Given the extent to which we’re rising into new vibrations and the extent to which lightworkers are meeting and making connections, one subject arises that I feel the need to broach. And that’s the subject of “triangling.” I’ve been in conversation with one reader who valued the discussion we had about the subject so I’m risking putting it out there more generally.
I know what I’m about to say is a bit controversial and I apologize. But it’s a situation that can arise and needs to be considered, especially at a time when we may experience increased ability to meet people and greater love within ourselves that may lead to new relationships.
Triangling is a word that group therapists use to denote three people in a relationship built for two. The third person is usually an ex-spouse or a former lover. My discussion is restricted to those three-people relations that are clearly dysfunctional, not to healthy relations. If three people can get along in a healthy and mature manner, then this article is not about them.
As lightworkers, we’re called upon, and will be more and more called upon, to be doing service work and, I think, we cannot afford to be enmeshed in circumstances that are deadening and disabling.
A triangle is deadening. I’m not saying that one should not be in relationship with a former lover or spouse. Not at all. But if the “ex” inserts themselves into a relationship and makes mischief, it can become a tar baby that cannot be gotten rid of and takes everybody down with it. Which in certain circumstances (getting fewer these days, I acknowledge), some people may wish to have happen.
A triangle takes the simplicity out of relationship and makes it complex. Instead of there being one conversation between two people there are now three conversations (still) between two people. Complexity goes up geometrically, so to speak. And, unless the three people are in one room together, the ability to relate what was said, get all three to act in a common way on decisions arrived at, etc., etc, can bring matters to a standstill.
And, while most of us are mature adults as well as lightworkers, and would not insert mischief into our former relationships, some of us are not. Triangling is one of the most common pitfalls for people generally, but it can be crippling for lightworkers.
A triangle (as opposed to a non-triangling three-people relationship) is founded in drama. If we cannot have what we want, then having drama in our lives at least maintains our connection with the people we see ourselves as having “lost” and provides diversion, color and interest. But for the couple wanting to consolidate their new connection, it can be an ongoing obstruction and prevent the bonding that’s so necessary when two people meet.
That means that the new relationship is off to a shaky start and may never “set.” Which again may be what the third person wants and in triangling is certainly what they want.
The number of people who can lose someone and make the adjustment in a mature manner is certainly smaller than we might wish. It’s growing larger, surely, but there still are some who have trouble with the adjustment and resort to triangling.
The blandishments that are made to keep the triangle going, the subtle blame, the manipulations, and so on, can neutralize a lightworker’s ability to love or serve.
A triangle is inherently stable for people whose relationship is in trouble. The man with a mistress is more able to tolerate his wife, for instance, if he can bleed off the energy by seeing his mistress. Seeing the mistress is what allows his marriage to continue.
But if the married person is seeing another and the other wants a stable and permanent relationship, the triangling is guaranteeing that that may never happen. It is in fact having the opposite effect of allowing the married person to get by by bleeding off bad energy and making bad conditions bearable.
Why do people in a new relationship resort to or allow triangling? Many people do because it results in what they think is the lowest cost for themselves.
Married men may have a mistress. (I’m not suggesting anyone do that, by the way. I’m just using the example). They may do it because it results in the triangling man not having to divorce his wife and pay a heavy divorce settlement. It may allow the man to remain married “for the sake of the kids.” It may provide him with enough love to stay with a person he genuinely cares for. There are all kinds of reasons for triangling.
Some former lovers and spouses prevail on others to continue a triangle because they want to keep hold of an “ex” and appeal to the goal of remaining friends, being spiritual, etc., where they really aren’t as concerned with remaining friends as keeping their hold over their “ex.
It’s not my place to advise people. I have no shingle outside my door. I have no expertise. I don’t want to be considered a spiritual teacher, which I’m not and am not qualified to be. But I’m just cautioning people, and especially lightworkers, that, if you see yourself getting embedded in a triangle, to get out of the triangle (not saying out of the relationship).
Hopefully these days a former relationship can appreciate a couple’s desire to avoid triangling. We should be by now able to see and hear when a connection is becoming a triangle and be fully committed to the success of the new couple and willing to stand aside to avoid anything like that even theoretically occurring.
I would hope that a circumstance like this, which was ablaze in the early Seventies, during a period of “free love,” which was a crippling disaster for many people and their relationships, has quieted down and is no longer a problem. But, as GD is fond of saying, I just wanted to “name it.”