of such an outpouring of caring and loyalty for a friend in need.  This is the ultimate emotional trap, and Jennifer completely fell for it.  I did not, and yet she chastised me for my behavior.  And I am sure that there are many other folks who did chastise me for the way I handled this situation.  The proper demeanor to adopt would have been to show compassion and give her all the time in the world.  That certainly did not work for me.  What she and others think of me now?  I do not care.

To negate what you are and everything by which you stand is not an option, if you truly desire to live life to the fullest.  As soon as you start negating yourself, you begin to die.  Your soul ceases to exist.  There is no half-hearted option available here.  To deny your desires, so you can accommodate a situation knowing that it is certainly not satisfactory to you is not only criminal but it also sets the foundations for the construction of a pattern that will ultimately take away everything that you are.  Are you ready to choose what you know really works best for you, instead of settling and accommodating spouse, partner, kids, colleagues, employees, banker, boss, etc.?  You name it!  May I encourage you to say “Yes!” every single time you genuinely want to say “Yes!” and “No!” when it does not work for you?

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To promote the idea that someone else has to come first in the equation of your own life depicts the way most relationships are currently functioning.  If you create a rupture with this dynamic, you will be judged like never before.  Are you up for it?  Although it may not be too pleasant at first, ultimately isn’t it about your life, your happiness and your personal development and growth?  Are you ready to show your kids that this is an option, so in turn they will empower their own kids to embrace it?

There are folks who incessantly judge their partner’s behavior as abnormal, disrespectful, belittling, dishonoring, mean and diminishing.  And yet, they continue to endure what they know is wrong and they stay in the relationship.  They elect to suppress all their frustrations, resentment and anger instead of addressing them.  They give up on themselves rather than reacting adequately to the situation and being truthful to their feelings.  By doing so, they choose to widen the separation that already exists in lieu of narrowing and then potentially closing the gap to create a brand new momentum for the relation.

Have people decided that breaking-up was utterly excruciating?  Have they concluded that it is in reality so much more comfortable to stay put and suffer?  What if suffering were in reality a deliberate choice?  For many people, it even gives their lives a meaning, something that they can share with the herds of miserable men and women who surround them.  So they can never feel alone.

:::: Should the relationship be more important than you?

Why are there so many horrendous relationships out there?  Who do you know never complains about his or her mate?  Who do you know is entirely fulfilled in a relationship with another individual?  For some, to be fulfilled only refers to the ability to acquire material goods at any time and without restriction.  Only then can they truly feel alive.  They need a provider.  And as long as the partner continues to give them the resources to push this agenda, the connection remains optimal.  For others, it is solely about being involved with someone for the sake of being in a relation.  And the motivations range from the fear of being alone to having to conform to what others expect of them.  What does being totally fulfilled in your relationship mean to you?  What definition have you constructed and then embraced?  Look at it, and wonder whether this definition is preventing you today from truly emancipating yourself and growing exponentially.

How many times have you known that you desperately needed to get out of a relationship before suddenly changing your mind?  Do you remember what motivated this abrupt turnaround?  Was it the fear of having to face your responsibilities and be accountable for committing yourself to this dreadful relation in the first place?  Was it the apprehension of creating even more turmoil… in your partner’s life?  Was it the utter refusal to stand for your own self and choose what was required from you at this moment?  Was it cowardice?  What encourages individuals to deliberately stay in an environment within which absolutely no expansion can be generated?  What triggers such persistence, when they relentlessly try to make something that is doomed to fail work?  Do they know that those types of choices condemn them to live a life, which is filled with successions of sufferings and disillusions?  Do they know that inside they are dying, slowly but surely?  Are you currently dying inside your marriage?  Do you actually exist in any of your relationships?  Are you able to voice your viewpoints freely and without apprehension, or do you systematically feel the need to suppress them, so you do not create any troubles?  Every single time you suppress yourself, how does it make you feel?  Can you be entirely satisfied?  Or do you continue to corrode every single part of what you are?  Be aware that at some point, there will be nothing left of you.

A destructive piece of programming to which most people have been subjected refers to the absolute need to preserve the relationship at all costs.  How often have you shared with parents or friends your desires to regain your freedom after having spent way too much time in a bad and counter-productive relation?  And how many times were your desires discounted if not totally dismissed?  In this society, it is more important to maintain the status quo than it is to choose for yourself.  And this conditioning is definitely not limited to relationships.  It is about everything else.  In other words, it is your duty to accommodate anyone else before you even start thinking of you.  How often have you heard insane reactions such as, “How dare you be so difficult?  Your husband works so hard, so what if he screamed at you last night!  He needed to vent!  He’s just tired!  Instead of being so selfish, you should have compassion for him!”  The latter is totally crazy yet extremely common.  For your own sake, it cannot depict the way you choose to assess and then treat a situation in your relation with another individual.

::: Is a relationship like a safety net?       

Safety nets DO NOT exist!  Next topic…

::: What prevents you from being yourself in all your relations?

The fear to upset the partner is certainly the biggest reason that prevents individuals from sharing freely their concerns about a specific issue.  This dynamic is what gives its full-on meaning to the expression “to walk on eggshells.”  In other words, “I am ready to do whatever it takes to keep the peace in the relation!”  But what peace is there to preserve, anyway?  Everything has already been shattered, hence the absolute necessity to walk on eggshells at all times.  The total absence of peace is what pushes people to suppress what they are, because they are afraid of reactions and possible acts of retaliation.  There is no peace.  This is hell.  When you refrain from expressing yourself and tackling an issue which you know is affecting the quality of the relation that you have with your mate, the relationship has ceased to exist.  Can it still be revived?  Everything is always possible, as long as both parties are on the exact same wave length and are ready to pro-actively treat the core of the problem.  But who is sufficiently honest with oneself to embark on such a shaky and certainly unpleasant adventure?  It definitely takes a lot of courage and the willingness to hear what the other has to say without reacting to it.

