Relationships
Into The Dark I Go
So this week I went to see my therapist. We had an interesting discussion in which she told me that I do not have to say out loud every thought that enters my brain. And while I have “understood” this for quite a while I have a hard time putting it into practice for it stems from some parts of my childhood and marriage that are not yet resolved. For whatever reason, I associate that saying what you feel it = honesty. Not saying what you feel = dishonesty.
“How is that working for you?” she asked. “Not too well is it? I have to say your radar on honesty and dishonesty is out of whack. It is a defense that has nothing to do with true honesty and you need to work hard to figure it out.”
Even I have to admit she is correct. Evidence shows that this way of operating befuddles me and creates unnecessary pain for myself and others.
She went on:
“You think you are being honest when in fact you are not because you are not allowing time for things to gel. By jumping the gun you are getting facts wrong or putting them in a category that they do not belong in. You are not containing what you are thinking long enough to see if the facts line up with your powerful intuition and when you speak from intuition without the facts you are not being honest.You are not being mindful. In fact, by not allowing time to pass in which you can throughly examine what is before you, well, you are contributing to some of the dishonesty that occurs in your life.”
Ouch.
“Further,” she went on, “When you speak too soon it shows that you are not operating in a conscious and mindful manner. It shows that you are just surviving which is not healthy.”.
Ugh
Again she is right …which makes the near future a whole lot more difficult. Because once again I have got some heavy duty work to do on myself which means unpacking a lot of boxes that lie in the Place of Mystery which are hidden in the deep and dark recesses of my mind. And while I know it will be worth it in the end, right now it feels like trying to unwrap a house that has been encased in yards of cellophane one layer at a time. This feels hard, tiresome and exhausting. And it will be. I try to remind myself that to produce the change I want to see, I have to put forth effort. So today, I start by unpacking one box and putting one foot in front of the other… so I get eventually get where I want to go.
With the light of wisdom
We leave behind the forest of confusion.
With determination we learn,
We reflect and practice -Thich Nhat Hanh
Can Lost Love Be Found?
I have lived these past 12 months with so many conflicting emotions. I have changed. I have bent. I have been driven down on my knees so many times that sometimes it feels like they are calloused and worn. Yet, through all of this I have had to believe that this work was important for me and for my marriage. And it has been for me…not so sure about the marriage.
Yesterday, B and I were talking and I said something to the effect that it must be hard living with someone who you wanted to love but just didn’t feel the kind of love you wanted to. I got no reply. That hurt. Just like the chandelier…still not hung… and numerous other things I try not to dwell on. But the fact is, it is hard to keep trying when it feels like nothing you do makes a difference. And sometimes it feels like I am getting closer to the point where I am not sure I can keep trying.
I am a good woman. I am a great wife. I am a good mother. I am determined. I am stalwart. I am fun and I am sexy and I can tell a great story. I am not a drunk nor a big spender. All together I am a pretty good package… NOT perfect but desirable and loving and the real deal. And here is the thing…I want someone in my life who appreciates this. I want someone in my life who knows that he is a lucky man because I am in his life. Frankly, I deserve to be loved fully and completely and I am just not sure that I can settle for someone who loves me out of obligation or “because of the children.”
Sometimes, there comes a point in time where you begin to recognized the futility of the situation. You realize that you cannot make someone love you especially if they don’t want to see the goodness in you no matter what you do or how you change. I am a woman who loves deeply and passionately and I want to receive this back. I want to be loved for who I am just the way that I am. I want to be loved because I am me.
In a few weeks we arrive at the end of the ONE YEAR TO FIX THIS. It will be 365 days since this saga began and we are still not healed, not head over heals in love, not repaired. Sure things in our relationship have improved.A lot. I like him more and I think he likes me more. We spend more time together. Our communication has improved but still isn’t where it needs to be. The sex still remains combustible. And one thing has remained the same throughout… I do love him deeply and I still think he is a sexy man after 30 years.
