In the days, weeks and months that followed, we talked and cried so much. Two conclusions were made: Stephen, tearfully, told me that he did not want a life with her and that he loved me. My choice was that I loved him as much as I always had and that while I was hurt and angry, I did want to save our marriage.
So much of what we needed to get to the bottom of was why he had allowed it to get to the point of a crazy fantasy that threatened everything he held dear and why did I allow it to go on and, in a weird way, almost support it. To be honest, for Stephen, he found enormous relief just from my having burst his fantasy bubble by drawing attention to it. As if awoken from a trance state, he was able to move forward with the work we needed to do with an open heart. Also, to make it clear, outwardly, Stephen didn’t compromise our marriage, it was his fantasy world in his mind that the compromise was occurring. He also told me that in the few days prior to my confronting him, it was getting harder and harder to keep fantasy from joining reality.
To make any real progress, we needed to take a good hard look at our egos. I don’t mean ego in terms of self-esteem, or confidence in oneself. But when I speak of ego, I mean it as the part of our psyche that is separate from our souls. Our egos, in this discussion, is the voice in our heads that says: you are not good enough, not smart enough and not pretty enough. The voice of Stephen’s ego had told him that this woman found him fascinating and worthy, the lure of which had been attractive. In my case, it was the voice that said if you confront him on this, he won’t choose you. It is the voice that keeps us earthbound and needing the approval of others in order to feel special. It is the part of ourselves that needs to be quieted – it needs to be told: I am enough, stop trying to tell me otherwise. In short, we need to divorce our egos to find our true selves, our soul selves.
So in these discussions, Stephen and I took a long hard look at what he needed (or his ego needed) from his interaction with Tracy and why I was so forgiving and willing to overlook what I was increasing becoming uncomfortable with, in regards to that interaction.
A few months prior to the night we had finally faced this, Stephen had done a past life regression with Tracy. I was present and both fascinated and dismayed by what was revealed. While in a relaxed, meditative state, she spoke about being in France in the 1500s and thrown into an oubliette as punishment. Tracy later explained a lifelong fear of dark spaces and a deep seated fear of being imprisoned. She used the word “oubliette” while in her meditative state and spoke about what that was like – it sounded horrifying. Yet, upon coming out of her meditation, did not know what the word meant. An oubliette was a pit in which people were thrown into as punishment and largely forgotten about. Oublie in French means to forget. Her name had been Nicole. She was sixteen years old. She described details like her dress, her broken foot from the fall into the pit and what the pit felt like. She also spoke about Stephen being part of that life and intimated that they were together. It made me sad – stupid, I know, to assume that it was only me with whom he had shared past lives. This seemed to be one lifetime, in which, I was not present. For me, I felt an understanding of the connection they shared but a sadness that came with the feeling that there was some kind of divine inevitability to their attraction, against which I was powerless.
So, this newly discovered past life connection both fueled Stephen’s growing fascination in which he somehow felt like he was her knight in shining armor (in that life he had been the Captain of the King’s Guard). A vision post regression on Stephen’s part had revealed a scene where Henri, Captain of the King’s Guard rides on horseback to rescue Nicole from her imprisonment in the oubliette. This vision only served to further fuel my denial of a situation I felt was somehow inevitable. Not a good combination when trying to preserve a relationship that was proving to be under attack.
In retrospect, it is difficult to wrap my head around why this went as far as it did but at the very core is fear. Stephen was fearful about his self-worth – the attentions of a young woman and her two children was flattering and made him feel powerful. He had always seen himself as a protector and provider. Her growing dependence on him both emotionally and financially made him feel good about himself. I was fearful that if I didn’t just go along with the program, I would lose him and end up alone. All in all, not a good way to proceed for either of us!
Our mission now was to push ego aside in hearing each other’s points of view and really listen to, and feel, what the other was dealing with. We are human with all the frailties and faults that accompany that condition, the first step in understanding each other is to accept and forgive. The inability to “let go” of the feelings of betrayal or humiliation have more to do with hanging onto ego than in actually forgiving the other person—in my case, the fear of not being his only choice made me feel insecure. That is what I could no longer hold onto, letting go of that fear and finally embracing my own strength has allowed me to forgive the situation that brought it up for me.
So many of our discussions had centered on why this situation had presented itself and what was to be learned from it. Many of my questions felt like they were rooted in the relationship Stephen and Tracy had shared in the 1500s in France. It was becoming obvious that Spirit was intent on us discovering the details of this shared past life for a reason. We were hungry for some understanding as to why we found ourselves in this broken place. Strong marriages like ours don’t allow for someone to insinuate themselves, like Tracy had, in ours. Feeling confident that a greater understanding of their soul connection would answer some of our deepest questions, we began a plan of meditation and notation in order to pull together the details of what seemed a pivotal lifetime for all involved. Months before he had done the past life regression with Tracy, in which we discovered that both she and Stephen had featured – we assumed as her fiancé. This process was going to start with understanding my role in that life, if, in fact, I had been a part.
Then a big revelation for me happened while I was doing dishes, of all things. Let me explain, Stephen’s intuitive abilities seem to come, in the early days of his experience of mediumship, in the form of song, the meaning to be understood on research of lyrics, then later through the use of a pendulum to verify his thoughts and with greater effort, by actually “seeing” a situation. For me, however, intuition was more of an emotionally-based event. My realization was that I had been her mother in that past life! The feeling that I had been Nicole’s mother in that lifetime was visceral in its intensity. Stephen questioned that, saying he had gotten only that her mother had been in the convent but had not “seen” her so didn’t know for sure. But I knew in my heart of hearts, that it had been me. It explained so much. It was why I felt a sense of maternal protectiveness even after it became obvious that my husband had become increasingly obsessed with her. It explained, in part, why I allowed it to go so far.
My name was Dominique and I died in 1544 in Loudun, France.