How To Fall Out Of Love—If You Need To.

Falling in love can be a magical and enriching experience. But are there any situations when the right thing to do is falling out of love?

We all know that there are cases when “being in love” with a particular person brings suffering to our life, instead of health and harmony. One example for all: when the falling in love is not reciprocal. If you are in love with someone, but he/she is not in love with you, something is off. Or think about those cases when a relationship has ended and you’ve parted ways. If the state of being in love persists, this can be painful. If we knew how to gently and consciously fall out of love, wouldn’t that make things easier?

The problem is that there is a difference between experiencing love, which is always beautiful, and the condition of “falling in love.” The way I see it, falling in love is like an altered state of consciousness, and if this sounds like a wild statement, I encourage you to have a look at the video below where I explain why.

Coming back to our story: if falling in love is an altered state of consciousness, then it should be possible to gracefully step out of it. So let’s have a look at some practical ways we can deal with “falling in love” when this is not conductive to our growth.

The most important thing to realize is the following: when we are “in love with someone,” we are actually in love with two different people or entities. One of them is the actual person in front of us. The other one, so to speak, is the “universal feminine” or “universal masculine,” a reflection of our inner feminine or masculine qualities that we project onto our lover. To use a fancy word, we are projecting our feminine or masculine archetypes on our lovers.

When we are in love with someone, it’s perfectly normal that we project our masculine or feminine internal archetype on him or her. We constantly deal with a mixture of projection and reality. But in some situations, this mixture can become painful. After breaking up, for example, for some time our projected archetype may still be attached to our ex-partner. This condition creates the feeling of being in love with someone although, somehow, we feel that that isn’t the right thing to do.

So how do we untangle this mess?

Read the full article on the Elephant Journal.