How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.
-Sylvia Plath
Yes, I want more…. I suspect I always have – most of us do.
If part 1 (the philosophical and personal complications of wanting more) was somewhat easy to write, part 2 is the sloppy quicksand I find myself in every time I try to think through, write through, and straighten out my feelings about intimacy and partnerships. I’ve been writing it and revising it for over a week. I’ve been writing and revising it for years. I’ve added and deleted pieces of podcasts and quotes from writers. I’ve tried to find the essence of what it is I wish to say only to write paragraph after paragraph dancing around what I wish (or think I wish) to say.
I’d like to find a committed, fun, curious, difficult, and compassionate partner who will challenge me and attempt to understand me. I’m looking for that travel companion who’s in it for the long haul and generally optimistic about where the road might take us. If home is, as I tend to believe, the person (or things) we hold most dear, I’m the older dog looking for his forever home. Just admitting that what I seek most is “someone to pour myself into” feels… well, complicated for lots of different reasons. A short enumeration:
- Despite centuries of thought from writers and poets, philosophers and musicians, writing about and prioritizing love and relationships feels both unserious and unmanly.
- For some time now, there has been a movement in modern American society to suggest that we, alone, are responsible for our own joy and that “needing” a partner is somehow associated with a fear of being alone or an inability to be alone. This rugged individualism for the modern relationship seems born out of the overuse and misuse (weaponization) of terms like co-dependent and toxic.
- In my last serious relationship, I was accused of being too needy and accused of being controlling. Because I took that person as seriously as one can take another person, those charges have lived rent-free in my head for years. Any time I come close to thinking I’d like to find a life partner, I feel some sort of shame for being overly needy (despite doing just fine on my own for quite some time).
- In my own spiritual journey, I have tried to need and want fewer things (status, material objects, etc.). I have tried to walk this fine line between believing we have everything we need within ourselves and life is better when it’s shared. Both are, or can be, true… yet I’m often vibrating between both concepts and feel somewhat deficient for not being able to provide for myself the same type of joy I find outside of myself.
- Despite looking for and finding levels of joy and fulfillment in lots of different places (work, writing, music, walks in the woods, time by the ocean, a nice glass of wine, good friends, family, etc. etc. etc.), I have yet to find anything that matches the warmth and fullness of being in love and building on a committed partnership. For me, attempting to understand, love, and care for another person on the deepest levels seems to provide a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment in life than just about anything else. If love don’t pay the bills, jobs and material objects don’t provide love, etc. etc.
For much of my adult life, the married and raising a family in the suburbs part, I lived a content but relatively unexamined life. It was a good life, but I didn’t really think much about what made me happy, or what I wanted, or how much of it I had. Selfishly, I also didn’t think much about what I was doing to make other people happy. I was dutiful and responsible, but I’m not sure I was overly concerned about the spiritual growth and well being of myself or others (see M. Scott Peck’s definition of love: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”). Collectively, my wife and I were keeping our shit together, we were keeping things running. We had good jobs, a reasonable house, and we raised a fantastic daughter. That’s a pretty normal description of parenthood and middle-class American life. The primary focus is on keeping your job, maybe advancing, and ensuring your children survive and hopefully become well-adjusted and compassionate adults. It seldom involves pausing to ask why or to what end (because who has time for that). When I contemplate the broader sense and implications of that phase of adult life, it seems that we have things backwards. Raising a child, pursuing a career, and building a partnership are efforts each deserving of our full attention and for some reason, we try to do all three simultaneously during some of our least mature years. That seems insane and bound to fail in one or more domains.
At that time, beyond my occupational pursuits, I didn’t chase after many things. I had a handful of interests, but no real passions. I certainly didn’t think much about what made for a good and fulfilling life or a strong and evolving partnership. I suppose I was too busy living life as defined by “the American dream.” Living comfortably beyond survival mode but not in aspirational or inquisitive mode. The image I have is of one of those wind-up toys. Wind us up, set us down and we hop along in some direction, sometimes veering off, sometimes tipping over, always hopping hopping hopping, legs spinning until we need to be wound again or the great big watchmaker in the sky gets bored and walks away as our movements grind to a halt. Or maybe we’re more like hungry hungry hippos: we consume, but we’re fixed in place and we never ask why we want so many damn marbles – more marbles than the next guy. I don’t know. “Tiger got to hunt / bird got to fly / man got to sit and wonder why why why”
Admitting that I want more out of life (or that I suspect there is more to life) makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel greedy, makes me feel needy, makes me feel like I’m not adequately appreciative of the blessings I have. This is why being called needy in that serious relationship stung as much as it did. Being needy was one of the things I was taught to be ashamed of. In that relationship, I dared to ask for the world and was, in a sense, cut down for thinking we were capable of it, deserving of it, and on the precipice of having it… Which is always the danger of getting too close to the edge, or overreaching – you might get knocked off. You might fall in.