Most of the conditioning that has been shoved down people’s throats since their early childhood is a total aversion to their being truthfully honest with their own selves.  It basically denies you of your right to know what is required for creating an expansive and joyful life.  Per this society, what supersedes everything else is to unilaterally embrace what the common denominator dictates.  If you bow to the common denominator, you are safe.  You do not make any waves and everybody is pleased with your docile and obedient behavior.  You do not disrupt how society as a whole functions.  Allow yourself to be guided, and nothing bad can ever happen to you.  From this perspective, how are you able to address anything that you view as disturbing?  Why would you, anyway?  Do you really want to be accountable for sabotaging this mechanism that makes this highly messed-up world what it is today?  Would you defy fatalism by bringing solutions that would make it a much more breathable place?  Think twice, because it goes against what everyone else expects from you!

Do you have to share your concerns about what is going on in your relationships, so you can prove to yourself and others that you count?  If you are aware that your friend, partner, spouse or parent is utterly unable to hear what you have to say, for what reason would you proceed with the intention of opening your heart?  Do you have to tell it all, anyway?  Or have you decided that you owed everyone an explanation about the choices that you make in your life?  If the latter tends to rule your existence, remember how many times you were disappointed after having shared your viewpoints.  How often were your positions, convictions and awareness totally dismissed, because they did not fit what is commonly acceptable?  You do not owe anyone anything.  When you are in reality all alone in your relationship or your marriage, and you know that you must leave it not only to preserve your own sanity but also to resume growing, you are free to do so without having to justify your choice to anyone.  Your justifications would not be heard, anyway.

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The choice to speak up about an issue shows your willingness to be honest with what is going on in your life.  By doing so, you clearly demonstrate that you are willing to be truthful with your own self.  But it is not necessarily pleasant and comfortable.  So many people cannot handle the realization that they have been involved in dreadful marriages for over twenty years.  To acknowledge the truth can be assimilated to receiving a violent slap in the face.  To act upon it can sometimes be compared to being run over by a giant bulldozer.  However, the rewards are always tremendous and extremely quick to come.

Many folks have solidified to the extreme the fact that they have already missed out on the one opportunity of their respective lifetime to shine, create, meet, thrive and/or prosper.  Inside their minds, it is now too late to start generating anything that would have the strong potential to bring a different alternative to this dreadful routine that they have created, and from which they cannot extract themselves.  Is it truly what reality is, or is it a reality that they have chosen to construct, based on series of self-imposed limitations?  In this is the case, is the motto “before was better” solely a myth?  Moreover, what ulterior motives are needed, so this myth can be maintained in existence?  On the other end of the spectrum, do you believe that anyone can be empowered to seek and create better, greater, higher and stronger at any given moment?  For many men and women, the latter represents so much effort that they would rather surrender and cease to exist.

::: Who wants you to believe that yesterday was better? 

There are hundreds of millions of people out there who spend an immense majority of their time, if not all of it, complaining about what they do not have, what they should be entitled to have, and what they had in the past, which they have now lost, and for which they are so resentful today.  Would you like to take an honest look at these three categories, and assess whether you currently fit into one of them?  If you do, would you like to identify and acknowledge the benefits that you are gaining from cultivating such a demeanor?  What fundamental value is there to chew the reminiscence of something that is long gone and that cannot be altered?  What hidden agenda does it serve?  Who wants you to be pathetic?  Is that you, or are you embracing someone else’s viewpoint?  People who glorify the past give themselves no other choice but to be resentful today, because before was better and they do not have it anymore.  In other words, they set their lives up for failure.  They cannot be satisfied with what they presently have.  It will never top what they did have and that still represents the pinnacle of their existences today.

Isn’t living in the past the perfect justification for creating the perfect excuse for being strongly averse to change?  Isn’t it also a great way to avoid being bluntly truthful with yourself?  Furthermore, is choosing to be averse to change the tool of preference, so anything that comes your way is automatically and instantly swept under the carpet?  This is the ultimate means to escape your responsibilities, regardless of the severe backlash that this will trigger later on.  How many individuals do you know have this interesting propensity to bury their heads in the sand all the time?  Isn’t it what you have been taught to think, anyway?  To embrace the pleasant and discard the unpleasant, in spite of the consequences the latter will generate.  Not that many people are ready to step-up to the plate and be accountable for the decisions that they make, especially when the consequences happen to be absolutely horrendous.  By believing that today cannot matter anymore, it gives them the possibility to be reckless, irresponsible and dismissive towards others.  It is a form of convenience that is destructive not only for them but also for those who are exposed to them.

Do you believe that anyone has the power to impose his or her views on you and your life?  If you take a superficial look at what conditioning and programming are, you might be tempted to adopt the idea that you are malleable after all.  However, if you choose to acknowledge that you are empowered at all times to choose what you know would work best for you in the moment, this does not hold anymore.  It becomes everybody’s choice to be conditioned or programmed.  Even though living in the past and refusing to be present are widely spread behaviors inside this society, ultimately the choice to abdicate and let others take over your life is very much personal.  So, why do you want to believe that “before” was indeed better?  Why do you elect to erect grandiose shrines to the glory of your past?  Don’t you have the power to make the present even more grandiose?  It is a choice.  You can either surrender or continue to live.

::: What if you could still choose to enjoy a sixty-nine… at sixty-nine?