I wish I could say that I understood where this was going. I wish I could say that B loves me the way both he and I would like. But he doesn’t and I am no longer sure if that is alright with me because now my heart and soul believes that I deserve better…because I do. Yes, I want that fairytale ending even though I know at my age that you may be riding on the back of a mule to a castle that is a money pit. I want to know that my true love is true and forever. I don’t think that is too much to ask.
Forgotten Things
These past five days:
I have had the chance to rejoice
In the unconditional love of my grandkids
And basked in the joy of watching
Them learn and explore
Watched as cousins took turns
Comforting the crying baby
Willingly and with a gentle appreciation
Of the difficulties of travel on young ones
I have gotten to have a greater
Understanding of my daughter
Her daily life
And her aspirations and dreams
For herself and her family
I have met cousins from here to there
Two of whom I never knew existed
Until I found them last week
One on-line and one
In a tiny local historical center
The volunteer of which
Called him to say
“Come down here. A relative of yours is here!”
And he came lickety-split
To meet an unknown
Provided with a chance to talk and compare notes
Next to the sloth bones that another cousin
Dug up over 100 years ago
And others I have not seen
Since I was a moody teenager
Sulking in my own misery
And misunderstandings of life.
I have traveled to the towns
Of my ancients
And had a glimpse of how and where they lived
Drove by their houses and fields
Seen the rows of corn
That are planted in the same spot
That my Great-Great Grandparents hoed
I visited the graves of those grandparents
Who made the perilous journey
Across a vast ocean
With hope of achieving something
BIGGER and BETTER
For their children
Their dreams realized in the faces
Of their never-known great grandchildren
And beyond
I have celebrated the birth of those
Who have shaped me
Shown me love and concern
Throughout these many years
And helped me to become who I am
I have been given precious keepsakes
Hundreds of years old
By my Aunt who loves to make
Others happy in the most
Delightful and meaningful of ways
I have felt the pain of my daughter
Whose child does not sleep
While admiring her calm and patience
On so little dream time
I’ve watched you, B
Love our children from afar
Reminding me, once again
Of all the precious people
I have waiting at home for me
With open arms and love in their hearts
But most of all I have had the opportunity
To feel all those blessings in my life
That I often miss during
The hustle and bustle
Of daily life
And those bountiful moments in time
With family members that love me
In ways once unimaginable
I am thankful for all
That I have
All I can give back
And for you
Giving me the chance
To discover things long forgotten
Love Is A Choice
If there is something else of importance that I came away with from this weekend’s Marriage Encounter it is that LOVE IS A CHOICE. It is a choice that you make again and again and again over the lifetime of your relationship. The choice to love begins when you wake up in the morning and think pleasant thoughts of your spouse while he lays there sleeping. It is present when you decide to take the time to really listen to what your partner is saying. And it renews itself when you chose to give your sweetie the benefit of the doubt and believing in the best instead of the worst.
I am not sure when B and I forgot this or if we ever viewed love in exactly this way. Letting resentments build up is not choosing to love. Foregoing intimacy is not choosing love. Escaping from each other by putting other things first is not choosing love and I know these things were happening in our relationship. No wonder our relationship became unsatisfying to both of us. Other things intruded and we did not recognize it nor stop it when we did. Making sure that our love for each other a priority just never got very high on the list.
I thought it might be difficult to make sure that B knew I was choosing love. But staying connected throughout the day via texting and dialoguing at night is helping us to see that putting our relationship first makes us feel good about the other. It makes us appreciate and celebrate what we have.
Sure, it has only been a few days and we have yet to be put to the test with schedules, poor behavior and a disagreement. But I have hope that as long as we both remember that LOVE IS A CHOICE and choose to honor the choice we have been blessed by; then loving each other as the unique individuals we each are will become as natural as a rose opening itself for all the world to appreciate and see.