Understanding and grappling with desire is also why I turn to Buddhist teachings. They acknowledge that chasing the sun, while natural, can lead to suffering. Those teachings might even ask, and what would you do if you caught the sun – would you not get burned? I am, for the most part, a man of moderation and modest ambitions. On most days, I continue to live a content life filled with minor joys and subtle disappointments. I spend my time trying to celebrate the joys and, with my chin-up, embrace the disappointments. I tend to believe wanting more, within reason, is natural, but excessive desire leads to destruction. I also recognize there are benefits to settling, to reducing my wants, to neatly tucking in my crazy desires. Wisdom seems to be about knowing when to do which. Despite this “knowledge,” here I am, making a life change (leaving my job and moving) in pursuit of something more (or at least different) while also knowing (or at least suspecting) everything I need is within. Awareness is a bitch. “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
In the midst of this decision making process, I can never tell if my choices are brave or stupid, foolish or bold. That too is part of the curse – always trying to assign value to the basic movements of life. So what am I after? What is my more? What is the “different” that I seek? Is this good?
I guess, like Plath, I have this belief that we are meant to pair-bond, to share our company with a soul, to comfort and rest, to receive and give confidence. I’m cautious about such seeking because I also believe that in doing so, we have a tendency to chase away the very thing we desire. Moving one’s entire life in order to have a better chance of meeting someone feels desperate (that’s the shame talking) – and I don’t want to seem desperate. Yet, were I moving because I landed another job, that would seem normal – almost admirable and ambitious. Do we value all ambitious pursuits the same? Elite athletes, corporate titans, scientists, holy men, lovers?
I recently read a short essay in which the author was writing about Sylvia Plath’s troubled marriage. Of it she wrote, “so often our unhealed wounds lead us to people whose claws fit those wounds and deepen them.” It’s an interesting suggestion rooted deep in psychology and the paradoxes of eastern thought. However, I suspect those pangs and barbs may have as much to do with the intimacy, deep knowledge, and profound disappointment that develops between two people as it does with attracting those whose claws best fit our wounds. If, as Adrienne Rich suggests, two people who dare to use the word love are continuously refining the truths they share with each other, then it stands to reason that some of those truths will be uncomfortable and quite possibly destructive. Talon meet wound. Put simply, we seek out in others what is both familiar and missing in ourselves, and in this courtship process, we discover how to heal and wound each other on the deepest levels. The disagreements that arise, the hypocrisies we discover, the disappointments we suffer can become unbearable precisely because we care so deeply and the grief is so personal. Nobody can possibly live up to our ideals. That realization is a type of loss. Love is often grief’s exuberant spouse.
A few years ago, I actively sought out a romantic partner. At times, it felt frenzied. I met a lot of people as I tried to refine my understanding of what it was I was looking for. I was deliberate, but unfocused. I had a few relationships that taught me as much about myself as they did the other person. In between those relationships, I would date, but would also focus a bit more on who I was as an individual. Eventually, I met someone who not only checked off most of the boxes but seemed open to the journey of discovery, disappointment, and renewal. For the first time in a long time (maybe ever), I had this foolish sense of indestructibility – as though we might be a good enough fit to mutually evolve and survive the major and minor griefs we would cause each other in the course of our relationship. It turns out, we were not good enough (or more accurately, we did not survive – I always believed we were more than good enough).
I shrank from that experience. I pulled back and withdrew. I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering how I could have gotten it so wrong. Yet, no matter how hard I thought, no matter how deep I dove, time and time again, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t get it wrong, that the outcome does not mean that I was (or we were) on the wrong path. Throughout that relationship, and for a long time afterwards, I was committed to our continual growth, repair, healing, and renewal. We had both arrived at each other with unresolved conflicts and patterns from our past. The authenticity of our connection seemed to open these latent wounds (hello claws). Afterwards, I read books like Sue Johnson’s Hold Me Tight because they suggested that no damage was irreparable and they reinforced my sense that we could have been good for each other – that in addition to claws, we had sutures and salve. And because I desperately wanted to avoid placing blame, and I’m allergic to anything that hints of moral superiority, it took me a really long time to acknowledge (without judgment or blame) that one of us was more committed to those concepts than the other. That’s pretty much always the case when something ends.
