Category — relationships

“You see, the whole thing in marriage is the relationship and yielding - knowing the functions, knowing that each is playing a role in an organism. One of the things I have realized - is that marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you are giving to the relationship. And if you realize that you are in the relationship just as another person is, then it becomes life building. A life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you’re giving to somebody else. Do you know what I mean?” –Joseph Campbell

I was interviewed for an article in this month’s Cosmopolitan magazine: 7 Love Rules You Need to Break. TODAY show did a segment about the article about a week ago. I had nothing to do with it, but it’s interesting because you just never know where things are going to turn up.

I posted an essay some weeks (months?) back called, “Once I Had a Broken Heart.” I’ve received a tremendous amount of feedback, mostly from people who are struggling with this extraordinarily painful situation. The pain of a relationship ending is so real and cuts so deep, but we think we should just snap out of it after awhile. It’s not so easy to do. There are many Buddhist teachings on how to work with a broken heart (one might say that is what the whole entire thing is about) like this, this, and this. But much of it was summed up by this statement I read from Gloria Steinem, who was discussing her grief after her husband died:

“In depression, nothing matters.” In sadness and grief, “everything matters.”

I found this to be such a moving expression of warriorship. It makes me remember that in sadness are the gifts of deepened insight and powerful compassion. When your heart is broken, it is also broken open and from it can flow enormous tenderness.

When my husband and I began dating, we had tremendous hunger to know who the other was. Daytime was an irritating obstacle to be gotten through until we could hold each other at night, when we would make love, certainly, but mainly we looked at each other. Listened. Smelled. Tasted. Touched. He was a stranger, but I knew him. And I didn’t.

After we’d been dating for a few months, he told me a story about a defining childhood event. In his story, he was about ten years old. His father had taken him on a summer walk through a farm belonging to a family friend. In concession to the heat, his dad was in shirtsleeves, tie loosened, porkpie hat pushed back on his head revealing an about-to-recede hairline. His gait was slow and steady while my husband’s revved up to rush forward and explore things of interest before running back to tell his Dad what was just ahead. They strolled through an orchard and past a henhouse before reaching a small barn. The floor was covered with a thick layer of hay and there was a ladder leading up to a platform that ringed the upper limits of the structure to create about four feet of storage space. His father encouraged him to climb up and have a look around, but to mind his footing because there was no rail around the platform, just a free fall to the ground below. The thick wooden floorboards were swept bare and felt sturdy under his feet. It was exhilarating to be up so high in a place where only a kid could fit. He looked down and saw the top of his father’s felt hat and the little gleam of sweat on his brow. His father reached his arms up and said, jump, I’ll catch you. My husband was scared. It seemed so far to go. Jump, his dad said, just do it. I’m here. So he did and at the last moment his father drew his arms back and let my husband fall to the ground. “Never trust anyone, son,” he said and walked away.

Tears came to my eyes and I felt for his elbows, shins, palms, the parts I imagined broke his fall, and covered them with kisses. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m grateful to him. It was his way of teaching me something he thought every man should know.” How awful to be a man, I thought. From then on, when I told him I was going to do something, I made extra sure to do it as stated and on time. No hidden lessons from me. My heart ached for him and my love deepened. Over time, the particulars of the story faded, our relationship proved trustworthy and our understanding of each other grew in scope and nuance.

Some years later, we were discussing the vaccinations his 6-year old son would receive at his next doctor’s appointment. Should we tell him now to prepare him (and preserve his trust) or spring it on him in the doctor’s office so he won’t get all worked up in advance (but threaten his trust)? I reminded him of his experience with his dad in the barn. “What would you have wanted?” I asked. He looked at me sort of blankly. “Oh, that,” he said. “I made that up.”

In that moment, I realized I didn’t know him and probably never would. And in that moment, the whole story came true.

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I was talking to my friend Michael Carroll today. We started discussing the nature of heartbreak. Here’s what he said. Check this riff:

The defining aspect of our nature is vulnerability. Vulnerability is the precondition for compassion. The foundation of vulnerability is uncertainty. The seed of the open mind is tenderness…this is what allows us to fall in love, cherish our children, and so on. But when we feel our tenderness, we panic at its very nature. The hypocrisy of pretending that we’re not vulnerable means we have to be checking our situation constantly to make sure it hasn’t fallen apart. This checking is the basis/trap of anxiety. The truth is we’re not okay. We’re wounded. It hurts. It takes bravery to be that open. Leaning into that not-okayness fully is the enlightened state. The ability to open to that which wounds us is the path. This is how non-duality is experienced.

It’s good to have a friend who says things like this.

October 2007

This is my story. What’s yours?

