I guess it isn’t just marriage, that is perhaps the ultimate gas on our raging out of control dysfunction. All relationships have the ability to light up your own dysfunction, this is why relationships, especially intimate ones, are so difficult. And rewarding. And hard. And a fuckton of work if you want a good one.
I have fallen in love with potential all my life. It was never reality. Ever. I saw things in this other person that they “could” be. For decades it never even occurred to me that the actualization of that potential was optional. I acted and behaved as though all the people I saw potential in would actually work to bring that full potential to light. Newsflash, they don’t.
In fact, I have come to understand, quite painfully, that the potential I see sometimes only exists in my own mind...that was a very hard lesson indeed.
Everyone has work to do on themselves. Everyone. No exceptions. This is commonplace. What is rare, increasingly and fundamentally, is a person who is actually doing the work that they need to do.
I see a lot of divorce. And marriages fail at the rate they do because of this simple, yet profound truth: marriage and commitment doesn’t heal dysfunction, it reveals it. And largely, I believe this is because we enter into relationships and then marriages believing they are whole and complete when the ingredients we are adding (us and our relatively unhealed traumas) are broken and in need of repair.
The most successful relationships and marriages I have ever witnessed personally and professionally are the ones where the two individuals entered the relationship with a clear and honest understanding of the relative dysfunction of themselves and the other person. Then both parties commit to working on their shit and helping, where they can and appropriate, the other person work through theirs.
The relationship/marriage becomes a nest for the growth of each person as an individual, but also as a couple. And as they do the individual work, the couple work is also supported and maintained. The relationship becomes a breeding ground for health, wellness, intimacy, vulnerability and mutual satisfaction. Instead of the usual shitshow of competition for needs getting met, further dysfunction and paralyzing anxiety and fear.
I was talking to someone last night, and it was so refreshing to talk to someone who has done the work and is committed to continuing to do the work on himself. He is actualizing the potential he sees and acknowledges in himself. While also acknowledging there will always be more work to do. We are evolving beings always and while we work to fix this one area today, there are other areas that are being left unattended. And when unattended too long, it will flare up and demand immediate attention, or, or it will proliferate into complete relational shutdown.
What if we could all re-evaluate relationships and marriage? What if we could begin selecting partners that will support us and challenge us to grow and change and do our work instead of just looking for someone that looks good when we are out in public, makes us feel good with a bunch of lies and empty promises?
What if we started dating intentionally with this idea that instead of a life partner we are looking, instead, for a healing partner. Where we both participate together and are invested in the individual and mutual healing two human beings can support, encourage and generate within each other?
What if we changed our ideas about commitment, relationships and marriage so that they were vehicles to repair dysfunction? I mean, the way we are going, we are just proliferating it.
What if our criteria for dating and loving and committing changed to encompass our dysfunctions? And then sought to provide a safe place for healing, loving and evolving?
What could we become with the right support?
What could we love into existence?
FUCK!
This feels revolutionary and scary and so insane that it just might work. I mean, I am crazy, but all the best people are!
Perhaps instead of setting our relationships and hearts and minds and souls ablaze with dysfunction, disappointment and dishonesty, we could begin the search for a partner who will tell us their truth, trust us with their pain and be willing to help us unpack all the lifelong baggage we all carry? What if we stopped trying to find perfect, and we just began our quest for real?
I don’t know, everything I have done so far hasn’t worked out so well...maybe, just maybe, we can switch it up and change the trajectory of love and marriage if we allow ourselves to be who we are, with all our problems and pain and trauma, and search for someone who can hold that pain with us and help us work it out and heal while we do the same for them?
Fuck, I don’t know, it is just crazy enough to work...
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