I was supposed to go to a concert tonight. It was canceled due to the COVID-19 stuff. As I took my walk down Main St., I thought about going out for drinks and texted my friend Stacy to see if she’d be up for it. I almost always feel like grabbing a drink when I walk past the Green Beetle at happy hour. Stacy wasn’t sure. I made some dinner (salmon with pesto and tomatoes and rice). By the time Stacy had gotten back to me to say that she didn’t feel like getting ready to go out, I was already in the process of making the same decision myself. I surfed the net, repeatedly refreshed the news, followed along with my friends’ group text, took a nap, and then started texting a bit with a friend in Omaha. She’s really torn because she wants her relationship back, but wants to stop repeating their negative cycle.
I’ve read so much about relationships over the past year, that it’s gotten hard for me to think about it in a concise way – they can be incredibly complicated, and the answers (if there are answers) are sometimes pretty simple. We all bring in all of this baggage – from past relationships, from our childhood, from having lived 40 some years on this planet. All of those things require work (to some degree). Many of those things inform our sense of what we need, or think we need. Add to that mix another person, some competing needs, different ways of communicating and expressing frustration… it’s basically a powder keg. YET…. you also have all of these wonderful moments, this sense of absolute bliss and radiance. As good as that is, it casts the negative things in a pretty dark shadow – to some degree it creates a false dichotomy – really good and really bad. My friend said to me tonight that she’s frustrated because she’s not getting what she needs, but also feels there is so much good. I tried to tell her that it’s an AND statement – both are true. She has to determine if she can get what she needs in this relationship, or maybe also consider that her needs are coming from some of that baggage that we carry around (desire is the root of suffering – have fewer needs and you have fewer disappointments). In the end, both people have to feel that it’s worth working through… or better yet, both people can stop in the middle of the downward spiral and say “is this really how we want to spend our time? Wouldn’t we rather just enjoy each other?” Being able to recognize the cycle (however that cycle takes shape) and stop it is an incredibly powerful tool. Many studies show that if a couple can get past those early stages and can find ways to grow together (usually through shared experiences like travel and activities) they can have long term success and the “fights” take on less severity.
I didn’t go in to much of that with my friend. I don’t like to see her hurting – especially because I’ve been there. I sometimes point her to some of the things I’m reading and watching. As I listen, I often wonder if I would be able to put some of this theory in to practice. Having spent as much time alone as I have this past year, having written and read and traveled and thought, I feel like I’m in a better place to maybe be a little less intense – to maybe loosen my grip next time around (I keep meaning to go back and read Of Mice and Men in which Lennie kills almost everything he loves). I don’t know how I feel about losing my intensity. Obviously, I don’t want to kill off relationships with it, but describing love as the “desire to be desired” makes sense, and if desire is the root of suffering… probably means there will be some suffering. In fact, my intensity is one of the things I like most about what I bring to a relationship. At my best, I treat a relationship with more creativity than I do most other things. I can’t decide if it’s better to work on me or to find someone who just accepts me… this too is probably an AND statement.
I also tried to talk to her about how I’ve been intentionally learning to get comfortable with being alone – not something I’ve practiced much in my life. Like me, she says everything is so much better with someone else. I said I agreed, but that it also puts a lot of pressure on the other person. What I was really trying to get at was that yes, having someone else is amazing when it’s working, but for the times when that’s not possible, it’s good to be able to enjoy who you are – to not dive back in to dating as a distraction. Sure, the nights are a little more lonely, the sunsets, while just as gorgeous have a little less luster when they’re not reflected in the eyes and smile of someone else. But…. you have to believe that maybe those moments will come along again while also being ok with those moments just as they are. She asked if I was over my fiancee, and I tried to explain being in a weird place where I don’t date and I don’t pursue her… I just try to live the life I have and remain open. Siddhartha approaches Kamala, a beautiful courtesan, in hopes of learning the ways of love. When she asks what he has to offer (most of her “clients” are rich) he says he can think, he can fast, he can await. I can’t say I’m big on the fasting part (if you saw my weekend breakfasts, you’d agree), but I am deliberately working on the other two, thinking and waiting. And by waiting, I mean in a way that is without hope or desire – a waiting that is based on the fundamentals of meditation. When a longing arises, recognize it, call it by it’s name, sit with it. It is, at times, frustrating because my approach isn’t how most people define moving on. I think a lot of people will feel I’ve moved on when I’m romantically involved… that requires waiting as well. It’s also frustrating because the typical mid-life crisis is about realizing that life is short – waiting flies against that.
I started this blog in my about page by quoting Whitman and his multitudes. I read about spirituality and multiplicity because I believe in our ability to be many different things to many different people. I believe in complexity, and when things get difficult, I also believe in simplicity and humor and just being able to pull back and say “I really care about this person, and they really care about me… we should stop doing these things to each other.” In the deepest relationships, we take on the other person’s concerns as our own, we merge with them, and yet also need to keep the individual alive. It “is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.” For me, it still seems like one of the most honorable pursuits a person could undertake. I don’t know what to tell my friend. Holding on to her love and the good that exists between them is the thing that might make them work – provided he can do the same. And that’s the catch, to some degree she has to want to do it whether or not he is capable – unconditionally. Ironically, her holding on, will seem like the thing that holds her back from moving on/letting go/ whatever we want to call it. And that’s the risk she faces.