Buddhism gives a unique perspective on relating to a broken heart. Of course, there are broken hearts and then there are broken hearts. No matter how much losing other relationships may have made you cry, there are some endings that transcend everything you’ve ever known about pain. If you’ve had such a heartbreak, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It crushes you. You think you may die and then you wish you would. You lose at least 10 pounds right away. You go to sleep and dream about this loss and then wake up crying about it. You buy a lot of self-help books. At least I did all these things when my heart was broken.

Derek broke my heart. I can’t even really explain why. We had broken up and gotten back together several times during the course of our five-year relationship and I had been the one doing the breaking up. Then during the last one, he started going out with someone else and, I’m not exaggerating, my world fell apart. I had a ferocious longing for his love. Really, I don’t even know why. When I thought about our relationship resuming, I still knew it would never work out and that we would just breakup all over again. But this longing wasn’t about a relationship. It was about his love. I needed it. I couldn’t breathe without it. This experience humbled me, embarrassed me, and I did things I can’t even believe. Like sending him 15 page letters comprised mostly of underlining and exclamation points. And then calling him to read them out loud. Every day. I probably filled five journals, the kind that would normally take me a few years to use up. This may sound like hyperbole, but I don’t think I drew breath for about two years without feeling this pain. I even moved to another town, from Austin to Philadelphia, which was really like shipping out with the French Foreign Legion. (Who would move from Austin to Philadelphia?) But I had to get away.

I hope I never have to go through anything like this again and I hope you don’t either. Except for one thing. It was during this time that I also experienced a deep insight, a “pointing out instruction” as the Buddhists say. It only lasted for a few seconds and I have no idea where it came from, but it contained everything I had ever needed to know and marked the beginning of the path I’m still on.

It actually happened while I was carrying the garbage down to the curb. (Hmm…) It was a very hot Texas morning and I wasn’t wearing shoes but I didn’t care if the pebbles and twigs hurt my feet, or if I got trash on myself. I hadn’t been able to sleep much the night before because every time I dozed off I dreamt up new tableaux to capture the moment my pain began. I would wake up in tears, beg for mercy, fall back asleep, and pick up the dream exactly where it left off, as if it had been bookmarked. This was more than 10 years ago, but I remember everything about it.

Walking down to the curb, of course I was thinking about him and his new girlfriend and sifting through an astonishing output of explanations for his hurtful behavior: I’m paying for his fear of commitment. I gave him the best love he ever got and he just couldn’t handle it. No, no, it was all my fault, if only I wasn’t so needy, we’d still be together. My strength and emotional honesty scared him. (This one was my favorite.) And so on. While conjuring explanations, my mind was also bouncing off other walls. It started to go faster and faster. I wonder if my friends and I will see him when we go out tonight? Well just in case, I’m going to dress really sexy and he is so going to regret his decision. His new relationship can’t last because he has no idea how to love. I shouldn’t have sent him that letter explaining this. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat again. He was my last chance for love. How can I ever get over this? Why is he doing this to me? How can I possibly be experiencing this much pain? Blah, blah, and more blah. All of which was unbelievably painful.

The pain was stabbing me from all directions and I couldn’t get away from it, awake or asleep. There was so much going on, it was overwhelming. But, wait. The moment I thought, “there’s so much going on,” another thought also arose, but this one was different. It almost seemed like someone else’s voice. It said, “there’s nothing going on right now.” I stopped. I looked around. It was just a street in Texas on trash day. Nothing was happening. No one was hurting me. I wasn’t in any fights. The future I was worrying about didn’t appear to be here on this curb. The past I was regretting also wasn’t present. I was just taking out the trash. Everything became very silent. Actually, that’s not accurate. The noise stopped and I noticed that I could have tuned into this silence at any moment because it had always been there. It was like when you suddenly realize that the TV has been blaring the whole time but no one’s watching it. And you just turn it off.

When this happened, I didn’t think, “Oh my, I just received a pointing out instruction on the nature of mind.” Instead, I thought, “That was weird. I’m actually not in pain right now.” But then I was again. Still, I saw something on that day that I can now never un-see: when you look closely, you see that there’s hardly anything going on, ever. I know because I’ve checked lots of times since then. If you can shut up even for one second and stop hoping for the best or fearing the worst, all is still. You can always tune your ear to silence, no matter how loud the sounds around you. You can try it anytime and it will always be true.

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I wrote an article entitled, “Getting Serious” for the September issue of Body & Soul magazine. It’s about things to consider when you’re thinking about getting serious about a relationship.