What do you need to change, so life does not have to stop abruptly simply because you have decided that your best years belong to the past?  Do you think that it is possible to be grateful for what you had before, regardless of the connotation that it carried at the time?  You could be immensely grateful for a successful professional career, a hot and attractive body, a great relationship, or even a wonderful Christmas surrounded by your entire family.  And why wouldn’t you also be grateful for a layoff, an unsatisfying body shape, a divorce, or not having been invited to a few all-so important New Year’s Eve parties?  The idea is that the past does indeed belong to the past.  It cannot be changed.  The only benefit that it can bring is your choice to learn from it, so you can identify all those patterns that you have embraced, and that have now ceased to function.  To make that your reality requires the necessity to be grateful for it all, especially the worst.  Remember, you are the sole creator of what your life looks like right here right now.  Therefore, the refusal to be grateful for what you have created up to this point is a negation of what you intrinsically are and the indelible mark of your utter refusal to learn from your past mistakes and successes.  Life is way too short to dismiss what needs to be changed.  Your existence must continually take a turn for the very best.  It requires a certain dose of courage to face those old demons or those choices that ultimately did not bring much positivity.  Are you ready to be honest, without judging yourself for having failed from time to time?  Nothing is ever too late.

Do you place much significance on your age?  Do you consider that you are too young or too old to dare thinking about all those dreams that you still have in mind and that you would love to see realized?  How many times have you heard, “Too young!” or, “Too old!” about pretty much everything, anyway?  In most societies, age is the one measurement that people undeniably use with intense nonchalance, so they can control others.  Age is segmented, and series of judgments are created, solidified and then associated to every single one of those segments.  “If you are laid off past fifty, good luck for finding a new job!” or “I am thirty-five and single, so I’ll never find a husband.”  Who is preventing you from finding true love for the first time at seventy-five or starting you own business at sixteen?  You have to do whatever it takes to thrive and prosper, despite the cruel fact that your environment is likely to dictate and impose its limitations on you.

What prevents you from enjoying a sixty-nine at sixty-nine?  The only person who ultimately has the power to judge you for expressing your desires is your own self.  What if the best were yet to come, regardless of how old you are?  Does it mean that you currently need to live your life waiting for the best, or could you enjoy every single bit of it right now, and despite what is going on?  When you are dead, it is all over.  It is way too late.  So there cannot be any room for regrets.  It is all happening right now.  You cannot be ashamed of your desires.  You will certainly be judged for them, but does it truly matter?  Why would you elect to suppress anything to satisfy anyone else but your own self?  This does not make any sense.

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If you are certain that the best is already behind you, may I suggest that you reconsider your opinion?  It is never too late to start living again.  Now is now. Now is not the future, and it is certainly not the past.  Whatever happened two minutes ago is over, gone, dead.  And I would actually challenge you to re-enact with precision what you did or said two minutes ago.  It is impossible.  So are you ready to leave your past where it belongs, which is in the past, and start fresh and new today, without having any ideas about what it is supposed to look like?

::: Are you in a relationship to serve a purpose?

Many men and women spend their entire lives seeking and then attempting to maintain relationships that are solely based on their constant need for convenience, comfort and (re)assurance.  This is their purpose in life, and every single relationship that they create is intended to serve it.  Any occurrence that produces an environment that differs from this objective is instantly rejected with much virulence.  The problem is that this purpose is never shared with whoever else is also involved in the equation.  And since the other party does not know what his or her mate covertly requires, he or she is given no other choice but to systematically fail.  Have you ever been this person who always needed to walk on egg shells?  Why was it your only alternative at the time?  You were certainly unable to grasp what was truly expected of you, simply because it was never communicated to you, openly and clearly.  As a result, you made successions of “mistakes” and you were harshly punished for each one of them.  Welcome to the way most relationships function inside this society!  They are about formulating needs that are never shared with the other.  Therefore the other and at a greater extent the relationship can only fail miserably for not fulfilling those needs.

Some people constantly have to create needs.  Those individuals have developed the destructive habit to believe that nothing can ever be enough.  So they always require more.  Every time they are able to attain a level of achievement that momentarily satisfies their expectations, it allows them to see life as something that is a tiny bit “less hard” to endure than usual.  Two words perfectly summarize this energy: emotional greed.  And emotional greed is a major component that leads to the creation of way too many relationships.  Emotional greed encourages people to connect with others, so they can push their agendas and, ultimately, make sure that their covert purposes are served.  Emotional greed appears when you make the decision that you are afraid of never having enough in your life, making this “never enough” an intrinsic element of your reality.  Relations are created in an attempt to fill this void and tone down this fear at all costs.  At least one party involved relentlessly uses the other, hoping that he or she will bring-in what is missing.  Are you presently in a relationship for similar reasons?  Do you need to be with someone who has to fill your emotional, financial and/or sexual void?  Do you need to meet an individual who fulfills this unspoken role?  Are you consequently ready to kill your next relationship before it even starts?

The categorical refusal to be alone is also a great generator of relationships that die before they even start.  This phobia of being alone is preponderant inside this society, because to be alone is often times judged as a sign of personal failure and as a total inability to be socially adequate.  It is considered as an inability to fit-in.  And how many people do you know are desperate to fit-in at all costs, so they finally have the feeling that they belong to something?  In reaction to their inability to assume such judgments, many folks conclude that they need someone else to find a meaning to their own lives.  But do you really need anyone else to function?  If you have decided that aloneness is utterly excruciating and therefore an impossible option for your existence, do you expose yourself to whichever choices and decisions your lifeline elects to make?  You lose all your powers.  As soon as you choose to rely on somebody else to fulfill your hidden agenda, you eliminate the notion of “ease” from all domains of your life.  In a nutshell, “ease” means empowering yourself to accept everything and everyone, positive and negative, invited and (especially) uninvited, without becoming subjected to anyone else’s environment and whichever things are created inside this environment.  Ease is what characterizes long-lasting happy and harmonious relationships with self, others and things.  It nurtures drama-free relations.

::: Can your relationship become your way toward the cross?

