The Myth of Love

“Most of us, when we fall in love, simultaneously stumble into a multitude of myths, such as being ‘meant for each other‘ and ‘living happily ever after.’ Take a deep forgiving breath and acknowledge any of the romantic movies you’ve conspired to create in your life.”

~from the Introduction, 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married~ Simple Lessons to Make Love Last, by Linda and Charlie Bloom

Grown Men Cry

Gustav Klimt, "The Kiss", visipix.com

If you’ve been following the “The Marriage Journey“ then you know that my husband and I are mercilessly challenging ourselves to deeper levels of “intimacy” during this, our jagged, 20th anniversary year.

Right away, we realize that we need outside help.  We try books, a therapist, and finally register for our first ever “Couples Retreat.”  (Good thing we haven’t seen the movie yet.)

After 15  years of parenting, we’ve only stolen a shameful single weekend away so there are visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads–not a cubicle with twin beds and a hall bathroom.

The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health had bestowed upon us a generous scholarship–including a private “room” instead of the standard dormitory accommodation (which would have really separated us)– so who was I to complain?  I do anyway.

By request, my husband helps shift my attention from the white brick walls and tight corners of our room–with almost a view– to gratitude for the tiniest sink we’ve ever seen.  At least we can brush our teeth in privacy.

I unpack a slew of yoga pants and tank tops while Casey lies down on his bed to rest his broken leg. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve rolled my eyes since he hurt himself, I could have easily upgraded to a room with a queen and our very own toilet.

I have been filled with childish feelings like this ever since my husband came hobbling into the house just days before we left for Kripalu.  (Did you catch that it’s a Yoga Center?)  I wanted to kick his air cast in the shin or at least drop to the floor and kick the air  for such cruel injustice.

"Two Lovers" (Fragment) Van Gogh (visipix.com)

“Did you have the injury when you made the reservation?” they ask at the reception desk, wondering who would want to navigate a Yoga Center with a broken leg.  (A desperate couple, that’s who!) Another eye roll dollar please.

In a moment of good humor, my husband jabs that he is going to tell the  “Love, Sex & Intimacy” presenters how unkindly I’ve felt about his injury.  I counter with the threat to reveal his attraction to “suffering;” But there are too many of us at the workshop for tattle time: a lucky 13 pairs in all.

While the rest of us lean comfortably in seat jacks with yoga cushions, my disabled partner sits above me in a banquet chair, maneuvering his cast for comfort. (Another eye roll.) Each couple takes a turn sharing why they came.

There are at least two newly married ones, another newly parenting, a dating pair, and a  seasoned bunch like us (on first, second and third marriages) with 20 or more years under their yoga straps.

Interestingly, a single man is among us– attractive, newly divorced and wanting to get a better handle on the stuff of successful relationships. At the end of the weekend, he leaves with a bag of books to bring back to Wall Street.

There is a woman attending solo too.  Her partner of 30 years was unwilling to accompany her (while other spouses admit to being dragged along.)

During our  face to face activities, this woman is partnered up with the single Trader.  As an added variable, she is a Lesbian.  At the end of their awkward partnership, she jokes that she’s taking him home.  We all relieve ourselves with a belly laugh.

Another same sex couple is participating in the workshop too, and they blend right in with the generic heterosexual partners, leaving me feeling hopeful about the future–

of Love.

We are a hopeful bunch.  But jaded just the same.  All of us have been together long enough to know that relationships are complex;  and over the course of the weekend, each shares a bit about the “grind” of  his or her particular challenges.

Surprisingly, there are only 3 times when we are asked to speak directly to our partner.  The first requires us to face each other, close our eyes, and hold up fingers to assess our satisfaction with the intimacy in our relationship.  One guy is relieved to earn at least a “one”– just for coming.

I hold a full hand up with another two fingers, blinking the latter up and down, just in case I need to better calibrate with my husband.  (I don’t want him to have the “upper hand” of greater dissatisfaction.)

After lunch, the topic turns to Sex…

Boecklin 1827-1901, Arnold, Basel, Switzerland (visipix.com).

I joke that I hope we aren’t using fingers this time, only to find out that–Yes, in fact, we are.   With a flushed face, I whisper to Casey, “Let’s hide our fingers between us.”  I don’t want the presenters (or any peek-ers) to see into our bedroom.  (We calibrate this time without any blinking.)

On our last morning together, there are no fingers at all…

Only hearts…

And tears…

And grown men crying.

Once again, we are asked to turn toward our partner, but this time– with open eyes. We are each given 10 minutes to tell the other what it was that we love and appreciate about him or her.

The workshop presenters model this process for us.  There isn’t a dry eye in the room when Linda finishes telling her husband Charlie just how and why she’s loved him through the past 40 years.  It wasn’t always pretty.  (I make a mental note to buy both the Bloom’s books before we leave, even though I had earlier dismissed them.)

When it’s time for the rest of us to turn toward our partners, I dash out for the bathroom–to both relieve and compose myself.   I’m  joined by a handful of tissue clutching women doing the same.

With a deep exhale, I return, only to run back again to hall– to kick off my flip flops– before taking my seat beside Casey.  He’s arranged us by the post in two seat jacks and patiently continues waiting while I reposition myself–again and again– to create the best angle for eye contact–And privacy–And delay.  Public vulnerability is not my strong suit.