“Relationships take compromise.” Is there any piece of relationship advice more ubiquitous than this? Personally, the first time I heard it, I hoped it wasn’t true. It sounded like a grim reality, one where I’d have to sacrifice what I wanted and find some way to do what the other person wanted even though it was stupid. And plus I’d have to smile and not care if they thanked me. All I could do was pray that the willingness to act like this would come with adulthood, bundled in a package with things like checkbook balancing and an interest in housekeeping. In the meantime, I thought, I ‘d continue as I was, skipping out of relationships that didn’t work, managing money by incantation, and dropping my stuff on the floor.

As I grew older, I realized that my heart only had so much give in it and if I wanted to keep it soft and alive, I’d better stop throwing it around willy-nilly and look for a stable relationship with someone I could love for a long time. “This could be cool” was no longer a good enough reason to hook up with someone. But what was? I started reading relationship books and found that though there was a lot of advice about how to get what you want in a relationship, it all basically boiled down to two suggestions:

1. Make a list of all the qualities you want in an ideal partner, visualize him or her, and you will attract that partner.
2. Set boundaries about what you will and won’t accept so you won’t get taken advantage of.

Well, who knows. Neither of these recommendations turned out to be useful for me. The opposite advice would have been more helpful. I wish I had read something like this:

1. Don’t assume that you’re the final word on what’s good for you.
My second to last boyfriend was everything I could have asked for: smart, cute, funny, same religion, no ex-wives, wanted kids, good job, close with his family, and, to top it off, our parents were friends.  So I moved in with him and everyone started placing bets on whether we’d spring for a big wedding or elope. One night we were sitting at our beautiful dining room table eating a lovely meal prepared in our fabulous kitchen and we had nothing to talk about, nothing whatsoever. I could hear him breathing. I thought, “Why does he have to breathe like that? Can’t he breathe like a normal person?” Uh oh. Apparently, I didn’t even like the way this guy breathed. This did not bode well. Mr. Looks Perfect was Mr. Dead Wrong. I did us both a huge favor and moved out, like the next week.

About a year later, I fell in love again, this time, with someone my friends (understandably) deemed Mr. Unbelievably Wrong. He had been separated for one month from his wife of 18 years. The divorce was a raging mess and it looked like he was going to be broke. We were not of the same cultural or religious background. He had a small child who burst into tears every time my name came up, and so on. But I fell completely, madly in love with him: his voice, his face, his skin, his ears, his glasses, the backs of his hands, his total his-iness. It felt choiceless to both of us. To this day, nine years later, the main thing we have in common is that we totally love each other. I have no idea why. So what are you going to do?

2. Let your boundaries have soft edges.
Whenever people say, “just set clear boundaries” as a solution, I get a little suspicious. Of course it’s good to expect others to treat you with respect. Definitely. But sometimes what we call boundaries are really reservoirs of fear. For example. I have a tremendous need for privacy and solitude. When I go for too long without them, I begin to feel unsettled and nervous. My husband, however, can’t understand why anyone would NOT want to feel the closeness of the one they love 24/7. To him this is sweet and normal, but to me it’s claustrophobic and bizarre. When we moved in together, I made my case very clearly and explained to him that spending some undisturbed time alone would aid me in becoming an adoring wife, as opposed to a harridan with snakes for hair. He nodded solemnly. About five marital minutes later (maybe a month), I told him I was going to go into my office for a few hours to do some alone time. “But it’s Saturday,” he said, and mimicked a pouty baby mouth. My heart sank. A few days later, he did the one thing I begged him never to do: disturb my privacy by talking to me while I was in the bathroom. To this day, he remains overwhelmingly interested in everything I do, everywhere I go, everything I think. Maybe I sound like a bitch, but this makes me insane. When I go upstairs, he asks me what I’m going to do when I get there. If I’m reading, he wants to know what and if I say I’m tired, he wants to know why. My comings and goings are of great interest to him and he marks both carefully. He continues to step all over pretty reasonable (to me) boundaries, like please don’t call me at the office before 11 because that’s my writing time. I’m a writer, so this is very important to me! Each time the phone rings at 9A and I see it’s him, I grab it thinking something must be horribly wrong. He says, “I was driving to work and just wanted to say hi.” I know it sounds terribly sweet, but after a while it actually starts to feel like, why is this guy ignoring me? I tried many strategies to get what I wanted: loving talks, angry screaming, showing him articles in magazines that said how right I was—but nothing worked. Finally, out of sheer frustration, I caved. The next time he called me in the morning, I cleared my mind, put work aside, picked up the phone and we started to chat. Nothing earth shattering, just what are you doing today and stuff like that. Having consciously set my own agenda aside, almost immediately I heard what this little chat meant to him. He was cozying up with me before heading into another stressful workday. It was like he wanted to give me one more hug. My heart opened. I remembered how much I loved him. I saw his phone call, not as disrespect for my boundaries, but as a display of vulnerability. When we hung up, it was with a feeling of sweetness and softness. My nerves were calm. My mind was clear. The balance that I thought could only come from privacy actually came from dropping my idea about how much I needed privacy.

