"Being Unfaithful" - OSHO Talks - Part 1

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.