Sandy,

To me, it sounds like a matter of postponing, putting off.

Consider a metaphor of your living room. You go into your living room, and its a mess. Old papers on the table, food wrappers, old soda cans. Whew! Luckily, you can turn on the TV to distract yourself from the inevitable work of cleaning it up. Perhaps some TV will rekindle your desire to clean up. But you get into the TV program, and end up eating some more, drinking more soda, and so now the mess is bigger! So you turn up the TV extra loud so you don’t notice the mess. Pretty soon the TV is maxed out, and there is crud everywhere.

The freedom from this is actually really simple. Cleaning up the crud first removes the heaviness that pushes us to escape. Like, perhaps if the living room was clean, TV or no TV, there is Sandy, smiling. And, its actually the cleaning that produces joy, anyway. Not some TV show. Or a relationship. See?

Said differently, its good for you to find happiness just so you experience it, dear sister. Not just so you can up your value to a partner.

With warmth,
Matt