It must be so horrible living with your feelings of guilt, of pain, believing that you sabotaged your own love. The sadness you express is very palpable, leaving your heart and touching mine. Your tears become my tears and together we commiserate and share a moment of mutual despondency, mutual regret. Losing love to the struggles of life is tough enough. Convinced that it was your hand behind the wheel makes it so much worse.

As a man, it is difficult for me to truly feel for your struggle, believing that you can have the man, the love of your dreams, by opening up and letting him in. And also knowing that by doing so, you risk everything when he gets his fill. It is an age-old dilemma, having so much power, yet unable to control the outcome. The allure of “I want him to be mine” must be overwhelming to your heart, even if your mind screams “No, not this way.” And that the intimacy is so passionate, loving, so exciting and raw, makes the choice so much more difficult.

Being your counselor, it worries me that this pattern I see has been repeated so many times. In your struggle for love, you take the same path, which inevitably leads to the same end – your sorrow, your guilt, and ultimately, your loneliness. I see it, and he knows it, but you don’t. Your beauty, your desire and your power blinds you to your own dysfunction, your own self-sabotage.

My job is to hold the mirror up to the life you are living, and ask “Is this what you really want?”

It’s my responsibility to coax some self-reflection out of your heated, broken heart, and walk you down a new road that you already know is filled with promise, connection and love. But you are not ready, yet. Your heart has more pain it can still bear – it is not fully broken. For now, I cry alone.

As your friend, I want to shake you – to save you! To yell at you and wake you up from your delusion. To force you to stop hurting yourself, wasting your life, and wasting time. I want to draw out on a map the dozens of times you have screwed up, messed up, and driven yourself off this same exact cliff. To scream at you until you truly understand how beautiful you really are, inside and out. How amazing you are and what a wonderful mother and wife you could be. How close you are to your own expressed deepest desire. If you would only stop. If you could only choose right, instead of always choosing left.

We both know that you wield the power – the brains, beauty, and the youth to bring into your life a loving, generous, kind man–committed to you and the family you can build together. One who will honor you, give to you, and protect you. One who can hear you and heal you. One who will love you eternally.

But you are not ready, yet. Your heart has more pain it can still bear – it is not fully broken.

Again, I cry alone.

As a spiritual man, I pray for you. For G-d to end your struggle, and bring you to the awareness of who you really are and what you can achieve. To please, please shine a drop of His light on you, transforming your life in an instant with a deep self-awareness of what you are capable of. To show you clearly what the world already sees – an intelligent, incredible lovely woman, fashioned in His divine image.

And my prayer for you is also for me, and all of us.

Because we are all you – living in the shadow of who we really are, and of what we can become.

Cowering behind our distorted self-image, and allowing the confused passions of our heart to control the outcomes of our lives. Incapable of fully loving our neighbors, and sometimes our children and sometimes our own spouses. In our quest to be seen and loved, we tear-down the very bridges that bring us there, pushing true connection even further away.

But we are not ready, yet. Our hearts have more pain they can still bear – they are not fully broken.

This time, we all cry together.