It was important for me to wrestle with the fallout from that relationship because it reminded me that two people can view the same event, object, or circumstances from very different lenses. Both can be right, both can be true, and both could have had good intentions. It’s been important for me to revisit that relationship because I constantly need to remind myself that despite the outcome, the risk is/was worth it. It’s also been important because it’s helped me gain a better understanding of the anxious-avoidant loop that we didn’t start out with but eventually fell into. If those earlier dips into the dating pool helped me figure out what I wanted, deeply reflecting on this relationship has helped me understand why I want it and what might be done to preserve it.
As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time (years) pondering two seemingly contradictory beliefs about how we enter (or should enter) into committed relationships. One mode of thinking suggests that we enter into relationships as wholly formed and independent individuals. Healing and happiness are our individual responsibilities and we’re all better off if we can take care of those things on our own. The day my ex left she was going to a therapy session and texted “I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else either babes. Just got to figure out my own shit and hopefully will be better for both of us. Kisses and hugs.” I think this was a fundamental difference between our approaches: independence vs. interdependence. Her shit, my shit… those things were ours to figure out as partners. Nobody gets left behind. The other mode of thinking suggests that we are never fully healed and that only through the care and compassion of others can we become better versions of ourselves. The compassionate mirror that a loving other shines on us helps us to see ourselves more fully. Here again, I suspect both approaches might be true and maybe necessary.
After being called needy and trying to accept the charge as having validity, I dove into trying to be more emotionally self-sufficient. I read and re-read Be the Person You Want to Find. I spent a lot of time cultivating interests that didn’t necessarily rely on others. My more morbid thinking was that we all die alone and nothing is permanent, so maybe I should get a little more comfortable with that. This, however, proves to be the windmill against which I tilt: I can’t shake the notion that I’m a better person when I’m committed to someone other than myself.
But do we need that type of a connection? Do we need to travel that path? Will it always be difficult? There don’t seem to be universal answers – it’s always, “it depends.” Around the time that I put my toe in the quicksand of this specific blog post, I listened to and began mulling over a podcast from “Insights at the Edge.” In that podcast, host Tami Simon interviews Dr. Stan Tatkin, a couples therapist. At the heart of the interview is a debate over whether we are responsible for our partner’s happiness or if we are only responsible for our own happiness. It’s a debate on the nuance between co-dependency and inter-dependency – a nuance on which I’m still not quite clear. Both Simon and Tatkin seem to agree that humans are, for the most part, social creatures who need each other. But when does that need cross a line? When does that need interfere with another’s needs and how might we successfully navigate those waters? Terms like needy and distant are subjective, accusatory, and often unhelpful.
I found the podcast conversation interesting because I both agreed and disagreed with much of what was being said. Despite his frequent analogies to war (a couple is like two people in a fox hole) I tended to agree with Tatkin’s basic premise that in romantic relationships we find ourselves trying to create a mutually beneficial two-person system in which we are invested in, and responsible for, each other’s happiness. He suggests that in relationships of choice, our job is to become competent at, if not an expert in, the other person. Despite agreeing, I found myself cringing (or at least uncomfortable with) some of Tatkin’s statements:
I need to be good at you, because I don’t want to spend all my time feeling incompetent, which means I won’t like you. We don’t like that which we can’t manage. We don’t like babies we can’t calm. We don’t like computers we can’t operate. We don’t like partners we don’t know how to manage.
And I suppose my discomfort is because there’s truth to it. I don’t want to be seen as trying to “manage” my partner, but of course, to some degree, we all want to (and try to) manage our partners. Every argument or disagreement, whether it’s what to get for dinner or how to load the dishwasher or what we want our collective future to look like is an attempt to impose our will and vision on someone else. And so the dance begins…
What I want is to find someone who both complements me (pay attention to the spelling) and expands me… a relationship that has the maturity, sensitivity, and wherewithal to withstand those first disappointments so that the things we seek don’t become the things we resent. I don’t expect the road or journey to end there. I’m not naive enough to believe that’s where the rainbow ends. It’s just that I finally feel positioned to try this crazy thing again – hopefully with a little more wisdom.
“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…”
― Pema Chödrön