Relationship Epiphany

I didn't used to be a lying-in-bed-in-the-morning-and-musing kind of person. I'm an extreme morning person and I pride myself on my ability to go from zero to sixty the moment I wake up. However, Wholehearted House is a great place for early morning contemplation. Because I don't have electricity, if I wake up before the sun is up, it is simplest to lie in bed until there is some light. And that lends itself to either going back to sleep or to lying awake and thinking. I have been doing more of both of these things lately.

Thinking in the quiet and the dark can be very productive. The other morning I had a real epiphany about my past relationships.

I'd say that I've had four serious romantic relationships in my life. One of them lasted for 12 years and after it broke up (more than seven years ago, now–wow!), a good friend gave me a beautiful book called Love Listography. I looked at it, thought about what it would take to figure out what I actually wanted in a relationship, and put the book up on a shelf. Something about defining what I wanted scared and repelled me.

I fell into my next few (brief) relationships by default, not by design. And then I fell in love. And that was a total disaster (for more details, you can listen to this song, which is one of many I wrote about that particular relationship attempt: 11 kinds of itchy). And then I fell in love again. And that was awesome for a while, but it didn't work out very well in the end. It's been an often frustrating few years, and I'm not sure I even understood why until the other morning.

Here is my epiphany: I saw that all of my relationships (including the brief ones and the ones way back in the distant past) unravelled in a similar way: communication failed. Things were going along okay and then my partner and/or I would start behaving differently. Gaps started appearing between what I wanted and what I was getting and/or what my partner wanted and what they were getting.

I can't speak to how my lovers may have felt, but I felt like I was expected to know and understand things that I did not know or understand. As a result, I acted with a lack of empathy toward the unknown and/or misunderstood issue(s). This was interpreted as a lack of kindness and understanding and was met with withdrawal, frustration and/or anger. I met this response with my own withdrawal, frustration and anger and POOF! Each relationship spiralled from love, kindness and mutual respect into discontent, frustration, terror and/or rage – and then each was (not surprisingly) over.

Although this is a sad pattern, I'm pretty excited about being able to see it clearly for the first time. I think there are a number of things at play here.

1. I'm generally smart and empathic and I think I "get" things when sometimes I really don't. I need to be a better listener.
2. I'm a fairly "judgy" person and sometimes people are afraid to tell me things because they aren't sure how I'm going to react. And sometimes people do tell me things and then feel judged, vulnerable and unsafe.
3. I can have knee-jerk reactions to things that stir up my own vulnerability and I don't always know when (or have the ability) to keep my mouth shut about it or take a few deep breaths before responding. Also, I can flippant at exactly the wrong moments.
4. I tend to be a "problem-solver" so people don't always tell me things because they know I'm going to tell them what I think they should do and they don't want to hear it (just as I don't want to hear advice when I'm doing the best I can and someone else has a better idea for how I should live my life). I need to learn how to mind my own business and concentrate on solving my own problems.
5. Sometimes, other people are really bad at communicating what the hell is going on for them, often out of shame, fear or confusion. There is nothing I can do about this because it is outside of my control. The most I can do is stay aware of when I don't understand what's going on and adopt a stance of open-hearted, kind and curious inquiry. I can ask questions and work to accept the situation if people don't have answers, or don't have ways of sharing their answers.
6. I am not very good at identifying or communicating what I need. I am a big-time coper. I can get by on very little (at least for a pretty long time), but that doesn't mean I should have to. And it doesn't mean that I don't get resentful if I am in a relationship where I feel like I am continually giving more than I am receiving.

The good news is that many of these things are things that I can do something about. And everyone of them that I can improve will make a big difference in my relationship with myself.

Getting back to the Love Listography, what I think I need is to be in a relationship with someone who has some extra energy to invest; a little extra patience to grant me while I improve my relationship skills. I need to be in a relationship with someone who is a communication and tenderness ninja.

Hey, wait a minute. What I really need is to become my own communication and tenderness ninja. I can be so hard on myself for the mistakes I make. I need to adopt a stance of curious inquiry toward my own heart and heal some of the old habits I've listed in this post. They may make themselves obvious in my relationships, but they are also at play inside of me all of the rest of time. And the place they need to be healed is inside of me. And the only person who can do that work is me. Maybe looking for too much understanding and healing from a partner has been one of my biggest problems all along. It is easy to become frustrated and dissatisfied when one has unrealistic expectations.

So here's to putting my new dedication to tender communication to work in my own life. I'll let you know how it goes.