When you have decided that without a mate, your life is empty, what becomes of your own self?  Are you then fully dependent on your partner’s decisions, behaviors and moods, even if they absolutely do not work for you?  Moreover, does it give you any other choice but to hand all your powers over to this other person?  When that is the case, is there really anything else to which you can look forward, or have you already completely ceased to exist?  You may very likely convince yourself that since you are breathing, therefore you exist.  But deep inside, are you still alive?  You do not have to reach that point.  You do not have to let yourself grow tired of carrying this cross that represents the intolerable burden that your relationship has become over time.  Because once it is all over, what do you do?  What is left of you?  And what do you choose next?  What do you do with your emotional baggage?  Do you create something new with someone else, and that ends-up being your new way toward the cross?  Do you still embrace your emotional greediness and repeat the exact same mistakes?  Or do you rather choose to sit for a minute, take a deep breath, assess how you have been functioning in regard to all your relationships until now, and choose differently, even if it means that you may have to remain alone for a while?  Are you ready to be judged as a complete loser, even if others have no clue that you are rebuilding yourself, so you can finally honor your own self and choose consciously from this point forward?

Should you continue to waste your time looking for love where it does not exist?  Isn’t it finally time to stop allocating all your energy on maintaining this artifact that you call “love,” so you can conceal the harsh reality that you are definitely not involved in a healthy and harmonious relationship with your partner and with your own self?  Are you ready to acknowledge that some of the relationships that you have created were dead way before they even started to exist?  Unless it still serves a purpose to be this martyr who continually carries a cross, symbol of all your emotional sufferings and your unavoidable shortfalls.  What you think is love is in reality nothing more than a vulgar notion that you have fabricated, so you are able to relate to the mediocrity of the masses in an effort to perpetually reassure yourself that life is not all that bad after all and that you are not alone.  How about putting an end to the martyrdom?  Are you ready to take an honest look at your choices and see whether loving and appreciating yourself truly requires anyone else’s presence, physical and/or emotional?  Are you ready to see others as additions to your life, and not as substitutions to what you are?

There are folks out there who are purposely in relationships for the wrong reasons.  “Wrong reasons” refers to all those expectations and decisions, which are based on personal need and emotional greed, and that people create so they can target this one specific person who (hopefully) will successfully fulfill those needs.  When expectations of fulfillment are placed on others, they immediately become the sole foundations of the relationship.  Expectations are very diverse and, most of the time, they defy all sense of logic.  They can be based on emotional, financial and/or sexual needs.  They can also be based on the credit, the validation and the acknowledgement that some people must obtain from others, since it gives them the confirmation that they indeed exist.  However, what ineluctably happens when the other party stops living up to those (unspoken) expectations?  The relationship ends and a strong sentiment of resentment surfaces, because the return on investment is viewed as null.  This is when reactions such as, “I have wasted ten years of my life in this marriage” start kicking in.

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What makes you believe that you are actually not in total control of your own life?  Is it the result of all this programming to which you have been subjected, and that implicitly stipulates that handing all your powers over to someone else is the only viable alternative at your disposal, so you can grow?  When you have decided that you must wait for others, so your life can finally take a certain turn, where do you place yourself in the equation of your own life? 

Most people are pretty good at supplying a never-ending list of reasons to justify every single one of their decisions, especially the poor ones.  Why is that?  The answer lies in the way society functions.  Individuals are programmed and trained to constantly construct cop-outs, so they can find excuses to their own behaviors, even the most outrageous ones.  If this inclination does not work for you anymore, may I invite you to assess what is still triggering this insatiable desire to give other people the benefit of the doubt?

::: Is the need to please others an aversion to honoring yourself first?

Only a very small minority of people have had the chance to be taught that putting themselves first in the equation of their respective life was indeed a possibility.  Based on that premise, what do all the others instinctively choose to do?  They elect to please everyone else but themselves.  Furthermore, they measure their personal success based on the number of individuals that they are able to please, regardless of the consequences such actions have on their own existence.  The consequences are horrendous though.  Compulsive pleasers allow themselves to become the preys of all those emotional predators who seek to push their destructive ulterior motives at all costs.  As soon as the pleaser starts the pleasing process, he or she automatically begins renouncing who he or she intrinsically is.  It is solely about everybody else.  And the pressure to maintain this dynamic increases when demands become more and more extravagant.  If those demands are not met, the pleaser is at risk of finding himself or herself alone.  And he or she does not see such eventuality as a viable option.

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”  Is this not a wonderful invitation to annihilate all forms of awareness, under the assumption that your kindness to others should mechanically generate some level of reciprocity?  How many times has your choice to embrace this mantra (excerpt from the scriptures) created pain, resentment, sadness, disgust and anger in your life?  By assuming those words today, do you become vulnerable to anyone who is going to use and abuse you repeatedly, until you (hopefully) choose to wake up one day?  The problem is that “one day” may be way too late.  So, how about deconstructing and eliminating right now all those decisions that you have made, and that pertain to how magnificent this world is?  It is definitely a jungle out there, and the fittest is not the one who will survive.  The ones who choose to be aware and conscious all the time will predominate.

Do you think that systematically placing others before you hides in reality a much greater and certainly more toxic agenda?  The pleaser’s life is entirely ruled by the need to constantly please anyone but himself or herself.  If you think about it for a minute, isn’t that the perfect reason for not having to look at oneself?  How convenient, right?  When you do not create time for you, you cannot evaluate the pertinence of your choices.  You are utterly unable to value where you stand in your life.  This is an open door to embracing successions of unconscious demeanor that create dreadful outcomes.  Why is it so difficult to acknowledge?  Per this society, if you do not rush to please someone else before you dare starting to think about you, you are instantly labeled as selfish, disrespectful and unkind.  As a result, so many men and women choose to deliberately divorce themselves, so they can appear favorable to others while forgetting about their own behaviors.

::: Can anyone ever take advantage of you?

