Marraige

Like many, if not most, of the women I know… I looked a long time for the man I was “meant to marry”.  I craved that union with another soul.  I wanted my split apart.

Now… starting back when I was thirteen or so… the idea of marriage had much more to do with wanting to feel loved or needed by someone.  I thought it would be romantic to have your heart so tied to someone that you would shatter with the angst of it all….

Into my twenty's I did the human and natural thing.  I thought that this “relationship” would help change the way I felt about myself and my life.  I was unconscious to the thought that I was expecting a partner to heal me and to save me in many ways.

And yet… there was a part of me guided in a wisdom I had yet to understand.  I made a list.  A long and detailed list of what I wanted this man to be.  Somewhere in the neediness of it all and the demands that I could not keep my soul from making… I realized that if I wanted “him” - the man in the list… I needed to be a great deal more like the list than I was.

And so I started working on that.  I began to also really pay attention to the way I related or did not relate to others and what expectations I put on them for the way I wished to be.  I started noticing other people and their relationship and I discovered games and manipulations that I swore I would not do.

YEARS went by.  I realized I had been bargaining with the Universe.  “I do this and I will gain what I am looking for”  I began to surrender.  I continued to find relationships destined to fail and then I realized I was afraid of that bone deep, open to the core intimacy.  I was afraid to have all that I ever wished to have, and I sabotaged all attempts to gain that.

I directed my healing in therapy to be less relationship challenged and let go of my committment phobia.  And I worked on myself.  I realized that I wanted a communion.  I did not want a husband to heal me.  To make me better.  To fill my life with meaning.  To make me less lonely.  I wanted someone that I could share my life with and that I could offer myself - whole and complete.

And when I was ready….. I surrendered.  I stayed present and in the moment and became so very awed when I found him.  I spent my time getting to know this man.  I found that the more I unwrapped the greater my delight.  I was whole and complete and happy in the life I had created and I was ready to share.

Today marks our second month of marraige.  I find that communion… emotional, spiritual, physical communion was worth waiting for.  It was worth the work that I did on myself.  I discovered that wedding….. to wed…. was to bind and combine the spirit of two.  There is a sense of shared life.  In our entire relationship, I have simply been present and magic weaves the moments together.

I am glad that I waited.  I am deeply humbled to know I was waited for.

Re: Marraige

Beautiful! Jill you inspire me not to lose hope, to keep growing and becoming until at the right time…

Love

Nicole

Re: Marraige

aww Nicole - there is tremendou hope!  My best friend a couple of years ago accused me of quitting when I had insisted I surrendered to the possibility of there being no one for me.  He brought me up short and I had to face a fear I didn't know I had.  And then I surrendered for real.

there is a song called “Broken road” and it says “God bless the broken road that led me straight to you.”  I love that song.  I look at past relationships and I am so very grateful and in awe of the path it took me on. 

There is so much to celebrate and open yourself up for!  Hope lives!

Re: Marraige

thanks dear Jill! right now i feel very peaceful and positive. at the right time, it will happen.

love,

nicole

Re: Waiting for the Right Time to Marry

Hi Jill,

Your story reminds me of something I just heard today on my daily hike.  I usually listen to something on CD.  I bought Marianne Williamson's book The Age of Miracles - Embracing the New Midlife.  There is quite a bit of metaphysical thinking it in and it is also based quite a bit around a Course in Miracles.  I also bought the audiobook on CD and I do find it easier to listen to her reading her book, than I found actually reading it - for reasons that I can't quite define.

Here is the story your post reminded me of.  It comes from the actress Ellen Burstyn's memoir Lessons in Becoming Myself.  She took a 25 yr break from love and sex; after a decades long string of husbands and lovers.  She didn't even date during her romantic hiatus because she was so sure that any liaison would be just another reflection of the same painful patterns she'd played out in her relationships up until then. 

While people make up all kinds of explanations for such a lull in their love life, Williamson believes this occurs because the person has declared a halt to romance on a subconscious level - regardless of how much their conscious mind might protest that idea.

In every relationship, you encounter the same demon - your own.  You have to deal with that demon or you'll never find true love because the demon will block it.  The arsenal of self-sabotage includes - insecurity, lack of boundaries, jealousy, dishonesty, anger, control, neediness and other forms of personal inauthenticity.  These traits attract to you, time after time, the same bad types or will blow it with any good types you find.