I’m not saying that every time someone crosses your boundary you should put your wishes aside and feel sorry for them. But try to come as close to your boundary as you can. Feel the tenderness and shakiness that surround it, both for the one who crouches behind it and the one who approaches. See what it’s like to let your heart take it all in.

Now, whenever I hear a single friend say something like, “but I can only be with someone who has no children/celebrates Christmas/is a vegan,” I think to myself, I hope the next single parent/Jewish/carnivore you meet will stop your mind with the power of love.

“Next year,” I think at each wedding anniversary. “Next year may be the last one—I’m not sure how much more of this relationship stuff I can take…” This past weekend was our 9th. We spent a few days in Portland, ME, taking long walks in the sunshine, eating at amazing restaurants (go Hugo’s), and staying in bed for a long time. Nine years of marriage. I never dreamt it could be this way: this wonderful, this awful, this empowering, this restrictive, this profound, this stupid—this ongoing. I know that 9 years (13, including pre-marriage) isn’t like the longest relationship of all time, but still it’s a pretty long time, certainly longer than I ever thought I’d last. Not because I didn’t want love, but I didn’t really trust that anyone would love me for real. Truth be told, I didn’t trust myself to love without later finding out I had been mistaken all along and it was time to run away. I guess I thought I’d get bored, he’d get bored, one of us would tire of something essential and unchangeable about the other: too needy, too messy, too distant, too here, too gone.

Interestingly, all these fears came true. I can’t trust either of us to remain loving in the right way. We did get bored with each other. We’ve become exhausted to the point of comatose about certain attributes in the other. I see him as clingy, demanding, in my face. He always wants to talk about things. He wants to spend time with me, doing things together. (What?! Why does he try to control me like this??) To him, I spend too much time on other priorities and he asks himself: Aren’t I important to her? Why does she avoid working on our relationship? (“Our relationship is the most important thing is my life,” he says. “YOU are the most important thing in your life.”)

Once again, all true. I do want to spend more time apart. He does want to spend more time together. I love working more than being at home and he feels the opposite. I often get more enjoyment out of doing things alone; he from doing them together. And it’s not just about how we are with each other, there are complaints about the other’s very personhood. Me: I live with a bossy packrat who needs unheard-of amounts of attention and doesn’t understand my needs. I feel so alone. Him: How did I end up with a self-absorbed helpless person who leaves all the details of life up to me and runs away at the first sign of trouble? I feel so alone.

We came into marriage with particular wishes and personalities and, nine years hence, we remain fully sequestered with them, pretty much in solitary confinement.

Here’s the funny part. So what. It totally doesn’t matter because while we bounce from hissy fit to hissy fit, there’s something else going on. It’s very mysterious. There’s a current of energy between us, carrying us. When we become utterly despairing or sleepy, the current shifts in our best interest. A fight or an issue or a mood arise that makes us reopen to each other. Painful as it can be, I can’t help but notice that each ferocious wave that drags us out to sea and almost drowns us, then throws us back ashore, leaving us someplace a little further inland than before. Until the next wave of whatever—anger, disappointment, crankiness, ridiculousity—drags us out again, we gasp for air, and are tossed back on our asses, looking around going what the hell just happened.

No one ever answers that question. But somehow, the next wave brings another clue. We just wait for it and when it crashes on us, try to let it carry us out, far from shore, buoyed by trust until we find ourselves back on dry land. This is how it works. If we try to create conditions to prevent ourselves from ever being overwhelmed, we fail. S*@t happens. If in the midst of the overwhelm, we try to tell stories about why it happened or whose fault it is, we drown for sure. The only thing that can hold us together is to hold on to each other and hope that neither one gives up and lets the other drown.

A good relationship has little tension. When there is a fight, the pair kisses and makes up. A great relationship can weather enormous tension that, once gone, leaves a couple, not more in love, but more entwined. This is what happens with us. It doesn’t always feel good, but I am quite impressed by it.

Although it lacks rhyme, there is something very trustworthy and sane about this rhythm. Unfortunately, we don’t believe it until after the fact and instead keep hoping that the other one will achieve some serious personal growth to prevent this from ever happening again. But no amount of relationship strategies, “I statements,” or self-help can control for discomfort. Whatever you think will solve your relationship problem—compromise, setting boundaries, selflessness—is rarely sufficient. He and I aren’t in control. Love is. Each of us has to figure out what this means.

The only bankable truth I’ve discovered is that the gate to love is always open, but the entry is secret. If the secret were to be whispered in our ear, we’d each be told something different. All we can do is listen for it as we would to a symphony in which interest in individual movements has been sacrificed for curiosity about the whole. At least for one more year.