The Neothink Society · Love and Relationships · July 2009
"Well, it looks like you have made a lot of progress out here. What are you going to do with all of it?"
"Take it with me, of course."
"You found a place then."
"Yes, I found a place outside of town. I think I'll be happy there."
"Emy, I know this has been hard on you. But we have nothing in common anymore."
"Nothing in common! Twenty-three years of marriage, two children, and now we have nothing in common?"
"I've grown, Emy. I've moved on. I'm still a young man. I want to be with a young, vibrant woman. The sooner you realize that I'm right, the better off you will be. You've been afforded a lot of luxuries over the years. You should be grateful for that and let me have my freedom." He turned and started to walk back toward the house.
"It's still all about you, isn't it, Richard! All our married life it was about what you wanted. Your career, your needs, you, you, YOU! You destroyed our lives together because you have a midlife crisis. Yes, Richard, you are middle-aged. No matter how many sports cars you buy or how many bimbos you date, you are still getting older. You say I should be grateful for what I have received. I was, until you took it away from me. I have given up a great deal to help you achieve your goals, and now you dump me. Well, from now on my life is going to be about me. Someday you are going to know how it feels to be used. For the next two weeks this is MY house, so get that person who came with you and get out." I grabbed a wad of clay and squeezed it.
The Turn The instant a life built around another person collapses is the instant the self-led individual takes the wheel.
The day she is discarded after twenty-three years is the day Emy stops building her life around another person and starts leading it herself.
Monday morning my desk lay piled with cases, and it looked just as it had when I had left on Thursday. I opened my email. One of the 246 messages was from HR. Apparently I needed to take part of my vacation before the end of the month or lose it.
I walked into Grace's office. "HR says I have six weeks of vacation time coming and I need to take some of it before the end of the month. So I am going to take it all. I need to get away for a while, and I need to move."
Grace nodded. "Richard told me about Saturday. Why don't you sit for a while and have a cup of tea. He said you were very upset for some reason."
"Some reason! That man dumped me for a younger woman and now he is taking my house."
"Emy, I have to tell you, Richard is an ambitious, ruthless lawyer and he has brought a lot of business to this firm; but I wouldn't have even hired him if it hadn't been for you. You started here before he did, and you are such a good paralegal that we didn't want to lose you to a rival company. So that is why we hired your husband. He didn't make partner on his own, either. I understand that you need some time off, and by all means take it. Six weeks is a long time. Don't forget where you work."
Her Own Value The value Emy thought belonged to Richard was hers all along. The career she helped build stood on her work, not his.
Common Questions
What is this installment of Side Road about? It is the eighth part of an eleven-part story. Emy, told after twenty-three years of marriage that she and her husband have "nothing in common," is being pushed out of her own home for a younger woman. The installment captures the exact moment her life stops being something she gives to another person and becomes something she leads herself.
What does self-leadership mean here? Self-leadership is the shift from organizing your life around someone else's goals to directing it from your own. For most of the marriage, Emy's days were built around Richard's career and needs. When that arrangement ends, she states the change plainly: "from now on my life is going to be about me." That sentence is the practice in one line.
How is reclaiming your identity different from revenge or simply starting over? Revenge keeps the other person at the center; starting over treats the past as wasted. Reclaiming identity does neither. Emy does not orient her future around hurting Richard, and she does not erase twenty-three years. She takes the capability she already has, including the professional standing the story reveals is hers, and redirects it toward a life she chooses.
Why can the moment of loss become the moment of power? Because loss removes the structure a person was deferring to. As long as the old arrangement held, Emy had a reason to keep deferring. When it collapses, the reason is gone and the only direction left to follow is her own. The loss does not create her capacity. It clears the obstacle that kept her from using it.
What is the mechanism that moves a person from dependence to self-direction? Seeing reality accurately and then acting from your own judgment. Grace's revelation, that Emy was hired first and that Richard's partnership rested on her value, corrects a false picture Emy had accepted. Once she sees that her worth was never borrowed, deciding to take six weeks and move is a clear act of self-direction rather than a reaction.
How does this story connect to the larger Neothink practice? It is a lived example of the self-led individual. Across the Neothink Society, members move from lives arranged around external authority toward lives they direct from their own minds. Emy's turn from a borrowed life to a self-led one is that same shift, told as fiction.
Further Reading
- Self-Leadership: the practice of directing your own life from your own judgment rather than around another person's goals.
- The Self-Led Individual: the man or woman who learns to see reality directly and expands into it rather than shrinking from it.
- A Life in Harmony: freedom from guilt, sacrifice, and dependence on authorities outside the individual.
- Love and Relationships: how members build relationships from clarity and self-leadership rather than dependence.
- Value Creation: recognizing and directing the value you already produce, as Emy's professional standing reveals her own.
Membership is by application.