In order to have a good love relationship, you have to realize that no human being can erase your pain for you.  Ellen Burstyn came to understand that her negative relationship patterns were reflections of her childhood wounds, which she'd have to reenact until she healed them.  Until that work is done on some level, there is no getting off the wheel of suffering.  The work has to be done deeply and absorbed.

Burstyn writes that she remembered feeling “Now that I know I am ready at last to love well, I fear it is too late”.  However, once your mind and heart are realigned, when the broken self you may have become in childhood is no longer manifesting broken relationships, then you're ready to love again.  Compassion, integrity, truthfulness, generosity and graciousness become key elements in your new romantic skill set.

You see what you have done wrong in the past, forgive yourself, now understand other people's actions and forgive them too.  You are humbled.  When Williamson asked Burstyn what if was like when she finally met the man of her dreams, she “There is much more respect and much less judgment.  Conversations don't escalate into arguments, and arguments don't escalate into violence.  I now know how to let a man be.”

I can't claim any of the above is my original thinking.  I just heard it today and then read your post.  And when I openned Williamson's book to find it, I landed right on the exact page this story begins, in the chapter called I Will Survive (pgs 107-112) which I have excerpted or borrowed here with my own 2cents here and there.  I think someone in your pod is meant to read this.  These are too many coincidences, clustered together, to have been less than that.  You know I visit you here so infrequently, though you are just the sweetest person, it is all I can do to keep pace with my own Living Metaphysics pod.  I don't believe in accidental happenings and so, I share this here with you and whoever.

Wishing you years and years of happiness.  I met my husband after my self-esteem was raised a bit at a Jack Canfield seminar, thanks to reduced admission offered by my Science of Mind church in St Louis, where I lived at the time.  I remember thinking “if the right man really existed, I would marry again”.  Now I have 2 young children with him in a second life (I also have a grown daughter and 2 grandchildren).

Deborah

Re: Marraige

If only everyone took the sojourn you have before marriage the unions would be so much more sacred and enriching with so much less separation, divorce, and discontent.

Re: Marraige

Deborah and Ookami,

Let me start with WOW.  You poured a mouthful into your response and all I can really say is YES.  I know - for me - the choices I made were out of a wounded place.  And each “broken road” if you will, led to an evolution of being for me.  I needed to quit being held hostage to my perception of me based on childhood.

Yes… I did just say that.  I do not believe that I am responsible for the things that happened in my early life.  I do.. however… know that it was my responsibility to heal.  And until I went to task on healing, I kept inviting a pattern that held my soul hostage. 

I love what you said Ookami.  I do think that if we honored the path of healing more than we encourage the path of avoidance, we would see so much less distress, disease and divorce.  Imagine the strength of a family where the wounded are not raising children.  Where children become the evolving being instead of the surviving being.

I love some of the signs we see of people waking up.  I am a big Obama supporter.  (have been hoping to call him president since the 2004 convention speech).  whether you support him or not…. the inspiration of watching people reach out for hope and yell in unison YES WE CAN… stirs me and leaves me feeling quite hopeful for our future.

I see so many more people my age return to their base and find love in a pure form.  I am excited for what will come next!

Re: Marraige

Dear Jill,

Just in the past week I have experienced significant healing. I am excited about the possibilities again and it is so amazing!

Love,

Nicole

Re: Marriage

A member of the community, Shell, posted this in the Living Metaphysics pod in the Tao Te Ching discussion for Verse 24. Since it seems so related to what has been discussed here, I thought I'd share it.

- Excerpted from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson:

“Examining the past can help clarify many of our problems, but healing doesn't occur in the past. It occurs in the present. There is practically a mania these days for blaming the events of our childhood for our current despair. What the ego doesn't want us to see is that our pain doesn't come from the love we weren't given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren't giving in the present. Salvation is only found in the present. Every moment we have a chance to change our past and our future by reprogramming the present.”

Deborah

Re: Marriage

Yes! love to you

Re: Marriage

I absolutely love that quote.  I think I may have that book in my heap of “to reads”  Think I will dig it out!  :-)

Re: Marriage

What a great discussion!   Thanks Deb.

Re: Marriage

Welcome Josie!!

