I believe in love and I believe that committed partnership is part of my path.
It’s where my hardest lessons have arrived and where I have done the greatest
healing. I don’t beleive that this is true for everyone. For some, the richest
lessons come while travelling solo. I invite those people to send me thoughts
on their journey so we add them to this conversation.. (submissions@soulflares.org)
For a long time I have wanted to write down some of the lessons I have learned
through partnership.Please add your own.
Number 1: Love without expectation of return. Give Love as you would
an offering.
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only what you are expecting to give—which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving. If you are very lucky, you may get loved back. That is delicious, but it does not necessarily happen.
Katherine Hepburn
Thanks to Disney World, I grew up with a particular idea of what "true
love" would look like and assumed my partner would share that. It included
a partner would reassure me when I felt insecure; who would promise to stick
with me in hard times. But my second husband gave me what he had the capacity
to give and couldn’t pretend to give more. He couldn’t pretend period. If
he needed to be alone he went off by himself. If he needed quiet he asked for
quiet. It didn’t really matter what romantic ideal I held. I had to accept him
the way he was or leave. Over the years his willingness and capacity to meet
me with what I needed grew, but not until I let go of my expectations. He helped
me with this by saying, "You have to be here with me because you want to
be here. Not because of what you hope I will become. I cannot make any promises."
As a result, I learned to love with fewer expectations. And I learned to love
as a practice, as an offering to something greater.
Can you love without promises or commitment? Can you love without reassurances,
without a safety net? In the beginning I couldn’t. I went to him again and again
to be reassured and to have my worries assuaged. But when he responded by asking
me to find someone else or accept what he had to give, I had to ask Spirit for
help. And Spirit responded. My capacity to Love grew ten fold.
Number 2: Do not expect men to speak the same language. (Warning:
I make broad gender generalizations.)
In general, women are raised to be adept at the language of emotions. A little
girl holds a doll and asks it "How do you feel?" We are at ease
talking about how we feel. We talk to eachother about how we feel without any
particular objective, but just to share. When a boy gets dumped or has trouble
with a girlfriend he doesn’t jump on the phone to tell his buddy how he is feeling.
But girls will spend hours crying together over a broken heart. I think one
of the biggest problems that arises between men and women is that men are suddenly asked to talk in a language that they don’t know. If or when they do try to
talk in the realm of relationship and emotions they quickly feel out-talked
and overwhelmed. In my relationship, I realized that I expected him to effortlessly
join me in my world. Over time I learned how to use words he could hear. Things
work a lot better when a woman lets a man know the objective of the conversation and what she needs from him. I think men have a hard time listening when they don’t know what is being asked of them or what the point is. If they don’t think there is anything they can do to help they will feel discouraged. So I am now clear up front. I will say, “I need 15 minutes from you to just listen to how I am feeling. There is nothing you have to do.”
Number 3: Be conscious about what you want to bring to your relationship.
I used to think that love wasn’t love unless your partner accepted all of you—no matter what you brought to him. I thought that if I couldn’t be completely myself with my partner than it wasn’t a good relationship. I’ve come to beleive that while being myself with my partner is important, what is more important is that I am conscious about what I bring to the relationship. Too often we are nice to everyone else during a hectic day only to unload on our unsuspecting partner. I learned that relationships are deserving of thoughtful consideration, to be treated like a jewel. Now, when I get to the door of our house I check in with myself: "How do I feel?" If I am feeling stressed I ask myself, "What would be the best way to alleviate my stress—a walk in the woods alone; some time with a girlfriend?" Usually, just asking that question brings me back.to a more loving place. It’s even better if you can do this process an hour before you are too meet your loved one. Check in with yourself and then imagine yourself greeting your partner in the way you would like—with love and gentleness.
Number 4: Talk about what purpose you each want the relationship to serve.
Just 50 years ago when two people got married it was pretty much assumed that
the purpose was to buy a house, have kids, and grow old together. Today, there
are many reasons two people might commit. For Rod and me it was for the purpose
of furthering the mission of Heron Dance—a creative partnership. My current
partner and I have committed to share and support each other on our spiritual
paths. To enter into commitment without being really honest about what you want
long-term is a mistake. We have to ask the hard questions early on.
Joseph Campbell wrote:
The whole thing in marriage is the relationship and yielding. Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. Marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it is a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate. And you are not giving to the other person; you are giving to the relationship. Because you are not giving to the other person, it is not impoverishing — it is life building, life fostering, enriching.
… The beautiful thing is the growing: each helping the other to flower. We often want to freeze the other person, but you can’t have that and love too.
This is one view. What is your partner’s view? What is yours?
Number 5: Go to bed angry.
I think one of the worst bits of advice for couples is: Never go to bed angry.
