I had to identify several areas of my life and rate them on a ten-point scale based on how well they were functioning. I found only two areas (out of 10!) that were working better than a 4. On a ten-point scale! This meant, I thought, that MY LIFE FREAKIN SUCKS! But that wasn’t the end of the assignment. The main task was to determine what kind of agreements or promises were violated in those areas that were not functioning well. Well, like a pioneer, I sat there thinking. And I couldn’t come up with anything! I mean, I’m such an honest girl everywhere, I haven’t violated any agreements, “it’s all their fault!”
So, I stood up and said, “Well, I don’t have any! Everything is clean and clear. I always try to maintain, nurture, and cherish personal relationships to the fullest. But they fall apart and then don’t show up for years… But I’m a present otherwise! The coach, of course, cleverly says right away, “Well, you admit that ‘what if.’
And also, ‘maybe some agreements were violated in relation to you, and you didn’t restore your integrity after that.’ I sit there, thinking. Nothing comes to mind. Working in pairs, I’m with this incredibly handsome-sexy (and kind!) guy (his name is Leonard Theodor Ludwig! For short, LT) who tells me about his friend’s troubles right now, and he promised to support him, but he’s not really supporting him, at least not as he should. And that he realized this and will now support him.
Suddenly I realized that there was a violation of integrity in close relationships, and besides, in my very first close relationships – in friendships, but that doesn’t matter. After all, friendship is just love without sex. So, I had a friend. For many years. We met when I was 16, I think… My friend – a woman. Men say that female friendship is all fake, but between me and her, there was real friendship, in which we always stood by each other, created together, thought together, dreamed together…
Our inner worlds were very close and intimate, we traveled together, and in general, we were like almost family. But time passed – and I got married. And my friend fell out of my life. But then, I had another new “friend” – and this “friend” took up all my time, my thoughts, and my emotional impulses.
It doesn’t matter what was going on in my family life. What matters is what happened to me then, that I, without noticing it at all, betrayed my friend, my first real closeness in life, the most beautiful closeness I ever had in my life – because after I broke it, I never managed to build any closeness again.
Now I understand why. You can come up with different metaphors for this, for example, that when my husband somehow displaced my friend in my heart, and because of this “betrayed” my friendship, – I created some alternative reality, in which I could no longer build any closeness… And now, like in “Back to the Future,” I need to go back to ’55 to take the sports almanac from young Biff and thereby fix the future, or rather, the present, turning it from “horrible-without-closeness” to “beautiful-filled-with-closeness”… Only I don’t have a time machine.
Or you can simply realize that at that moment – it doesn’t matter if I noticed it or not – I broke my integrity, breaking the most beautiful relationship of my life… And that’s it. Since then, I couldn’t build any truly close friendships. And that’s why I wasn’t capable of any truly close intimate relationships either because love is just friendship with sex. 
Just imagine that integrity is like a beautiful vessel. If even a small piece is chipped off, it’s not as beautiful anymore. And if the bottom falls off – no matter how much you pour, it won’t make any difference. So, I – no matter how hard I tried to pour into my broken jug of integrity, there was still a mess of neglect inside.
This, my friends, is not just “the penny dropped,” it’s called “lightning struck.” At that moment, everything became crystal clear. And, although I’m insanely sorry for missed opportunities and relationships, not to mention that for many years I’ve been missing my friend terribly, who considers me such a worthless person that she doesn’t even respond to my letters, even just to tell me to “go to hell”… Even realizing that she might never write to me – not that I didn’t deserve it, I did, more than ever!…
But this realization hit me so hard that I suddenly realized that my integrity had been restored. Yes, battered, yes, the bottom is quite worn out, but it has reattached to my vessel. And I realized that I can now, really, create good closeness and friendship and be a friend, not a backstabber.
It’s amazing to see how you operate with concepts of closeness, friendship, depth, interaction, when all this is just some pathetic dances on the debris of your own integrity, and all these concepts ceased to have any weight in the light of the fact that integrity was violated. And for so many years, I wondered why people don’t strive to build closeness! They do strive for it, only not with me – what fool would build closeness with someone for whom it’s just an empty sound, albeit a significant one?
Who would pour gold into a jug without a bottom?
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