It’s a rainy Tuesday morning. The sky is trying to brighten. By noon, it’ll be sunny again. I never thought there could be too much of a good thing – such a glutton am I for good things: eating too many plums until I’m sick, staying out an hour later than I had planned, encores at concerts, trying to attach myself at the hip to a woman I adored, burning the roof of my impatient mouth on fresh from the oven pizza. As a sun worshiper, I have never understood the pluviophiles – the lovers of rain and gloom (though as a poet, I understand gloom and nuance all too well). That is, until now. There’s a guilt I feel when I waste a perfectly good and sunny day, letting the excess sunshine spill like golden coins on the streets and sidewalks only to wash down the gutters and sewers never to be caught or held onto for very long. The rain provides the balance and context. When the rain came this morning, I felt a sense of relief. I was allowed to sit on the sofa, drink my coffee, and read. This is a mindset that I’m actively trying to shift. There is no such thing as a wasted day.
Yesterday, I was in a minor funk. I had listened to the wrong type of podcast. I put on an episode called “Why love – and therapy – means going in a direction you don’t yet know.” It was from the podcast How to Be a Better Human (a show I had never listened to before). The episode was an interview with Dr. Orna Guralnik. She’s a therapist and has a docuseries on Showtime called Couples Therapy. For a few hours after listening, my mind was searching and wandering – mostly in one general direction, but with lots of tangential thoughts. I wasn’t quite triggered but I was revisiting some things I’ve tried to leave behind. Maybe because it sent me scrambling in a dozen different directions, it was the right type of podcast. I’m still not sure.
I did couples therapy once. It was a strangely rewarding experience that has cast a long shadow over everything that has come afterwards. I wrote a little bit about the experience here. As I listened to the podcast, I thought about how therapy was a deliberate choice my partner and I had made – a commitment to going the hard way with each other. A commitment not just to each other but to, as the podcast title suggests, “going in a direction you don’t yet know.” A rare gift of optimism we tried to share with each other but couldn’t sustain. I was struck by that phrasing: “going in a direction you don’t yet know.” To me, it sings with the essence of the adventure. To me, it says, I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m glad it’s with you. To me it echos lines from one of my favorite Stephen Dunn poems, “I will try to disappoint you / better than anyone else has.” I love that type of shit: making a plucky go of this messy thing we call life.
I think what caught me off guard as I listened to Dr. Guralnik, was how I’m still convinced, these many years later, that we (the partner I had done couples therapy with and I) had most of what it would have taken to get through the rough spots and to enjoy a really good life together. There’s still a know it in my bones quality to my feelings about that relationship – a feeling that all we needed was a bit more time, practice, and patience… and as common wisdom suggests, had we gotten twenty years in to the relationship, we would still need time, practice, and patience. Love is a creative act that requires daily attention and occasional revisions. It’s a practice of grace and gratitude, and learning to walk softly, unsteadily, along the fine line between generosity and greed.
What became obvious (a conclusion I’ve come to time and time again) is that I was deeply interested in this person and what made them tick… that despite the challenges they (and we) were facing (challenges that sometimes manifested in a lashing out or running away), I was committed to waiting it out and working it through. The present challenge has been to quietly and repeatedly answer those sentiments with a kind, but unemotional, “so what?” Just because I was willing to be patient with it doesn’t mean that it would have ever played out in our favor – or more accurately, just because I felt we had what it took, doesn’t make it real or unequivocally true. We live(d)/experienced two different and separate realities, and sometimes (less frequently now) I still find myself trying to reconcile those differences. It’s not surprising that a podcast on couples therapy would make me think about irreconcilable differences.
When I think about these things, I tend to ask myself two questions. What do I do with this old line of thinking, this old and tired internal attempt at reconciliation? and Is it preventing me from building something new? To the first question, I usually respond by saying I don’t have to do anything with it. I can let it sit there. I can accept it as an occasional visitor, a natural part of the grief process and wait until it recedes back into its depths. To the second question, I say. “it’s probably a hindrance, but I’m not sure how or why.” My fear is that it will always hold me back. This, too, was part of the funk. I have days (fewer of them) when I can’t imagine caring that deeply about someone else or being that invested in our mutual success and happiness. In this respect, I’m afraid I’ve become more selfish. I also have days (fewer of them) when I wish we would have pushed through or that she could know the person I’ve grown in to.
