Dear Clara:

Good morning here, good night to you! Good to read from you: clearer and another step ahead toward moving on!

“she thinks too shallow (may be too compartmentalized/ emotionally unaware, if we use more psychological terms), while they all know how much of a deep thinker I am“- I agree.

“But the funny thing is, I think I knew this, and my mind says ‘if you are committed to someone, then you should not give up on that person because of her ‘flaw’“-  you should give up on her because she told you (I am sad to be repeating her words) that she does not like you anymore, and that she has no feelings for you. And because you can’t trust what she says in regard to her feelings: she told you something to the affect of it being difficult for her to separate from you, from a person she has no feeling for: this is not believable because when person A has no feelings for (not even liking) person B, it’s not difficult for A to separate from B, it’s difficult to stay with B.

“In my mind, I think I should work with her to see how we can improve, rather than, just walk away. The fine line between being perseverant and being stubborn, is hard to manage in a relationship for me. When should a relationship really stops?“- when one or two of the people in the relationship says they don’t like the other.

The line between being perseverant and being stubborn in this context, as I see it, is that in being stubborn, you don’t really hear what she said, or you don’t process it, or you explain it away (as in, maybe you think that she likes you and has feelings for you but is currently unaware of these feelings). Perseverance has logic behind it; stubbornness, sometimes has no logic behind it, and when that’s the case, it leads to suffering.

“I think sometime objectively, she should be more emotional mature (given she is 40, but honestly there are a lot 40’s who are still not knowing what they are doing in their lives… ), on the other hand, I think she really doesn’t have the skills or capability yet so I should be more empathetic“- if she was a 4-year-old child and you were her 40-year-old teacher, you could empathetically teach her skills and capabilities and she would be eager to learn, I imagine. But like most older adults (30s and onward), she is done learning certain things. I don’t think that she looks up to you (as a child would look up to a teacher) to teach her things in matters of emotional skills and capabilities.

“I think being with this person has given me a lot of lessons to learn, given that we are quite different. I think we must have cared for each a lot at some points, that allowed us to sustain 5.5 years of relationship“- yes, she cared for you as much as she is capable of. There were good things in the relationship, good times to honor and to move on from, at the same time. Do I make sense?

anita