A Weekend Of Promise
This weekend we traveled six hours to attend a World Wide Marriage Encounter. This program is put on by a segment of the Catholic Church and its aim to to strengthen and preserve marriages. Since we are not Catholic, I was a little worried but I decided from the get-go that I would take away what I needed and leave any discussion behind regarding ideas/values that I may disagree with. That was a good decision but in truth there was very little church doctrine thrown our way.
All I can say about the weekend is that it was very therapeutic and restorative. Programs were given in which the Marriage Encounter leaders shared powerful stories from their own lives and gave examples of how following the program renewed their relationships and made communication/intimacy easier. Listening to the hardships and disappointments of these couples really helped B to understand we were not alone. Seeing their relationships and the intimacy they shared made us want the same for our marriage too.
We spent the weekend writing and learning to dialogue with one another. For someone like B, who finds sharing and even discussing FEELINGS difficult, seeing other men who were in the same boat as he, but have learned how to share and behave differently was a huge break through. The most important things we learned were:
- Feelings are neither good nor bad. It is the actions that follow the feelings that can be good or bad.
- The difference between thoughts and feelings. Thoughts include judgements, beliefs, ideas, perceptions and opinions while feelings are spontaneous inner reactions.
- If you can replace “I feel” with “I think” then you have expressed a thought not a feeling.
- If you can replace “I feel” with “I think” and it doesn’t make sense or if you can replace “I feel” with “I am” then you are most likely expressing a feeling. For instance “I feel irritated about this” it doesn’t make sense if you say “I think irritated about this” so it is a feeling. You can also identify a feeling by saying “I feel irritated about this” and then replacing the “I feel” with “I am” “I am irritated about this” so it is also a feeling.
There was also a priest there who participated and shared about his journey and disappointments with his vocation. He was so honest and forthright about his life. It was refreshing. I think for some of the men hearing the struggles of a priest allowed them to really look at their own lives and to open up.
It was an INTENSE but amazing weekend full of hope and promise. The feelings and intimacy we shared was much needed and appreciated. We both felt like we came away with the tools to improve our marriage and make it be the type of relationship we both need and desire. And we both had felt a renewed commitment to our marriage and each other.
Yet, I think the thing that touched us the most was when we found out we had had two couples who had gone through Marriage Encounter praying for us and the healing of our relationship throughout the weekend. I have to admit that prayer is a iffy thing in my book and I have always felt uncomfortable with others praying or asking for things on others behalf. It has just never sat well with me. Yet, to know that people we didn’t know were wishing us well, encouraging us through prayer and rooting us on just amazed me and somehow it felt like a blessing rather than an intrusion. But what was even more amazing was that after the weekend was over and we were exiting the building there were those same couples who had prayed for us standing there welcoming us with their insight, love, the candles they burned for us and flowers…well, it caught us both off guard. We felt encouraged, joyful, honored and amazed that strangers would do all this for us with the hope that our marriage would come to a place of peace and harmony.
There are not many times in life where you truly get to feel uplifted and amazed while experiencing positive changes working within your own life. This weekend was one of those times and it leaves me hopeful and gives me the ability to dream again about our future together. It doesn’t mean that we will be free of troubles but we have some more tools in our tool belts and how they work make sense to both of us and we are both willing to take them out and use them to improve things between us. I hope you will root us on too in whatever way you choose for one thing we learned this weekend is that we can use all the help we can get to take our relationship in the direction that we want it to go.
Love Letters
Recently someone contacted me (after finding my family tree on a genealogy site) saying that they had found a box of letters from 1912 from my 2nd Great Aunt (I’ll call her Mary) to her then boyfriend who later became her husband. She had three boys from an earlier very bad marriage and in stepped (I’ll call him Ned) to love and cherish her and the boys. Not many men would have had the heart or the courage to take it all on but he did and I know that Mary and her sons were blessed to have Ned in their lives for another 51 years.
There are about 40 letters in all and they are courtship letters. Mary and Ned were separated at the time by two long train rides from one another and they were trying to find a way that they could be together as a family but things were hard and there was not a lot of work where my Aunt lived, so Ned went to the “Big City” to look for work. One of the bonuses of these letters is that my Grandfather is mentioned in them twice. He was about seven at the time. In one her letters to Ned, Mary says that my grandfather said to her son, “Do you think that man is going to marry your mom?” He replies “I reckon they might.”