I'm 42 this year as well.  Given everything in my adult life and the struggles and relationship stretching that I have done… I would go back and do it all again to have the peace of mind that I had going into this amazing relationship.  Just to be here - where I am with my husband - is beyond my wildest imagination.

And I love how you said this “I needed to love myself dearly - No one else could fill this emptiness”  I was in that place as well and I worked to a beautiful place of filling full and fullfilled and quite happy with my life.  And then… I opened my arms to this beautiful soul that I married.

I congratulate you for the journey and your willingness to share!  Thank you!

Re: Marriage

Marriage - the state of being united
United - one


I have been married for 15? years I think. I first met my wife when I decided to stop looking for some-one. By not trying to join a “me” to “another” the act of leeting go and giving up allowed me to be One. And in that split second it happened, Tricia my wife appeared. (a few beers may have helped too:)

 Love is not something to find, its something to fall into. It takes no effort, reveals itself most when untouched and is the expression of you being the universe.

we are all married, united, one with each other… walk down the street and look deeply into every strangers eyes and greet yourself in them…. and be in…. love.

oh and there is a happier ending to this story… so 15 years now, three kids and tons of difficult journeys i am still “in” love with the girl I met just “last night” as it seems.

Re: Marriage

Michael, this was wonderful.

In a few months my husband and I will be having a 'Blessing ceremony”.  Our wedding was very small to honor the privacy I felt around the ritual of binding.  The blessing ceremony is to honor the greater connection we all share, and to celebrate the bonds of relationship.  This seemed like the most wonderful way to honor other's need to celebrate our union.

I love what you wrote!  I love that you are in love with that girl you just met!  (fifteen years ago)

Re: Marriage

Recently Deborah asked me how married life was….

It has been over a year since I last wrote here about this subject and I thought I would answer her and fill in the rest of the story…

I am so incredibly thrilled that I have been on a healing journey for decades.  In that time I have seen the evolution of me as a person and me in relationship.  I have addressed my own fears about commitment and learned to stand just a little more naked and vulnerable.  To honor how I feel.  A year ago, I felt like my marriage was effortless.  Two years ago I felt like my relationship was effortless.

In the intervening year…. nothing has changed except a deeper willingness to honor communion with my husband.  It continues to be effortless.  People who know me are now asking HOW.  And I have thought long and hard about what is different about the way my husband and I approach things and the way that I see other couples engage.  Here is what I see:

1)  Vijai and I are focused on building a life together.  The holistic health of our family is vitally important.  We are dedicated to communion.

2)  We are each accountable for how we feel and perceive life.  There is not dependency on the other one to change how we feel inside.

3)  We spend time every single day honoring what we love and appreciate about the other.  There is ZERO time given to tearing each other down.

4)  Name calling, even in jest, is not part of our lives. 

5)  We engage in a spiritual practice together.

6)  When we do not agree about a perspective, method, idea…. we honor that.  Sometimes our best ideas come out of how we each see something differently.

7)  Affection is a natural outpouring of our relating to each other.  It is never given as a reward, withheld as punishment, or only used to comfort each other.  It is as easily given as a smile.

8)  We spend time every single day gazing into each others eyes.  Most especially when we're having a hard time looking at ourselves.

9)  We are not competitive with each other.  I have never seen a couple that handles that in a healthy fashion.  It usually just creates division.

10)  We have family meetings to go over things that are upcoming, like budget, needs, travel, etc.  It keeps things from boiling up.

11)  We laugh.  We seek laughter.  We let the silly out!

12)  We own up to feeling sheepish or shy if it comes up.  And we use those moments of opportunity to truly stand naked and be seen by another human being that dearly loves who we are.

So… it is a mindful path.  And it is joyful and effortless.

Re: Marriage

This is so inspiring Jill. Thanks for sharing your joy with us. What a wonderful life!

Love,

Nicole

Re: Marriage

Michael,

What you've written is amazing. I think there are a lot of people out there who can benefit from the knowledge that they can stop “looking” for love and know that real connection cannot be sought after.

Re: Marraige

Hi Michelle… welcome!

I think that you hit the nail…. love is.  and it is as silly as looking for air, when all you need to do is breath it in.  If we surrender the shields we put in place, love is present.  Communion is simply allowing the love to flow freely.

I am so glad I surrendered, stayed present and was invited to commune with this beautiful soul (husband!)