Connection...

“You cannot build a deeper connection with someone who is disconnected from themselves...”

Yung Pueblo

Now if that isn’t true...

And yet I have been trying to do this the whole of my life.  First, I was disconnected from myself.  That would explain my marriage failure and marital choice.  I was not capable of intimacy and sex being in the same relationship.  It was either one or the other and if I had one, I most certainly, did not have the other.  That was on me.  That was my dysfunction.

In the intervening 10 years, I have found all the places I unhooked myself from myself.  And did the very hard work to reconnect all the broken connections within me.  And the work continues, I am sure I will find more ways, I abandoned myself, more ways that I am disconnected from source and me.  But I have committed, and diligently persevered, to reconnect all the places I disconnected from me.

I can see now, that even though I endeavored to do the work on me, I didn’t really see that I should have been evaluating the work of others a little more closely also.  Not in a judgmental kind of way, but instead in a discerning kind of way. Just because I wanted the person I liked or loved to be more spiritually evolved and insightful into themselves, didn’t magically give them the gift I wanted them to have.  And my complete and utter failure to really observe my beloved’s disconnection from themselves, fucked me and them and the relationship up repeatedly.

I could not build a deeper connection with someone who was disconnected from themselves.  First I got it all wrong with me.  Then I got it all wrong with them.  Now I feel pretty connected with me.  I have done a fuck ton of work, steps, programs, therapy, EMDR, meditation, inventory and the like.  It is an ongoing thing for me.  Something I will continue to do for the rest of my days.  At least that is the plan.   It is a lot of work but it is also a very rewarding endeavor when you sleep soundly every night, alone.

I am not sure I will ever find a partner who can or wants to match the work I have done and continue to do.  I am not sure I will ever find and be attracted to someone who has done enough work to connect back to themselves. Perhaps, even, find someone who never got disconnected from themselves to begin with...wouldn’t that be novel and rare?  

But I do know now, I cannot connect with someone who is disconnected from themselves.  And I also know that connection is a variable thing.  We are not all connected up all the damn time.  It fluctuates.  It moves.  It varies.  And in any relationship there must be room for each person to get a little lost from themselves, each other and the relationship from time to time. But the bond of commitment binds each to the communion of circling back and going deeper.

None of us shall remain connected all the time to anything or anyone.  But if any kind of connection shall remain, it must be nourished, grown and tended whether that be with ourselves or with others. And a similar commitment must exist in each person otherwise one shall forever be attempting to do the work of the other with abysmal results.  We can only do our own work and support others in theirs.  We cannot do others work for them...believe me I have tried.

I am working to build deeper connections in my life.  It isn’t easy. I so prefer the light and superficial.  I mean, really, I don’t.  But I do...it is so much more comfortable in the shallows than the pain and skill it takes to dive into the depths of relational water with another.

I keep trying.  I keep working on it.  But it is hard.  But I remain forever grateful today I can see the failures of the last 10 years have been a result of me attempting to dive deeper with someone who has not done the work to reconnect all the places they are disconnected with themselves.  And my attempts to love them more deeply have perhaps, at times, felt like I was trying to drown them in the murky depths of depth. You can’t do that work for someone else, no matter how hard you try, love, believe, want, yearn, desire or need.  It simply cannot be done.

And, for me, today, I am grateful that I know this now.  I shall not ever be confused about this particular fact again because the pain of the last time I attempted to connect with someone who was so grossly disconnected from himself, lives on in me still, no matter how hard I try to rid myself of that lesson, it resounds in me, it reverberates within me still. Maybe forever. Maybe it will fade with time. But I shall never again forget the pain of attempting to connect with another who is completely, totally and unable to connect with themselves. That pain, I can tell you, is like no other.