As I listened to the podcast, I was reminded of a few different things, lessons I’ve learned, and epiphanies I’ve had over the years – all of which pointed to my appreciation for, and desire to, solve problems on the deepest levels with a caring and competent partner. In my head, I heard my favorite lines from Adrienne Rich stating that love is about going the hard way with someone else. I heard that particular ex’s statement the day she left saying, she wouldn’t want to be doing this with anyone else. I heard my own silly, yet unwavering optimism that always seemed to say, “we got this.” I was also reminded of my “personality tests” which suggest I’m a person whose “real passion is to get to the heart of the issue so that people need not be rescued at all”; who “hope that every story will end with, ‘…and they all lived happily ever after'”; who “will take the time necessary to find someone with whom they truly connect. Once they’ve found that someone, their relationships will reach a level of depth and sincerity of which most people can only dream”; and who “are not for the uncommitted or the shallow.”
By the end of the podcast, I was wondering if what I’m secretly looking for is someone who is going to stick around. I was wondering if I appreciate couples therapy because it often represents attempts at rekindling, reunion, and rebirth – it strives for deep understanding and when successful represents the ultimate proof of love’s potential triumph over hardship – an unending process of growth, revision, and renewal all at the same time. I was wondering if what I’m really looking for in my next relationship is someone who is willing to do couples therapy with me? Maybe that should be my suggestion for a kick-ass first date? Also by the end of the podcast, I felt somewhat convinced that I may not find that depth again. Or perhaps more accurately, that because I don’t trust people to stick it out, I’m less willing to do the light, fluffy, and fun stuff that’s necessary to get to those deeper levels. Has my litmus test become one in which I’m looking for depth because I don’t trust levity? Have I become distrustful of my once playful and cheery optimism?
Being sent back to some of these thoughts was (and is) a challenge. I don’t doubt that my memories are flawed, but what I remember from that relationship was a ton of laughter mixed in with some very real growing pains. And it’s always the growing pains that end things. Few relationships end because they’re having too good of a time together. Yet even that statement is only a partial truth. Coming from a dark place a person can crave the light so much that the first signs of darkness can feel crushingly ominous and cause fight or flight responses.
I have, at times, been accused of wearing rose-colored glasses or being too accommodating and forgiving to less-than-ideal behaviors. Talk to me about homelessness, crime, and almost any anti-social behavior, and you’ll see me twist myself in knots trying to understand where those behaviors come from. It’s not that I see the world through rose-colored glasses, but more that I’m willing to try them on as a different way of seeing the world. It’s taken me a long time to recognize that I’m a realist who believes in and hopes for the best for almost everyone and every relationship (including my own). I’m a person who, while not a pluviophile, enjoys a rainy day from time to time. I’m a person who, at the risk of my own “forward” progress, will look back as a way to not only re-examine, but to see how what I’m carrying with me from my past might be impacting my present. Listening to the podcast reminded me of how difficult some of those therapy sessions were and how they only solidified my optimism about who we were as a couple.
I had a tough time sitting with those thoughts yesterday. I wrote and wrote and wrote. When I changed into my running clothes, I immediately changed back and skipped the run so that I could latch on to a few more words and sentiments. Before even listening to it, I suspected the podcast would send me there. Going to couples therapy, in some ways, represented the best of who we were as a couple. It represented our willingness to go in directions we didn’t yet know. And when I think about those varied and ambiguous directions, that featureless map we were charting, I think about the wild sense of adventure it represented: the trips we took, the nights out, the nights in, the engagement, the cancer scare, the moving in together, the late-night talks about where we would land next or what the long and distant future held. In those moments, I wouldn’t have wanted to be doing it with anyone else.
I’ve spent the last five years learning to do it on my own: different jobs, different states, loss of pets, a two-month long road trip, and more uncertainty than I’m used to or comfortable with. I’ve set aside the maps and plans for the future in favor of a series of meaningful todays. In some ways, I’ve become the person I had wanted to find – a person with a slightly more carefree attitude fashioned from the cloth of ambiguity. In some ways, I wouldn’t want to be doing this with anyone else. Realizations which, like the morning rain, are both bittersweet and necessary.