Throughout all the letters there are pronouncements of practical love and a few glimpses of passionate love too. In one letter my Aunt talks about what might happen if they were to work together and says, “But if we do you have to promise to keep your hands off of me while at work!”
These letters are nice reminders of how early in relationships we do our best to impress, to praise, encourage and to believe in the possibilities that lie ahead. I think that is often missing as marriages mature and the letters have reminded me of just how important those kinds of gestures are in everyday life. Mary and Ned’s belief in their love and their future together is strong and its an overriding theme throughout their writings. It was important to them to believe and celebrate what they had and what they had found in each other. It’s some thing I want to rediscover in my relationship too.
Ever since B brought up the”maybe divorce” I have had difficulty celebrating what we have had, what we do have, and what we might have. Yet, as Mary and Ned have shown me celebrating a relationship and each other if important. It is a must do and it serves a much needed purpose to foster love and a sense of connection. So I have decided that if I want B and I to be a couple, I have to live like we are a couple and act as if we will be together forever. I have to believe in the possibilities that still exist for our marriage if this relationship is to survive. I must:
Damn I’m Good-A Positive Post
I love the color red. It’s bright, invigorating and screams out “LOOK AT ME!” like a three year-old having an intense but satisfying tantrum. Yes, red is a color that begs to be both seen and heard.
I have never had much red in my life even though I love it’s sass.I tend toward colors that live life in a predictable fashion, steady and neutral ones, which when I think about it, describe me perfectly. They are the familiar and comfortable colors. They represent things like grilled cheese and soup on a warm winters day. Nothing fancy and nothing too far “out there.” Just reliable go-with-anything colors that you can count on to get you through life.
This week I decided that the house needed a facelift so I bought a gazillion of those cans of paint samples trying to find the perfect hue with which to paint my shutters. There were forest greens, navy blues, and soft grays. Yellow was out but black remained on the list. With the amount I spent on samples I could have bought several gallons of paint but it was important to find the “perfect” color. Just for kicks I decided to try a red on for size and surprised myself when I decided to paint those shutters a kiss-me-once-more shade of RED.
Now I think I have shared with you that I am desperately afraid of heights. Terrified. And the shutters are mostly on the second story which would necessitate crawling out on the roof to get the job done. Now B would have eventually gotten around to it if I had asked but frankly his painting sucks. Drips everywhere. Streaks galore. Whereas I am a painting pro who doesn’t even need to tape off because I have such a steady hand. I am a Leondardeschi of the da Vinci gang. But up on the roof? Heaven help me. Even I had my limits…or so I thought.
So it was with trepidation yesterday morning that I eased myself out of my daughter’s second story window and stood out on top of the roof, the sun scorching my delicate skin, while I scrapped, prepped, and painted eight shutters. And if I do say so myself the change looks great. But it is not the exterior change that is important; it is the interior one I made inside of myself that is significant as well as meaningful to me. Because once again I conquered my fears and I accomplished something that made me feel positively giddy. I did what made me happy and was not afraid to transform things just a bit. And if the truth be told, painting the shutters became symbolic of something even greater. It spoke of my belief in the longevity and eventual recovery of my relationship with B because I wouldn’t have risked life and limb on the roof of a house that I wouldn’t be living in in the future. Amen.
Looking For The Good-Positive Post #2
The other night B and I were out taking our usual late night walk. It was a beautiful evening, cool and crisp, for this area of the country. The moon shone bright and the stars were singing the Twinkle song. Everything was perfect…except… where was the sparkle between us?
About mid-way through this jaunt we stepped into a quiet and very dark place where I told B, “I think that instead of concentrating on all the characteristics I don’t possess or all the things you feel are missing from this relationship, perhaps it would make us happier if we both looked for the good in one another.”
