Dear Maggie,

I am deeply in love with a man who doesn’t return my feelings. He loved me once, but now he’s in love with someone else. I always thought we’d be together forever. You keep saying that we sort of have influence over everything that happens to us, but I don’t seem to have any power at all over his feelings for me. I don’t want to live without him. I can’t be happy without him. I don’t see any possible solution for me. I don’t see any way I can ever be happy again. Please tell me how to make sense out of this, because it doesn’t make any sense to me.

Heartbroken & Hopeless

Dear Heartbroken,

This is one of the most difficult situations to get through, for anyone, so don’t think it’s just you. But let me see if I can help you steer through it a little bit better. You’ve had your heart broken by a man who doesn’t return your love, so in a way, you’ve never been more clear about what you want – you want a man who loves you the way you deserve to be loved. You want that man to be one you can love just as passionately and deeply as you’ve ever loved before. You want it to be this particular man.

The thing about creating our own reality is that the key words are “our own.” We can’t control anyone else’s actions or feelings. The key for us is never, ever to let our own happiness depend on anyone else’s actions.