Hi my name is Ricardo, I'm 18 years old (almost 19), and I write from Mexico.

I have visited Plum Village website several times, and today I came across the Sharing section. It is very good to find this kind of sections which can be truly inspiring.

 

What I want to share is my story of wrong perceptions in love relationships.

 

First of all, I was 15 years old when I had my first girlfriend. She lived only with her mother, because her parents divorced some years before. She was not a happy girl, because she always doubted herself, and she was always competing with our friends and me to be better, to be the best. At that time, I was not absolutely aware of how much she was suffering, mainly because I was focused in school and having fun with my friends, as all teenagers seem to do. I became his boyfriend just because another boy who was not nice to me wanted to be with her, and sort of a competition started between he and I to see who would stay with her. I never felt love with her. I knew I was fine with her, I felt good with her, but it never became a very strong feeling from my part. However, she actually claimed to be in love with me. In spite of this, she liked other boys, and sometimes she tried to make me jealous of that. Instead of feeling jealousy, I started to feel dissapointed, because this was a symptom of confussion in her heart. On one side she tried to retain and have my love, but on another side, she was also interested on another guy. This, and some other things, like her competitive spirit, and her greed to be better that me, started to take away my interest on her.

 

When I became totally dissapointed, I met another girl. My inner voice told me from the very first day I saw her that she would become very important in my life. I tried to think about why, but there were no arguments, reasons, or explanations, it was just my intuition. We would have to spend a lot of time together, because we were doing social service for highschool. The conversations we had were amazing. We seemed to have a lot in common, and I started to notice that she was a much more balanced girl than my first girlfriend. I used to tell her about my girlfriend's behaviour, and she made me know that she was not like that.

Despite of our social service, the schedules didn't match completely, so I was not seeing the new girl daily. By that time, my girlfriend's behaviour was much more complicated, but I was not worried about that. I knew she wasn't for me, and I searched for psychological help for her. She was depressed and I didn't understand the way she thought. However, I could never help her well. I felt drowned in her problems, and I decided to move on and break our relationship. I never thought she was bad. Actually, I thought the only real problem was her perspective on things. That's why I never took the time to listen to her or help her. I lacked of compassion, I think.

 

When summer ended, I knew I had another great time to have fun with my friends at highschool. I had a daily class with the girl I met in the social service, so I would have time to be with her. We met each other quite well, and we knew there was a lot of chemistry between us. I liked her. She liked me. But one day, I heard she had a new boyfriends, and gossips were right. She spend with his boyfriend a lot of time together, about one year and some months. However, the girl sometimes confessed me she still liked me, and her boyfriend knew about it.

 

Then I met another girl, and I had to make a great effort to be with her. At first, she rejected me, and after I persisted, I finally managed to be with her. But, in the mean time, all I thought about was her, I was kind of obsessed with that girl, and I didn't know why. The time we spend together was very very good. I can remember it perfectly. I was truly in love, and so was her. My parents soon knew, and for some reasons, they were totally against this relationship. So everything went down. I felt really bad for this, and so did her. We did not break up at first, but we were just taking some time, and in that time she started dating another boy, and that made me feel very bad again. Then, she knew she had made a mistake, and she tried to come back to me. But we were both suffering. I suffered because of my parents' actions, and because of her actions. She suffered because of my parents' actions and she felt so alone without me, that she started dating another boy so that she didn't feel so bad. At the moment, I didn't even try to understand her. I just suffered.

 

Then, the end of highschool was near. There was only one semester left. It had been 2 years since I met the girl from the social service. We were always in touch during highschool. Suddenly, life gave us the opportunity to be in the same daily class for the last semester, and this was great. At that time, I doubted of the possibility to be with her. Because, it had passed a lot of time since I met her. But, being classmates, see each other daily, and sit next to the other one, triggered the relationship. We were so happy that we were finally together, that we thought that we had wasted those 2 years. Everything was joyful. I had very very good memories of our first months together. It was like heaven on earth. We were fascinated, and at the end of highschool everyone could see a smile in our faces all the time. Then, summer came, and it was an exact year since I broke up with the girl my parents didn't like. I never thought of her again, because the relationship I had with the girl from the social service was amazing. However, she spent the whole summer in the countryside, because of her family. I started to doubt about us. I felt so insecure, and the things she did started to hurt me. The few days that she came to the city and we saw each other, were not good as they were once. Then, when we entered to (the same) University, I thought we were breaking up, but that didn't happen. Instead, we had a really good time. However, problems came back, and I expressed to her my feelings of insecurity and jealousy, because she was always thinking and seeing another boy. She became disappointed, and the relationship went down. By that time, I bought Thich Nhat Hanh's "Peace is Every Step", my first contact to buddhism and mindfulness. But it was too late to fix the things with this girl, because she was with another boy. And I was very very hurt.

 

After some months, I met another girl. By that time, I wished a lot to have another relationship. I met her, and I knew she wasn't the one for me. She tends to judge everything and everyone. But my urgence to be in a couple made me pressure things and start dating her. I always felt bad with her, but I was there, expecting that our relationship suddenly changed and that everything would be alright. I always did my best, but it was never enough for her, and that hurt me. But, I didn't have the courage to break up, because I always wanted and actually believed everything would be right. Then, I knew that I meant nothing to her. Maybe we could be just friends, but she said there was no chemistry between us, and she was right.

 

By that time, I was reading "The River of Feelings" chapter of Peace is Every Step, and I knew I was not mindful. I started to practice mindfulness, and to be aware of my own beliefs, perceptions, and limited patterns. I was very hurt, and I discovered the cause of my feelings. I discovered that the insecurity I had the summer the girl from the social service and I were couple, came from the relationship that suddenly ended because of my parents, and from the way that girl reacted when my parents knew (she went to another boy). I knew, that I was repeting the limited pattern of losing one that I love, and of being abandoned for another person. That chapter of my life brought me fear, anxiety, insecurity, and unhealthy relationships. Then, I realize that I never took the time to cry or to let my feelings flow, so I was carrying the suffering of three failure relationships. I cried. I cried while I remembered everything. I became totally aware of what I was doing to myself. I knew what I was doing to my heart, and I apologized to myself. I cried all the tears I should have cried the moments I suffered. But I smiled. I smiled because finally I knew the reasons of my suffering. I smiled because that day I became free from it. I SMILED because I learned one of the most important lessons in my life, which actually came from inside of me, from my own experience. And I wrote this poem:

 

---

 

The phrase which illustrates the lesson that I learned after all this time is: WE MUST FIND INSIDE OF US WHAT WE SEARCH IN THE OUTSIDE.

 

Thanks for reading this long story. I hope it is useful for someone. I had a good time writing this, and now I don't even feel bad for these things that happened in the past. Thanks to the practice of mindfulness, I became aware of the reasons of my suffering, and I could transform them into a complete magical lesson.

Now, I am prepared to Love and to be Loved. And now I know that I cannot lose anything, and mostly, that I love myself.

 

Regards,

 

Ricardo.

 

 

Hello,

I just wanted to say thank you for convincing me to go the retreat. I've met many new friends there. I enjoyed many things over in Deer Park, especially when I got to play [the guitar] at the bonfire. Hopefully, I can go again next year. At first, I didn't expect that I would like it in the retreat because the kids can't use the internet, but then I figured out I didn't need it after all. Thanks again.

Alan