“That’s funny,” replied B. “That is exactly what my therapist said tonight and she gave me some homework to do in this area.”
Instantly we reached for each others hand, reemerged, and continued walking along. Immediately I got that sense that both of us realized that by looking for the best in each other, instead of the worst, things felt immediately different. Better. For while you are in the dark there is nothing to see, but when you change perspective and step into the moonlight, the sparkle returns, and you can begin to be able to shine once more.
The Dance Lesson- A Positive Post
The other night we took our first dance lesson. We had been looking for something fun to do and this just seemed to fit the bill. We picked something that was not fast or sassy like the Rumba or Salsa. The Slide didn’t generate much interest nor did the Polka. We decided that the only prerequisite was that the music needed to be old and slow …just like me… and most of the other students who showed up. In short that left us only one dance…the Waltz.
For those of us who know me and before you howl in laughter let me assure you that this waltzing stuff is hard work. YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER:
Eyes up..keep looking over your partner’s left ear.
Left hand held high…but not too high…not too low either.
And keep in mind that your right hand must be seen at all times in order to prove you are not goosing your partner.
And those feet…keep them out from under your partner.
Make your steps smaller.
Make your steps bigger.
Go slower
Now faster
And ladies, to make this dancing stuff even harder… you will be moving BACKWARDS!
“Okay, I’ve got this,” I thought after doing the box step about a dozen times. By then, B and I had stopped fighting about who got to lead. But then, horrors of horrors, we were told to switch partners! It had the effect on me that an orgy would…get me the heck out of here!!!
Now I know I said for the next week I would only write positive things. So here goes: I am positive I have two left feet and should be banned for dancing forever. By the time we were done I think my other partners believed so too. I looked like a teenage boy at his first boy-girl dance in Junior High. Graceful was not in the cards but stress induced acne was.
My first partner smiled big as I slipped into his arms. His smiled disappeared the first of the seven times that I stepped on his toes. “Stop trying to lead,” was his helpful advice.
When I arrived before partner #2 I laughed wickedly and said, “I was a teenager of the 70’s. I either danced alone or did the BUMP.” I saw “CHALLENGE” flash through the man’s eyes. We had only gotten three steps into the box when he said in a superior and slightly uptight manner “Stop trying to lead.”
Partner #3 was obviously a professional dancer. I tried the BUMP conversation again at which point he said, “Hogwash, I can make any dancer look good.” Turns out he was wrong. He waved me on to the next man with a “Stop trying to lead” tripping off his tongue as I inadvertently did the same over my own foot.
Partners 4, 5,6, and 7 all had the same thoughts and “stop trying to lead” became the mantra of the day. This dancing stuff was tough and not necessarily because of the movements and coordination that was involved. Truth be told it was the fighting each man to lead that was doing me in.
I think at this point I should confess that I do like to lead in all areas of my life. Frankly, I am a natural born leader and a forward thinking kind of girl. I try not to look back in life with too many regrets and apparently this going backwards stuff while doing the waltz didn’t leave me without regrets either. I soon began to ask myself, “What am I doing here?”
Finally after being paired with so many different partners, I arrived back into B’s arms. It felt good and comforting to be held by someone so familiar and suddenly I found myself moving backwards with ease. In retrospect, I think it has something to do with trust and for those few moments I had an abundance of it as B waltzed me across the ancient hardwood floor.
I wish it was that easy in real life. It must be amazing to just let go and get swept up in the moment, gracefully put one foot in front of the other, and in time to whatever life throws your way. It must feel marvelous being able to trust your partner and to know without a doubt that they won’t bang you into any walls or waltz you right off the stage. To know that your back is covered and your feet are too. And it must be awesome to move with your partner to life’s beat without constraint and without a care in the world.
I hope dancing will teach me all of those things and more. I am even more hopeful that dancing will allow me to finally recognize something even more important:
That following doesn’t mean giving up the lead…it only means you’ll tread on fewer toes!
Gardy Loo Pismire 