Casey goes first, and I find my eyes shamefully stinging–not with gratitude, but with bitterness.  He offers genuine love and appreciation for who I am, but I have felt him diminished in the face of my strength for too long, and now I know how much it’s cost me.

A watershed of emotion at the bridge of his forehead threatens to break the dam of his resistance; and I realize that it has been he who has been withholding love, not just me.

When my own 10 minutes of professed love come, I can’t help but scan the room to find faces awash with grief and tenderness in their own acts of sharing.  As I begin to acknowledge what it is that I love about this man beside me–his tender lips, his willingness, the combined strength and vulnerability of his throat– I am shaken by an unusual sound.

"The Lovers" Schiele, Austria (visipix.com)

I pause.  And listen.  Is  it laughter?

No. Someone in the room is sobbing. I try to regain my focus, but this sound of anguish takes hold of me.

I stumble through the rest of my turn and leave the workshop as soon as it ends without saying goodbyes.

Saturated, I return to our room to pack, only to find that it has grown.  It is a sweet space after all and I relinquish belated gratitude.

At lunch, I collect whomever I see from the class to join us in the corner of the dining hall– the Trader from Wall Street; the couple married just a year; the other married a lifetime.

“Did you hear the crying?” one man asks.

“Yes!” I say, “I didn’t know what it was.“

“It was the young couple,” he says.  “The ones that left the baby behind.“

“She must have been really moved,” I say.

“No,” he replies.  “It wasn’t the wife.  It was the husband.”

We all gulp, knowing what it is to have love brushed aside in the face of early parenting, each carrying the scars of the ways in which we’ve felt unloved and unappreciated.

After everyone has gone, I linger at our table, soaking up the buoyant energy of the room.   I’m not ready to leave our time here.

I began this day in such darkness, dreaming that I had prepared my best turkey soup only to store it in a garbage disposal where it went bad before I could figure out how to serve it to my family.

I ponder this dream as I look out over the Berkshires above the frozen lake where skaters and ice fisherman have already begun their day.  A pair of crows lands in a tree beside me.  One circles overhead, a little too closely. Casey limps out to join me.

The way before us is jagged, and I don’t know what will come.  I only know that we’re reaching for the BIG LOVE–

The kind that makes grown men cry.

(View of the Berkshires from Kripalu Yoga Center)

Kelly Salasin

(Your thoughts, comments & conversation welcome below.  To read more on the subject of Intimacy, you could begin here:  82 Pages Till Sex.)

The Spirit of Friendship

“IN ONE OF THE HINDU RITES OF MARRIAGE, the bride and groom make to each other a solemn statement,

You are my best friend.

Western couples need to learn to be friends, to live with each other in a spirit of friendship, to take the quality of friendship as a guide the the tangles we have made of love…

When two people are “in love,” (others)… say that they are more than “just friends.”  But in the long run, they seem to treat each other as less than friends…

(If) being in love is much more intimate, much more “meaningful,” … than “mere” friendship, why, then do couples refuse each other the selfless love, the kindness and good will, that they readily give to their friends?

People can’t ask of their friends that they carry all their projections, be scapegoats for all their moods, keep them feeling happy, and make life complete for them.  Why do couples impose these demands on each other?

Because the cult of romance teaches us that we have the right to expect that all our projections will be borne-all our desires satisfied, and all our fantasies made to come true–in the person we are “in love” with. “

~Robert Johnson, from the book edited by Emily Hillburn Sell, The Spirit of Love.

The Delicate Nature of Love

“When the time comes that you feel love for someone, be gentle.  Love has a delicate nature. Never be rough with it, or it will be completely destroyed.  Always distinguish the difference between love and desire.  Love gives pleasure; desire creates pressure.  Desire, loneliness, tension and disappointment can all deteriorate the delicate nature of true love…  If love is not given gently, it becomes stormy.  Stormy love, like stormy weather, can never last long.”

~Hua-Ching Ni from The Spirit of Loving by Emily Hillburn Sell

Lost in each other…

Here’s something to ponder…

“At what moment do lovers come into the most complete possession of themselves, if not when they are lost in each other?”

~Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Your experience welcome in the comment section below…

Loving through Change

“Sunlight pours into my study from four windows.  Year by year the turquoise silk has faded to a gentle watery blue, the brilliant embroidery has softened, and it is lovelier than ever.  ‘We love the things we love for what they are,’ Robert Frost reminds us.  And he means, I think, that we love them as they change–he is speaking in the poem of a brook gone dry–as well as for what they once were.”

~May Sarton as quoted in The Spirit of Love, edited by Emily Hillburn Sell.

Rising in Love

“Interestingly, we say ‘falling‘ in love, and not ‘rising‘ in love.”

~Alan Watts

The Why of Love

“One always loves the person who understands you.”

~Anais Nin

Take the Journey

“Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and the take the journey of self-discovery.  Love, and don’t be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be.  When you love, everything will come right.  Love has its own action.  Love, and you will know the blessings of it. Keep away from the authority who tells you what love is and what it is not.  No authority knows and he who knows cannot tell.  Love, and there is understanding.”

–J Krishnamurti

from the compilation, The Spirit of Loving, editor, Emily Hillburn Sell.

Rilke on Love

“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch, and greet each other.”

(Rainer Marie Rilke,  from the compilation, The Spirit of Loving, editor, Emily Hillburn Sell.)