We were messaging each other on Skype, and once again I reminded her: it just became unclear to me why we originally gathered together to get rid of the people who were trying to convince me to forget Nadya, and now you yourself have started doing the same thing. And then Lena unexpectedly said, “Igor, hi! I wasn’t talking about getting rid of those people, but about the fact that, when it comes to your relationship with Nadya, they can’t help you, but in other matters, they could be interesting for you.”
I was stunned. When did she ever say that? Getting rid of those people was my own decision—what do her words have to do with it? Moreover, I never asked Natan and Kolya to help me with Nadya. On the contrary, it was important for me that they did not interfere in my matters with her at all. As soon as they found out about my messages to Nadya, their focus shifted from simply communicating with me to persistently trying to convince me to forget her, to “let go of the past,” and “move on.” This endless “nonsense” and advice that I did not need turned them from friends into people who no longer mattered to me. In the end, I decided that I no longer needed them as friends. That was my position, my personal policy. But Lena insisted on her own point of view, as if she were making decisions for me.
At some point, she wrote, “You know, I felt angry at her, that you’re doing so much, and she is so far away and you’re physically alone. I thought during our session that this wouldn’t be useful for you to hear, but now it kind of fits.”
And at that moment, I just lost it. So, she decided she knows what is “useful” for me to hear and what isn’t. She had already made up her mind long ago—for her, this is just infatuation, something superficial, and she chose the “right” moment to insert her opinion. Lena did not try to get to the bottom of my situation, she did not ask questions, did not try to understand the deeper reasons for my feelings. Instead, she decided that she had to choose what and when I needed to hear, and that deeply offended me.
Then Lena started telling me, “Flaws fade at a distance, and this looks like idealization.” And at that moment, I just got furious. What kind of nonsense is she talking about? I know all of Nadya’s flaws perfectly well, and sometimes I even think there are more of them than there are good qualities. I have told her about these flaws many times. We have even gotten to the point where we threatened each other with criminal charges, promised to get each other arrested! I have a million reasons to hate her.
But I don’t do that. I do not feel anger towards her, and it’s not because I close my eyes to her flaws. It is the result of huge self-reflection that I went through. I spent a long time thinking about all the events and Nadya’s actions, and instead of getting stuck in anger and hatred, I saw opportunities for my own growth and development in those situations. I realized that it was precisely through these difficulties that I was able to train my mind, develop myself, and reach a new level of awareness.
What infuriated me was that, apparently, she thought I wasn’t capable of understanding even the most basic things. But if I don’t reach those conclusions in my situation, doesn’t that mean things are much more complicated? Why couldn’t she figure that out? Instead of trying to understand the depth of my experiences, Lena decided that it was enough to tell me obvious facts. That wasn’t help—it was pure self-assurance. Lena had already drawn her conclusions a long time ago, and her “advice” only increased my irritation.
And here arises the question: what did she actually think of me? If she considers it necessary to tell me such obvious things, did she really think I simply couldn’t understand this on my own? That I am mentally deficient or so naïve that I need someone to explain such banalities to me? Obviously, I have known everything Lena is talking about for a long time—since I was sixteen or twenty, if not earlier. But if I know this and continue to act the way I do, maybe it means that things aren’t so simple? But for Lena, everything turned out to be extremely simple. Apparently, in her eyes, I am just an idiot, a fool who cannot figure out his own situation. Such an attitude toward my problem seemed not only unprofessional but also humiliating. At thirty-six years old, I do not need anyone deciding for me what I should be aware of and when I need to realize it.
But Lena did not see this and could not understand it. For her, everything seemed simple—I am just a person in love who overlooks flaws and is in a state of blind idealization. That was complete absurdity. She thought that I was not able to see reality and evaluate it adequately. It was humiliating and made me even angrier, because she ignored the fact that I had consciously gone through these feelings and drawn important conclusions from them for myself.
In that same Skype conversation, Lena once said, “Everything you write is proof that you are on the right path.” That was probably the only sensible thing she said during our whole interaction. But even then, I was not sure how sincere she was. Maybe she said it just to keep the conversation going, or to somehow soften my objections. But after all her attempts to impose her superficial judgments on me, I could no longer fully trust her words. It seemed to me that even when she said something right, it was more of an accident than a sincere understanding of my situation.