Fatality does not exist.  You are empowered to make the right choices for you and your loved ones at any time.  But if you persist in taking unconscious decision, to say “I did not know” is not receivable.  To rather say “I did not want to know” sounds more like it because it is honest.  Are you ready to abandon once for all this false idea that it is indeed easier to close your eyes, so you can cruise through life as smoothly as possible?  Every single time you elect to discount what you know is best for you, it always comes back to bite you pretty hard.  And the consequences become harder to undo.  Should you rush to blame those people you had initially trusted for the consequences of your choices?  Even though it may be a reflex, since it is so much more comfortable to make it someone else’s fault, this is counter-productive because it contributes to obstruct your view even more.  Now it is true that blaming others for your poor choices may be a pattern that you have continually observed all around you growing up.  Therefore, to perpetuate the pattern feels quite easy and satisfying.  But if such an option keeps you and your life stuck inside a tiny and hermetic black box, it is certainly worth reconsidering.  To open your eyes and fight this utter refusal to be accountable for some of your choices is unpleasant, but it is also a necessity.  This has the potential to change everything, so life can never be mediocre again.

This world is full of men and women who do not have your best interest at heart.  They are only concerned about taking from you, until there is nothing left to take.  When that finally happens, they move on to another prey.  You may think that you have nothing tangible to offer, and still they are here, surrounding you and ready to take advantage of you.  Money, emotions, it does not matter, because everything is worth grabbing.  But do they really take advantage of you, or do you allow them to do so?  Most people thrive on receiving compassion.  They even sabotage themselves for the sake of triggering compassion from their peers.  They meticulously create situations, so they can fail.  They set themselves up!  What agenda do you intend to push every time you allow someone to take advantage of you?  What is it that you need so badly and that ultimately forces you to create such a precarious situation?  Is it a thirst for attention?  The best intention that you can receive is the one that you give yourself.  No one else can provide that for you.  Is it the need to self-destruct, so you can get compassion?  To self-destruct obviously leads to your destruction.  Then what more of you remains?

You cannot be angry at those individuals who take advantage of a situation that you have originally created and that has now ceased to accommodate you.  To put the responsibility of your actions on anyone else but yourself is the weakest alternative possible.  One precept that has been deeply entrenched for ages stipulates that you cannot be wrong.  If you believe that, therefore blaming someone else for your mistakes is unfortunately your only choice.  However, is it truly potent and pertinent?  Does it give you the possibility to learn, grow, expand, thrive and prosper?  Or is it nothing more than a perpetual mechanism that creates disappointment, resentment, mediocrity and regression, as well as a pathetic way to hide a deep state of desperation?  The refusal to be accountable is an emotional epidemic that has been transmitted for centuries, from one generation to the next.  It is present in all spheres of society.  It does not generate progress, consciousness, momentum, awareness, or prosperity.  Like most epidemics, it can be deadly.  What differentiates this epidemic from others is the rapidity with which it spreads, simply because no resources are allocated to find a cure.  Why produce efforts to discover a cure that would go against one of the laws that rules this world, anyway?  Remember, you have to be right, no matter what!  But what is the price to pay?

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Emotional predators are everywhere, and they know how to choose their preys wisely.  And you do not have to be one of those preys.  If you choose to be honest with yourself and consequently remain fully aware at all times, you cannot be forced into any fraudulent interactions.  The constant willingness to look at yourself in the mirror is certainly the one habit that you want to embrace.  It may be painful at first but it is necessary if you desire to thrive in all areas of your life.

::: In reality, have you always resented compromising?

Do you truly believe that compromising is the only alternative at your disposal, so you can finally find a way out of what looks like an inextricable situation?  When you know that your point has absolutely no chance of coming across, is that your preferred escape?  Is compromising what you use when you are about to surrender?  But ultimately, what is there to surrender?  Do you even want to attempt answering this question?  Because it may be safer to allocate all your energy trying to convince yourself that you are only passing on a thought, a choice or a desire, since it is never gratifying to admit that you are bluntly giving up on yourself.  Now who told you that it was more than fine to give up so easily on your dreams, so you could accommodate everyone else?  This is completely insane and unconscious.  Every time you reach a compromise, you erode what you are, one piece at a time.  And guess what happens when there is nothing left to be eroded.  You are gone.  You do not exist anymore.  By definition, to compromise is to settle by mutual concessions.  How does settling make you feel?  Is it what you have forced yourself to do most of your life?  And so far, how satisfying has it been?

What do you honestly have to gain from adjusting yourself to a situation or to someone else’s demand?  When you elect to settle, so you can be accommodating, does it truthfully celebrate what you are and what you have accomplished up to this point in your life?  Are you fully satisfied or do you wish that you had chosen differently?  What prevents you from choosing differently though?  Would you like to recall the last time you ended up compromising?  Why didn’t you choose what had the potential to work so much better for you at that moment?  Were you afraid to confront what others might have thought or said about you?  Was it the fear of being judged as difficult or egotistical?  Or were you apprehending the risk of being excommunicated from your social and/or professional circles for your opinion?  Did you notice that the three reasons I have just exposed have strictly nothing to do with you?  They are all about other people’s reactions.  So what if compromising were indeed the ultimate lie by which so many have opted to live their lives?  To compromise is about pleasing others while giving up on your own self.

May I invite you to grasp the energy that lies behind “settling” and “adjusting”?  Even though they are often times considered as qualities and used to qualify someone who is socially adequate, how do they sound to you?  Do they feel expansive or rather constricting?  Each time you choose to settle or adjust yourself, where do you end-up in the equation of your own life?  What part of you do you have to surrender every single time you make the choice to compromise?  Remember, once there is nothing left of you to give up, you have ceased to exist.  To compromise does not give you any other choice but to tone down everything that you are, so the greater number can work something out, at your expense.  In other words, all the parties involved are required to suppress what they are, so the common denominator can prevail.  This is a total negation of your own person.

