Osho – My wife is utterly faithful to me, but still doubt goes on lingering

Question – Osho, I know for sure that my wife is utterly faithful to me, but still doubt goes on lingering somewhere inside me. What should I do to get rid of the doubt?

Osho – Avinash,IN THE first place, why should you ask that she should be faithful to you? It is from there that doubtarises. The very desire that your wife should be faithful TO YOU is the beginning of doubt. Why?Who are you that she should be faithful to you? She should be faithful to herself, you should befaithful to yourself.

That’s what love is. If you love the woman, you would like her to be faithful to herself, because you would like her to be authentic. You would like her to be an individual in her own right. Why should you demand that she should be faithful to you? Who are you? – just a stranger.

YOU need not be faithful to her, you have to be faithful to yourself. This is my basic approach; it has to be understood well. Down the ages it has been said: be faithful to your husband, be faithful to your wife, be faithful to this and that. Nobody has told you: be faithful just to yourself.

And that’s exactly what my message is: be faithful to yourself. Then doubt disappears. Doubt is not good, but doubt is a by-product of a desire, a wrong desire – that she should be faithful to you. And how can you except anybody to be faithful to you? In that very expectation, you are asking something so unnatural that doubt will arise.

Who knows? – she may come across a beautiful man, far more beautiful than you are. And you know there are men who are far more beautiful. Fear, doubt, are bound to be there. Who knows? she may be getting fed-up with you!

In fact there is every possibility that you yourself are fed-up with yourself. You know how ugly you are, how ugly your habits are; she must have come to know by now. In the beginning things are different. When you meet a woman on the beach, just for a few hours things are different.

The full moon creates great illusions, and the ocean, and the vibrant air, and the silence, and the night, and the unknown territory… the woman. She is unknown to you, you are unknown to her; both would like to explore each other’s geographies. You are tremendously interested, she is, but once you have travelled the geography so many times, the same contours….

You know you are fed-up with your wife, so deep down the doubt arises that she may be fed-up with you. Don’t ask for faithfulness, ask for freedom. Give freedom so that you can have freedom. And if out of freedom you go on loving each other, it is beautiful. Out of freedom everything has beauty.

But out of a certain duty, if she even remains faithful to you, it has no value. When she comes across a beautiful man on the road and a longing arises in her heart to know this man, to be with this man, but she knows this is not right – she represses it. She has already gone away, she is no more with you. You may be holding her hand in your hand, but she is no more with you.

Her whole being has gone in that moment. She may not ever do anything, but in her fantasy, in her imagination… You cannot control her fantasy, you cannot control her imagination. In her dreams she may be making love to other people. And who makes love to one’s own husband in a dream? Have you ever heard of such a foolish woman or a foolish man? Have you ever made love to your own wife? – one always makes love to other people’s wives in dreams.

In dreams you are free and private. The magistrate is not there, the policeman is not there, the wife is not there, nobody is there. You are again free. So just on the surface you can fulfill formalities. The doubt is arising because you have a wrong expectation in the first place. I cannot help you to drop the doubt unless you drop the desire that your wife should be faithful to you.

Drop the desire that your wife should be faithful to you. Drop that, and then if you can create the doubt, it will be a miracle. Then how can doubt arise? We never go to the very root of problems, we only go on changing the symptoms. My help is available to you only to go to the deep root of the problem, to the very foundation of it. Change it there!

And you say, ”I KNOW FOR SURE THAT MY WIFE IS UTTERLY FAITHFUL TO ME.” How can you be so sure? You are just trying to convince yourself by using these words, that ”I am sure” – just using great words to hide something! You are not sure. See the cunningness of the mind. You are not sure, hence you are using the word ’sure’: ”I KNOW FOR SURE THAT MY WIFE IS UTTERLY FAITHFUL TO ME.”

Just faithfulness won’t do? Utterly faithful? Is there some doubt? Why UTTERLY faithful? A circle is simply a circle. You cannot say that this is a complete circle, UTTERLY circular. If it is a circle it is a circle! You cannot call it a perfect circle, because if it is not perfect it is not a circle, it must be something else. Watch, meditate on these words.

”BUT STILL,” you say, ”I DOUBT. SOMEWHERE DOUBT GOES ON LINGERING.” You doubt your wife? Are you certain about your faithfulness towards her? Maybe that’s why the doubt arises. You may be fooling around, if not actually, then in imagination. And then naturally the inference is there that your wife may be fooling around, if not actually, at least in imagination. And the male ego is such that it cannot allow even the wife to fool around in imagination.

The story is told of Mulla Nasruddin, who got married and spent a pleasant honeymoon with his bride. But one day he came to the office with a rather glum expression on his face. When his fellow clerks asked him what was bothering him he said, ”Gee, I pulled a terrible boner this morning. Getting out of bed I, like an absent-minded jackass, laid down a ten rupee note on the table.”

The other man consoled him. His wife wouldn’t think anything of it, they assured him.

”That isn’t what bothers me.” he answered. ”She gave me three rupees change!”

It may be your own mind. When a beautiful woman passes by, does something happen to you or not? Only in two cases will nothing happen: either you are dead or enlightened – which mean the same! Otherwise something is bound to happen. And then the suspicion: the same must be happening to your woman too, because she is as unenlightened as you are and as alive as you are. Maybe the doubt is there because you are not loving her as much as she would like you to love her.

And it happens to couples – how can you go on having the same peak of love that was there in the beginning, the honeymoon peak? One has to come down. Sooner or later one has to come down from the hills to the ordinary, mundane life.

Sooner or later one has to forget ali poetry, fantasy, romance. And then a fear arises: maybe I am not taking as much care as I should? Maybe this will become an opportunity for her to move with somebody else? Look into yourself….

A husband comes home and finds his wife in bed with a man. He is furious and wants to leave at once. The wife pleads, ”Give me a moment to explain. This man came to my door an hour ago and asked for something to eat. I gave him a sandwich.

I noticed that his shoes were worn out, so I looked in your closet and found a pair that you haven’t had on your feet for five years, and I gave him the shoes to put on. Then I saw that his jacket was very tom, so I went back to your closet and found a jacket that you haven’t worn for eight years. When he took his old jacket off to put yours on, I saw that his shirt was falling to pieces, so I opened your bureau drawer and gave him a shirt that you haven’t worn for the past twelve years.

Then as this man was going out of the door he turned to me and asked, ”Is there anything else around here that your husband doesn’t use?”

Avinash, it is not a question of your wife, it is a question of your own mind. Just look deep down… have you been with her? For how long have you not been with her? – I don’t mean physically, I mean spiritually. For how long have you not seen her face? – just remember; for how long have you not looked into her eyes? Figure it out, and you will be surprised that for years you have taken her for granted, and that may be the cause of your doubt.

Remember, problems are always part of your mind. Go deep into them. In the first place, don’t ask that she should be faithful to you; that is violent. Nobody has the right to ask anybody to be faithful towards him. Help her to be faithful towards herself.

And secondly, look inside your own being. Are you still in love with her? If you are, then the doubt is not possible. The doubt simply reflects that your love has disappeared. Life has become a drag; you have started taking her for granted.

Love is no more there. Now it is only a hangover, hence the doubt. Bring the love back, bring the poetry back, bring the romance back. And those who are intelligent, they can bring it back every day. Every morning they can look at the wife, at the husband, with fresh eyes.

Go on dying to the past experiences, so that you can remain available to the present, fresh, young, utterly intelligent, and then life has a totally different flavor. Then these stupid things don’t arise in the mind at all.

Source: from Osho Book “The Guest”