Anger and fighting is the expression of the ego not the soul. I for one, do
not beleive you can solve a problem created by the ego with the ego. Ego is
stubborn. I have spent too many night talking in circles. In his book Soul
Mates, Thomas Moore reminds us that when it comes to love we need to access the soul’s intelligence. He recommends that we give over our disagreements to the soul, to allow it to ruminate there and come back to it later. What I learned is that there is a time for everything and the soul knows when the right time is to bring up an issue. It take faith. We are used to using our intellects to solve everything. Unfortunately, our intellects are better at building evidence to support our case than to be compassionate to the other’s feelings. We forget we have more intelligences. I would wait three days before I talked about something that was bothering me. Usually, the issue would just dissolve. Other times, the time allowed me to see more of the issue and come at it more open and loving.
Out beyond ideas of
wrong-doing & right-doing
There is a field
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Number 6: Look for the third way to arise.
Whenever my partner and I come to an impasse I say, "We are intelligent,
creative people. We can create a solution here." And then we remind each
other to look for what we call the third way. Not my way, not his way, but a
third way of approaching what feels like an immoveable obstacle. But the third
way does not arise until we have let go of what we think relationship "should" look like. We have to embody the energy of "not knowing" of expectency, openness, and curiosity and access a different intelligence—our hearts.
Most people have non-negotiables in relationship. Non-negotiables make the
third way difficult to access. But if they are clear from the start then exchanges
can be made. When Rod told me he had to live alone I said I couldn’t do that.
But I decided to give myself more credit, to try it despite my fears. What happned
was that I really loved it and disovered the joys of spending time with myself.
Number 7: Remember that your partner is always changing, always evolving.
You can never completely KNOW them.
Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly, has said some very wise things
about relationship. One of the best: When we say, "I know you" we
put our partner and our relationshp in a box. We don’t know ourselves, how can
we claim to know the depth and mystery of another human? I think one of the
reasons relationships fail is that we think we know our partner so we do not
ask for what we need. "He would never allow that" we think. Never
underestimate your partner’s capacity to change, to give, to allow for the sake
of love. A reader of Soul Flares has been married for over 40 years.
One day she told her husband, "I am not happy in this relationship."
And then she asked him if he would meet with her over a lit candle once a week
to share how they are feeling. She was afraid he would think it was silly. Turns
out, he loves it and reminds her about it. This is an all too common exchange
among partners. One person says, "I am going to run a marathon." The
other says, "You can’t run a marathon. Remember how many times you’ve started to run and quit? You don’t have the discipline." We must always,
always, believe in each other’s limitless potential. Let your partner surprise
you.
Number 8: Just because we love someone doesn’t mean they will trust us.
In my second marriage, I worked to be the ideal partner. My goal was to love
selflessly, to be loyal, and to never lie—all the things I was unable
to offer my first husband. What I expected from my second husband in return
was that he trust me. So when he questioned my integrity every once in a while,
I would lose my s*&$!. I was indignant. "How could he not trust
me? What do I have to do? Put my body on the tracks?" But he never
promised that if I loved him he would trust me. My anger and indignance did
not take into account his past experiences that had left him so guarded. And
although he often reminded me that he trusted me more than any other partner
he had had, I was not satisfied and my dissapointment played a large role in
his leaving the marriage.
Number 9: Love yourself the way that you want to be loved by others.
I have known for as long as I can remember that you must love yourself before
you can love anyone else. But living that has proven a lot more difficult than
simply knowing it. I entered my third committed relationship with a lot to learn
about how to love myself while in a partnership. Despite my successes, my self
confidence, and strength in other parts of my life, I had always felt afraid
of asking for what I needed in relationship. At 42 years old, with two marriages
behind me, I realized it was time to put aside my fears and put my own health,
my own needs first. Jangchub, my current partner, is my greatest ally in this
quest. He reminds me to take care of myself and his commitment allows me to
fearlessly ask for what I need.
…Spend time in that inner space befriending the invisible director that
guides your life. Trust it today. Allow it to function in the loving way that
it wants to. Go with what it directs you to do, trusting that your life is
on purpose and that you will not be misguided, the more you will commune in
the peaceful, harmonious world of real magic.
Dr.Wayne Dyer
Number 10: Be fearless.
Everytime we open our hearts fearlessly we expand our capacity to love—a
capacity we carry with us even if the relationship ends.
I’ll end this with one of my favorite quotes on love. Please send yours (submissions@soulflares.org)
I was lying in bed one day, thinking about my death, wondering if I’d
be conscious enough to talk to my children, what I’d want to leave to
them; famous last words, as it were.
The key word is trust. Trust everything that happens in life, even those experiences
that cause pain will serve to better you in the end. It’s easy to lose
the inner vision, the greater truths, in the face of tragedy. There really
is no such thing as suffering simply for the sake of suffering. Along with
developing a basic trust in the rhyme and reason of life itself, I advise
you to trust your intuition. It is a far better guide in the long run than
your intellect.
Next on my list is to learn what love is. It is complete and utter surrender.
That’s a big word, surrender. It doesn’t mean letting people walk
all over you, take advantage of you. It’s when we surrender control,
let go of our egos, that all the love in the world is there waiting for us.
Love is not a game, it’s a state of being.
Henry Miller, from Reflections, edited by Twinka Thiebault