This is a case that still haunts me from time to time.  

The client had made an appointment to see me at the behest of his wife. He had cheated on her but she was willing to forgive him and give the marriage another go.  

During our conversation, it was clear that he had misled her about his views and actions on the matter.

“Since you won’t change and intend to continue having affairs, could you not tell her the truth so she can decide with the full details. Gift her the chance to be happy and find love with someone else if faithfulness is what is important to her.”

He just smiled and left the room.

I have no clue if he did as I recommended or what transpired between them later on. It was a client that I did not wish to continue the journey with.  

Faithfulness was important for his wife and she thought he had changed.

Faithfulness wasn’t important to him yet he couldn’t be honest with her nor to himself.

In the opening chapter of his book The Path to Love, Deepak Chopra asked, “When you look at yourself today, can you still make the two statements every infant could, if it had the words?”

“I am completely loved.”
“I am completely lovable.”

And that “You know you have fully experienced love when you turn into love – that is the spiritual goal of life.”

When I broke up with Mr X the man I fell in love with after leaving my marriage, I was extremely bitter, hurt, sad, and angry. I veered between despair at losing him and anger at him for being an idiot, a jerk, etc.

Can you see the conflict and irony?

It was not love. If it was love, I would have let him go and all the negative emotions were unnecessary. Rather, it was my ego at play.

The “hurt me” railed at the unfairness of losing him and the low-esteemed me wondered if I was really that sucky. Because I did not feel that I was completely loved or that I was completely lovable, the breakup accentuated this limiting belief. I had not yet learned the importance of falling in love with me.

Loving means having the grace to let go.

People can change their minds and if we have loved them or still love them like we professed to, then we can let them go.

We will be sad and will need time to heal; but that is different from being angry or revengeful; or to bitterly hope that they will never be happy again because we are unhappy.

If we cultivate the ability to allow people to change their mind despite commitments made, I feel this can lead to new beginnings and allow us to lead the good life.

In the case of the client, his wife wanted to stay committed to her marriage and was willing to forgive him based on the understanding that he will stop his behaviour. On his part, he did not provide his wife with full disclosure. She made her recommitment based on dishonest information.

He could have given her the opportunity to change her mind as well.  

Allowing people the grace to change their minds can also expand into our professional lives where commitment often shows up as loyalty to a role, a team, a mission or a shared dream.

We celebrate those who stay the course, who persevere through challenges, who show up consistently. And rightly so.

But what if commitment also meant honoring the evolving truths within ourselves and others?

If we truly commit to people and not just outcomes, we can offer them the grace to change their minds. We can normalize the language of transition, of re-evaluation, of “I’ve changed.”

We can create cultures where honesty is not punished but welcomed as a sign of growth.

This doesn’t mean abandoning accountability or structure. It means cultivating emotional spaciousness and honesty within our commitments.

What do you think? Love to hear your thoughts on this.