When I was in second grade, there was a kid who enjoyed bullying me during each recess.  His parents were also friends with my parents.  One day, his mother called my mother to invite me to her son’s birthday party.  My mother immediately answered for me, saying that I would be delighted to attend.  When I told my parents that there was no way I would go to this kid’s party, they asked me to behave “as an adult,” which at seven years old did not sound like a lot of fun.  My parents asked me to compromise.  They told me to go to the party, so I could prove to myself that I was not intimidated while avoiding hurting their friends’ feelings.  When I arrived at the kid’s house, he punched me and ran away.  At that point, I realized how ridiculous compromising was.  It was certainly not a “win” situation for me!

::: Do you really want your loved ones to be suppressed?

Would you want your partner, your children or your friends to suppress themselves in the relation that they have with you?  Do you think that you should suppress what you are to be in a relation with either one of them?  If it is the case, to me this is called “abuse.”  To make sure that either you or the other party divorces himself or herself, so the relationship can subsist is totally abusive.  But if this is the type of dynamic to which you are accustomed, is there a price that you need to pay to ensure its continuation?  Is it really acceptable to divorce oneself in a relationship, so all parties are able to reach a middle of the road solution?  Unfortunately, this is what most people have been programmed to believe.  In their mind, it is the only solution that can create a supposedly satisfying environment for all parties concerned.  I see it as a lose-lose scenario.  No one is truly happy.  When personal satisfaction is so highly fragmented, there cannot be a possible win-win dynamic.

Have you ever had the perception that you were giving up a part of your own self in the process of compromising?  What does compromising really entail, anyway?  Charles and Marie can never reach a compromise on where to spend their summer vacation.  Last year, he wanted to visit a couple of Greek islands and she wanted to rent a house on the French Riviera.  Where did they end up?  Where they live all year long:Paris.  The year before, Marie was looking at Turkey and he was attracted to the South of Spain.  They finally decided to go to Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where neither one of them truly wanted to be.  Did spending their vacation at home in Paris or compromising onSwitzerlandbring either one of them pleasure and satisfaction?  Certainly not.  How much anger was suppressed as it rained continuously during their vacation in Switzerland and each of them read in the local newspaper that temperatures were ideal in Turkey and Spain?  How much of this anger then exploded at the first opportunity to start a fight?

How many times have you heard, “In most relationships, not everyone can always be happy about a given outcome.”?  Why start a potentially blissful interaction between two individuals with defeatism?  Why not choosing to explore a different possibility instead?  How about talking, processing and assessing what would bring entire satisfaction to all parties that are involved in the process, even if what comes out of it drastically differs from what the initial plan was supposed to look like?  The problem is that most men and women refuse to have this kind of talk.  Their ego, their insecurities and their defensiveness prevent them from embracing this option.  They’d rather fight to impose their viewpoint, before capitulating and being unhappy with the outcome.  And they will always use this frustration as ammunition for later.  This is utterly ridiculous and so counter-productive.  To compromise is a reflection of the unwillingness that most people have to discuss with one another.  Instead of building up, they choose to scale down.  How about building up, without setting any limits!?

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To compromise does not exist in a healthy, harmonious and expansive relationship.  If you feel like spending the weekend in Sedona and your husband wishes to spend it skiing in Lake Tahoe, you are free to go your own way.  And you may even end-up together in Los Angeles, because you have changed your mind and because you both desire it.  To compromise calls for the need to come up with a solution that will accommodate everybody.  Look at the energy behind the verb “to accommodate.”  How does it make you feel?  Do you have to go out of your way to accommodate someone else?  Do you have to make concessions and hence give up a part of yourself to do that?  This cannot work.

What do people commonly say about love and loyalty?  If you want to get an idea, simply go to the movies, and you will see how society in its ensemble defines them.  Truthfully, after having heard, “I love you. You’re my only reason to stay alive.” or “I will do anything to deserve your love.” how many times have tears dropped down your cheeks?  Perhaps do you think that no one can top such heights in term of romance and profoundness?  Do you wish that you lover had the ability to articulate his feelings just like Robert Redford did in “The Way We Were,” so he can prove how deeply attached he is to you?  Are love and loyalty the foundations on which lie all your relationships?  If they carry this type of energy, you may be in deep trouble.

::: Can “love” be one of the biggest hypocrisies ever? 

“I love you.”  What went through your mind the very first time a boyfriend or a girlfriend said those words to you?  Dubitatively, did you think, “That’s interesting.  He’s saying that he loves me!”?  Or did it create the idea that you were for a fact involved in a serious, exclusive and meaningful relationship that was now evolving at a much greater speed?  Maybe, did you instantly construct expectations?  Did you project yourself in the future, by assuming that he would love you unconditionally forever?  Did you reach right away the conclusion that he would always be there for you, no matter what?  Did you instantaneously think that you had finally achieved “it”—that you were presently in a solid and therefore successful relationship?  Did you start to believe that you had become the most important person in his life?  To hear “I love you” instigates loads of assumptions.  But how many ended up being true?  How many nights did you spend crying, asking yourself how you could have been so stupid and so naïve?  Or are you still in denial and wasting all your energy persisting to view him as your one and only love?

There are individuals who spend their entire lives looking for a partner who is going to love them unconditionally.  And as soon as they have found him, life is all about getting constant confirmation that love is indeed unconditional.  In other words, “I love you” is not sufficient anymore.  The unconditionality that supposedly defines the love that itself defines the relationship is all that matters.  It is the proof that supersedes everything else.  Anything less is out of question.  But what is unconditional love, anyway?  Does it signify that whatever happens, the love that both partners have for each other can never budge?  Have you ever stopped living up to your spouse’s expectations?  If that is the case, what suddenly happened to the unconditionality of this love that was defining your marriage?  Did it disappear?  Did the love abruptly become conditional?  And were you even aware of the existence of an expectation?

