“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Much of what you discussed today was discussed by me a good deal of time ago. (True.) The suggestions I made at that time were not followed. Others were not, for both of your reasons, because the situation served both of your purposes to some extent.

Because now you fear that the situation may become a way of life, you are finally both willing to take more direct action. To some degree you have both been avoiding each other. You made a pact not to discuss troublesome, frightening or critical problems, particularly those which did not seem to have an immediate solution.

Ruburt was correct then in those statements he made last evening, having to do with the balance of routine and spontaneity, for his nature does need both. So does yours, incidentally, though this is not nearly as apparent. You were not living clearly in the sensual, physical world, in that large amounts of energy were being used to repress physical communication.

I am speaking now of you both. You did not communicate your concern to each other, therefore you did not communicate your hopes. You, now, did for some time get into the habit of nonsmiling, which led Ruburt to further reinforce his own negative ideas of what you are thinking. But all of the symptoms now represent aspects of your lives that you have not faced in a normal above-the-board fashion. It is not so much that you have not solved them, as that you let communication about them gradually fade away.

Ruburt can be far more helpful than you realize, in helping with those solutions. Your lives in many ways did not satisfy you, but rather than accept this fact clearly and cast about for what changes or solutions there might be, both of you tried to keep everything precisely (underlined) as it was, make no changes, and live with the dissatisfaction that became a constant inner problem.

It naturally reflected all of your own attitudes, the similar and various ways the both of you have of facing reality. So when you discuss it the problem becomes an excellent focal point, showing you how you interact, how you interpret and misinterpret each other, and brings out quite clearly any basic conflicts that you have.

In other words, such discussions are excellent methods of showing you how you interrelate. They provide miniature yet perfect therapeutic sessions, beside having the advantage of bringing the initial problems to the front where you can deal with them together. Before you nursed these separately, and felt, both of you, overburdened at times, and misunderstood by the other.

Now. To the both of you, unconsciously, an emotional encounter means an encounter with unpleasant emotions. You have both done a job of hiding your emotions from each other, even more than your thoughts.

The sexual aspect is but a symptom of this. You were both afraid in varying degrees of emotional contact of a strong nature. In the early days or years of your relationship these patterns were submerged largely. Your tendency to avoid such encounters was much more apparent then than Ruburt’s.

Your habits both became extremely sloppy in that regard, and it was easy for both of you to justify the lack of increasingly rewarding emotional interaction by saying it went into your separate work, and into our work.

Your relationship and your lives in general, you see, follow certain definite patterns set by you. Your work and your relationship are interwoven. You have not allowed yourselves the leeway, or the excuses either, that people do with families or a large number of interests. If you do not find emotional satisfaction with each other you do not find it, in other words. The whole problem however involves your work also, and solving one problem solves the other. Finding release in one gives you release in the other, and both of you chose therefore a life situation and framework in which precisely those problems you have tired to ignore should serve as challenges and impetuses.

You can break the pattern then at any time. This should help you do so, by present, current action. Often you are so involved with feelings you had in the past that you do not know what you are feeling in the present. There are richly creative emotional founts within you both. Each of you know this and sense it.

You would do far better by trying to bring these out into the open on your own parts and encourage them on the part of your mate; the angers or aggressions or misunderstandings, when you let them out and discuss them and feel them. You try to be, both of you, too mental and intellectual about your emotions, thinking them away if possible rather than freely admitting them.

Now, this is the basic problem. The basic reasons for both Ruburt’s symptoms and the holdback in your own work, and the answer to both lies in learning how to release yourselves to yourselves, to let your own emotional natures relate to each other. You must get over the hump therefore of being afraid of your emotions, both of you.

Now Ruburt inhibited the negative emotions, so-called, first of all because of his own background—the fear of arguments, of hurting someone, as explained clearly in other sessions. The end result however on both of your parts was the inhibition of emotional expression in your relationship, precisely in those most important areas where it was most needed.

You related in terms of your work, or our work, or as a couple with others. Now resentment against each other grew. Many would be far more than satisfied with your relationship, but you set yourselves high goals, both in your work and in your personal lifelong relationship with each other, and you suffer when you are not true to this.

Now this session was not practically possible until each of you were ready to hear it, for these facts were made on both of your parts. There is no other answer. The entire affair must (underlined) be considered as a creative emotional venture and challenge.

You are both indeed lucky, for you do have a firm basis from which to work. It is not that you do not have an “ideal” in quotes relationship; but you had lost that feeling of the potentials within you. Your relationship fell so far below those standards, and you are so closely bound together, that his would show in all areas.

Our sessions, both of your creative works, the good you have done and are doing, the health that you have maintained—no serious organic defects—all of this is testament to what you have done.