O. I don't mean that as an accusation, I'm sorry if it sounded like one. Past is past, but present and future we can write however we damn well want it to be. Past is prologue, never fate -- we do not have to be the versions of ourselves we once were. We can always be the versions of ourselves we choose to be and that we strive to be. And that's a grace we must give to every soul same as we ask it for ourselves if we have behaved in ways in the past that we wouldn't now. "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better"~Maya Angelou

I'm not saying that I consciously expect him qua who he is in THIS life to make the same sort of choices as his past lives -- he is no more the same person in this life than I am the same person I have been in my past lives. There's a reason most people walk into most lives complete tabula rasa -- the growth and lessons that need to be learned generally can't be learned if you're always judging a soul by who they have been in the past without seeing their growth and healing and changes in the between times. As a general rule, people only remember their past lives if it was 1) their most recent life 2) a traumatic death or 3) the lessons they need to work on require healing karmic patterns that have formed ACROSS lifetimes. I would say that, at least on my end, this falls into the third type.  Other than my most recent lives, and mostly those are the deaths, MOST of the older lives I remember are all ones where our souls paths twined or crossed or nearly crossed but just missed interacting.

Which means that healing whatever we choose to be between our souls is part of what the lessons of this life are about. And clearly, me trying to let him go for what I believe to be his sake and what I think he wants is NOT the solution to what lies between our souls. No matter what rationalization or reasons I have for trying that, it's never worked out well for either of us and the intensity of his reaction to me trying that is part of what has brought me to the point of questioning the assumption I didn't realize I had been holding onto unexamined. Which means there needs to be rapprochement and healing of the damage that has happened.

But, it's quite possible that in trying not to CONSCIOUSLY pre-judge him by his past lives choices (including the really good ones between us) I have created a situation where I don't give enough credit to all the good which has been and still is and all the more that could be and instead leave in dark spaces of the subconscious conditions where the doubts/fears of "is this going to happen again" have created self-sabotaging actions that I didn't recognize as such. Dark things grow in the dark, you have to shine the light to look at them and face them if you want to heal and believe in being better moving forward.

I think that it's important, for both our sakes to feel and understand how/why the bond is what it is and how we got here BUT I think it's equally important to acknowledge who we both are NOW is not the same as who we HAVE BEEN and we should be focusing on forgiving/healing the past so that we can learn the ways who we are now pull toward each other and could fit together. (especially given that overlays and that inner pull isn't right to do trying to have relationships to third parties, but trying to diminish the pull of the bond creates worse problems between us. And neither of us deserve to spend our lives alone wishing for something we think we can't have (or is it more accurate to say think we don't deserve? why does that feel more right?) or unhappy making the best of what we think we can get whilw always measuring everyone/everything else against what it isn't.

Also. And this is in no way his fault or mine. But some of the things I've done in my soul's purpose being in the incarnation, I don't know if I would have made those same choices to do them if I hadn't spent those intervening lives thinking that the reason he didn't find me was because he no longer wanted to find me.... (as opposed to him spending far too many lives believing he didn't deserve to find/have me.) I mean, my stoic fatalist martyr streak would never have gotten so overgrown out of hand if I hadn't spent those intervening lives genuinely believing that he wasn't crossing my path because he no longer wanted me. And I'm not claiming I was RIGHT in believing that, I just claim I DID believe it... And I very well may have chosen differently in those lives if I'd held in my heart any hope he wanted me instead of making me face the idea he didn't anymore and that was why his soul stopped finding mine -- because you generally wont find what you don't seek because you no longer want it..... It was, apparently, a very VERY wrong headed idea, but that doesn't untangle centuries of me believing the wrong headed idea and the choices I made while firmly believing it, y'know?