A few years ago, Grace and I were invited to the wedding of a former colleague of mine, Bradley.  Standing at the altar before the priest, he promised to unconditionally love his wife Monica for the rest of his life.  Yet, four years later, he divorced her.  It occurred immediately after her parents had been forced to sell most of their assets to repay large debts that they had incurred.  Bradley realized that Monica would not inherit anything, including the cabin atLake Tahoethat he had always expected to own one day.  Monica had not done anything; she had not changed her behavior in any way.  But because of her parents’ losses, she was no longer able to fulfill his unspoken expectations.  Bradley’s unconditional love was a fraud.  Isn’t unconditional love the biggest hoax you have ever heard of?  People are lured by the certainty that they are loved unconditionally.  Then suddenly, the love is over.  What happened?  The love ended because the unspoken expectations and assumptions on which the love was based were not met.

::: Is “loyalty” another condition to love?

Very much like love, loyalty sounds like a wonderful concept but just in theory, because it is also widely misused to abuse people.  When an individual requires from you to be loyal as a way of honoring the love or the appreciation that he or she has for you, what does it really entail?  Is it an invitation to be aware, so you can look for yourself at this person’s actions and see whether they work for you?  Or does it mean that you have to blindfold yourself and go along with anything that he or she does and wants, regardless of how that may affect you?  In most families, loyalty forces people to blindfold themselves.  I once met Christopher, who got into a dispute with a few of his wife’s siblings regarding business issues, and who was ultimately sued by them.  Christopher expected loyalty from his wife’s other siblings who were not a part of the lawsuit; however, they chose not to side with anyone.  Today, his wife is the one who pays the price.  She barely sees her brothers and sisters anymore out of “loyalty” to her husband.  Loyalty has become a condition to their love.

Loyalty is not a choice.  It is a decision that people make.  And like most decisions, it is often times firm and final.  There is no way back.  There is no changing one’s mind.  In this society, those who dare to change their mind are judged heavily.  They are chastised.  They are considered as unstable, lacking of ambition and weak.  Who would want to be labeled as such, right?  So to avoid the judgments of others, the only issue is to stick to a decision at all costs, even if it carries dreadful consequences.  And this is what loyalty is all about.  It is the obligation to stick by someone’s choices, no matter what.  It means to be faithful to a person to whom fidelity is due.  When you are involved in a relationship, per this society your love is due to your partner.  You owe him fidelity.  Therefore, you must be loyal to him at all times.  If you dare thinking for yourself and deviating from your partner’s viewpoints and agendas, you betray the sacrosanct bond that this society has established.  The problem is that such bond is founded on the need to systematically control the one who is loyal.  You are then punished with an extreme severity.  But isn’t embracing the punishment worth the preservation of your integrity?

::: Is there an alternative to love?          

Have you decided that love is stronger than adversity?  Do you think that it is really true?  Have you decided that since he loves you, he will definitely change for the better?  Well, has he started yet?  Have you considered the possibility that love, as it is defined in our society, is loaded with conditions that are highly destructive and so counter-productive?  This love does not overcome anything.  It may look as though it is about being together, but this love solely creates cleavages and divisions among people.  It has nothing to do with harmony, expansion, consciousness, or being totally present with oneself and the other person.  It is based on series of unspoken assumptions and expectations that are intended to manipulate and control the other person.  This is unfortunately the essence of a great majority of relationships in existence.

If this love is a hoax, is there another alternative?  There is always another alternative, as long as you choose to see that it exists and that you do not look for it outside of yourself.  You are free to love your own way.  You are totally empowered to define “love” as you wish, so it satisfies you and it also honors all those men and women with whom you elect to share it.  You do not have to comply with the rules and dogmas that society has established, especially if they do not work for you.  Your love does not have to carry any conditions.  And the best way to determine whether your love carries any conditions is to think of an uncomfortable event that occurred in the past.  Think of an ex-partner who has hurt you.  Has this episode made you stronger today?  If not, could it have the potential to make you stronger today?  Could you still have appreciation today for this person you loved yesterday?  Certainly!  When you love without judging, you are thankful for anything that anyone has brought in your life. This is how you learn from your past mistakes and continue to grow.  But this is only possible if you truly love yourself without conditions, which means that you never judge what you are and you never judge your choices.

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Most people will do anything they can, so they can control, abuse and manipulate others.  And “love” is a tool of choice among many others.  If you are confronted to a situation where love is used against you, instead of being utilized as an instrument of expansion and bliss, will you have the courage to step up to the plate and end such a destructive dynamic?  If you believe that “love is blind,” it is a major issue.  Have you ever dishonored yourself, by thinking that since someone loved you, whatever hurtful action he or she took did not matter?  Have you decided that love was stronger than someone else’s cruelty or meanness?  Did you excuse their actions by deciding that they did not mean it in the first place?  What unkind behavior have you excused based on the pretense that the other person loved you?

Do you currently have a friendship that is completely drama-free with someone of the opposite sex, in the sense that there is absolutely no unspoken expectation whatsoever?  If you answer yes a bit too rapidly, I would encourage you to take a truthful look at your feelings and to open your eyes wide, so you can assess what your friend’s true motivations are.  Maybe is he a “friend with benefits?”  Under this scenario, sex is not taboo, which represents a significant advantage.  However a challenge still subsists.  The man and the woman must not judge themselves for mixing friendship and casual sex, and neither one of them must secretly seek a relationship.  Good luck…

::: Is it that reprehensible to be sexually attracted to a friend?  

