We assign reasons for why people are together as though logic could solve the mystery. But the answer is not so much secret as it is enigmatic. Often, deep in dreams, when we are draped leg over leg, two as one, under the goose-down comforter, there, in night's stillness, we intuitively know we are exactly where we need to be.

But this does not mean that we are always ecstatically happy. Feeling good is certainly an option but clarity is what we are looking for here. When we are clear, we want to stay, regardless of how we feel. We are committed to the essence of the relationship and willingly bear its fluctuations. We often fool ourselves into thinking that this feeling has something to do with longevity. But that is not always the case. Sometimes our most profound lessons come from brief interludes-just long enough to change a life forever.

Our commitment is not based on things making sense but rather on a feeling that lets us know we are where we need to be right now. This distinction of "right now" recognizes that what we need to learn and whom we need to learn it with changes all the time. How long we are with someone is not something we can intellectually or physically manipulate. We might convince ourselves that we are with this person for a specific reason, but the truth is that relationships adhere to the laws of physics and energetically have a life of their own.

Like everything else in the universe, each of us has a vibration. This vibration moves at a certain frequency and pulls to us someone who has a vibration that fits with ours. As long as these vibrations remain in sync, people stay together. When they are no longer a match, people drift apart. Simply said, when people aren't meant to be together anymore, they're not.

I realized the truth of this statement after a couple years of psychotherapy. Both friends and acquaintances frequently commented on how mismatched my husband and I seemed to be. He was very involved in worldly life and I, on the other hand, was much more connected to my inner life. There were problems from the beginning that continued throughout our relationship, but for some unknown reason I chose to ignore them. I tried unsuccessfully to leave the relationship several times, and when I finally did, I never looked back. As the marriage ended in divorce and I heard myself saying we were never meant to be together, I could feel the incongruity. We had been together and, whether I liked it or not, it was something that was meant to be-if only for a limited period of time. From the outside we seemed so different, but I knew we were vibrating at the same frequency. I pulled him to me just like he pulled me to him. Rather than think the marriage a mistake, I somehow knew it had been a perfect match. We had something to learn from one another, and this was the universe's way of making it happen. The same law of energy that had magnetically drawn us together was now responsible for our separation-the energy had simply vanished.

From Reality Works Copyright ? 2002 Chandra Alexander