In our last session we read a letter from a woman who said she had had an affair with a man in her office, and now she couldn’t get rid of him. He kept hanging around her desk and making up reasons to do things with her. I suggested that she was ALLOWING him to do that because she felt worthless because of the mistake she had made with him. Now back to the writer of the letter.
As long as you confuse making MISTAKES with being WORTHLESS, you’ll allow this man to do whatever he wants to you. So what can you do to change things here?
First, you need to understand that simply learning some things to say and do will not do the trick for you. You need to change who you ARE. You had this affair in the first place because you didn’t feel loved, and THAT is what must change. Do what it takes to find Real Love in your life. Learn about it, find people to love you, and spend all the time you can with such people. You can learn about that here on the website and in the Real Love literature. Tell the truth about yourself to those people. Tell them straight up: “I was stupid. I made a dumb mistake. I had an affair instead of finding Real Love.” Of course, you have to understand that at the time you didn’t know any better, so it was virtually inevitable that you would have made a mistake of SOME kind, be it an affair or SOMETHING. I’m not making an excuse for you, just explaining what you did. Then allow those loving people to love you until you don’t feel ASHAMED of who you are. You’re not BAD. You just screwed up in the process of learning how to change your life and become a loving, responsible person.
Then, while you’re in the process of learning to find love, you can deal with this man who is wasting your time. You do NOT have to put up with that, and you also don’t have to respond in an angry way. Simply decide what projects you absolutely HAVE to do with him. In fact, do what you can to MINIMIZE them. You could probably even talk to your supervisor to further minimize the projects you work on with this guy. Then, when he comes around to talk about ANYTHING other than what is absolutely necessary, you look at him and say, “I’m busy. I have work to do.” And then you look back down at your work. Be courteous. Don’t be angry. You’re simply telling him what you have to do.
If he keeps talking, you look at him again and say, “I have work to do. Was there any part of this that you didn’t understand?” He might be offended. That is HIS choice, not YOUR problem. Don’t allow YOUR guilt to take on HIS problems. There might be a choice here: HE can be offended, or YOU can have your time at worked controlled by this man. Which way do you want to go? If he STILL keeps it up, stand up from your desk and tell him that you’ll be going to your supervisor to request that he leave you alone so you can get your assigned work done. Quite reasonable on your part. He’ll leave.
Being loving does not mean you have to be a doormat. Your affair is over. Now, let it BE over. Be free of it. You deserve to be free.