A platonic relationship is always possible but, ultimately, isn’t it destined to be short-lived?  What primarily creates this attraction that generates the desire that a man and a woman have to connect?  Is it a physical attribute, an intellectual proficiency, a social or a professional status?  These are superficial viewpoints that you have been trained to embrace, so you can make choices according to constructed and often times imposed standards.  But if you erase such programming from your mind, the element that truly triggers your interest to connect with someone of the other sex has nothing to do with a measurement or a judgment.  In reality, it is an energy that captivates your attention and that fills your body and your mind with a sensation that only euphoric sex can produce.  If you truthfully choose to be in tune with all your senses when you meet someone with whom you want to develop a friendship, regardless of the gender, you will experience this very particular sensation.  It feels good, warm, nurturing, safe and orgasmic.  So the exact same energy that is experienced during euphoric sex is the key-element that attracts you to another individual.

As soon as you or your friend acknowledges that the friendship was built on the premises of an energy that replicates the sensations that only great sex can offer, the friendship becomes totally biased.  The pretense of maintaining a platonic relation cannot hold any longer.  In this case, what are your options?  Do you come clean and reveal the content of your realizations?  Well, this can be quite risky.  First, the decision to confess that the friendship was in reality based on a sexual energy can have one major dreadful consequence: that your friend refuses to admit that he or she had the same motives and now blames you for opening-up.  In all two-way interactions, it takes two to tango.  What you initially felt is no different from what he or she initially felt as well.  No one was forced to commit to a platonic relationship that was certainly not one from the very beginning, anyway.  However, the utter refusal to acknowledge a reality led to a farce.  Second, your friend who refuses to openly admit his or her true feelings, certainly out of shame or embarrassment, will use your honesty as a tool for emotional extortion.  And how can you react to someone who says, “How could you do this to me?  I thought we were friends!”?  Don’t you feel compelled to do whatever it takes to appease your accuser?

In this day and age, male-female interactions cannot be avoided, whether they happen in a professional or in a social setting.  In this world, to be involved in a romantic relationship is viewed as an absolute necessity, because of the heavy judgments that are directed toward those who have not found their mate yet.  In this society, most marriages are utterly horrendous and the courage to walk away is quasi-inexistent.  And such cowardice pushes those unhappy souls to seek comfort in the reassuring words of a friend, with the hope that it will soon turned into the arms of a lover.  Now who benefits more from those types of interactions?  Is it a win-win situation for all parties involved?  Can everyone be rewarded emotionally?  Or does it rather tend to be a one-way street, where the individual who is convinced of the pertinence of his or her unspoken feelings has a definite edge?

::: Ultimately, is a man-woman friendship no different from a man-woman relationship?

Aren’t the expectations exactly the same, at least in the beginning?  A man-woman relationship starts on the exact same premises as a man-woman friendship, excepted for the fact that in the relationship, sex is supposed to quickly become an intrinsic part of the equation.  How often have you claimed that you had finally met your best friend on the day you thought that you had met your life partner, or the other way around?  Both types of relations cannot be dissociated.  They originate from the exact same energy.  This is why the sexual desire, whether it is cognitive, is omnipresent in the friendship, whereas it tends to disappear over time in the relationship.  It is in most individuals’ nature to crave what they cannot get.  Consequently, when they are unable to gratify their sexual appetite because the friendship does not allow them to be open and forward about their true desires, they stick around, hoping that intercourse happens one day.  When it does happen, the unspoken goal has been reached, and the choice to maintain the friendship does not make much sense any more.  There is a progressive loss of interest, and the interaction slowly dies.  This is also what happens in a great majority of relationships.  One party grows tired and disinterested, and the relation ceases to exist.  To avoid loneliness, it then becomes urgent to construct a friendship with someone of the opposite sex, hoping that this relation includes sex at some point down the road.  This is the extra-marital affair.

Most men and women are ashamed of their feelings and desires, especially when those revolve around sex.  For reasons that only their upbringings and self-imposed beliefs and values can explain, the reluctance to acknowledge and own such feelings and desires is utterly painful, if not totally impossible.  So it generates interactions that are toxic before they even start.  If we consider that all male-female friendships are based on a sexual energy, can you sense the level of intrinsic discomfort that systematically rules the lives of those friendships?  Behind the laughter, the discussions, the commonalities and the activities, there is a lot of resentment since the sexual desire is suppressed.  And any glitch in the interaction, certainly because of something trivial that was said but surprisingly misinterpreted, is in reality a reflection of this sexual desire that is so difficult to continue suppressing.  This is when all the emotional baggage that was accumulated from all past failed relationships and friendships emerges again.  And it is fueled by all the vexations inherent to a friendship that is not going the way it was implicitly expected to go.  The person who becomes the recipient of the other’s sudden anger and frustrations cannot choose any other alternative but to be defensive and defiant, in reaction to his or her own inability to express his or her true intentions.

For what reasons do most individuals refuse to create clean interactions with people of the opposite sex?  They are in relationships, they have circles of friends, and none of these relations is healthy.  Is it because of the presence of an insatiable sexual desire that cannot be revealed?  Is it because of a sexual desire that was finally satisfied, and now there is nothing exciting left to look into?  If you take the need for physical sex away from all these equations, then a new possibility can emerge that will not disrupt the dynamic.  When contemplating your involvement in a healthy relationship or friendship, the sole alternative is the necessity to be totally judgment-free.  Without it, either one is deemed to fail sooner or later.  This certainly goes against all the programming and conditioning to which most folks have been subjected and the way this world functions, where judgments must be an intrinsic part of all interactions.

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Platonic love does not exist.  Friendships with benefits work as long as all parties involved get their share of the benefits.  Beyond that, it is important to note that all friendships are based on an initial attraction that carries a strong sexual energy.  It does not necessarily mean that it is a desire to have sex.  It is nothing more than just a sexual energy.  And anyone who judges sex in any shape or form cannot have healthy friendships and, of course, relationships.  If you assume the entirety of your thoughts, which means that you do not judge them, then the male-female friendship is possible.