Going Deep

What is a healthy relationship? How does it look, especially in times of conflict, grief, and major transition? When I think about a healthy relationship, I often have this rosy view that only includes the joyful times, those times when all is well and it feels glorious just being alive and sharing time with my intimate partners. But I find that I am much less clear on how a healthy relationship looks in a time of stress. How do lovers, wives, and husbands support each other when there are crises, differing needs, and grieving going on?Recently my lover and I had a disagreement about the business we run together. On my side I felt very polarized and passionate about my position and wasn’t really having much luck seeing his view. I kept telling myself I should lighten up and just listen to him, but every time I would try to listen, all I could hear was that I was wrong! I felt a lack of support for a deep need that I had to create something. Essentially, I was in a total communication breakdown. This had happened over the course of the day, over many different discussions, and by the end of the day I was overwhelmed. I needed space from the argument, from my partner, and from my own feelings of sadness and despair.

I knew that I needed support. Something deep in me was triggered by the unwillingness to support my dream. Nevermind that this was a business discussion, and that my lover had perfectly good reasons why my plan of action needed close evaluation before implementation, I still felt hurt. And when I feel hurt, I need someone to listen and to let me cry, if I need to. I need to let the feelings out. I went to a dear and cherished woman friend, who I trust implicitly with any secret. Because she always listens so lovingly to whatever I need to talk about, I feel safe with her. I am able to release all the emotions bottled up inside when I am in deep reaction to a difficulty. The truth is, even a healthy relationship cannot always support us in times of crisis, because sometimes our partner’s cup is not full enough to give us a shoulder to cry on. In a healthy relationship, each partner learns to say when they can support the other and to cry uncle when they can’t. In a healthy relationship, each partner has these other people who can also listen and provide support. Sometimes it may seem that it is harder to love someone unconditionally, to accept all their faults and foibles, when we get into a relationship. Why? Why is it harder?

My personal theory is that the deeper we get into intimacy, the more we approach the divine union where there is no separation between us. And when the other person starts to feel like a part of us, their decisions have a much more intense impact on our emotional lives. It is easy for my friend to support me — she doesn’t share a home or money or meals with me, neither do we spend much more than a few hours a week in each other’s company. We know each other’s spirits quite intimately, but we aren’t in the state of merging that happens in most love relationships. To me it seems that the more things we share, the more likely it is that we will have conflicts and therefore struggle being that unbiased shoulder to cry on or that cheerleader for any cause. In a love relationship, we are so much closer, and we must learn to go in and out of that deep state of union in relationship, just as we do in the spiritual practice of tantric sex. We must learn to be comfortable with moving between deep intimacy and independent pursuit of our own center. Like a double helix, a symbol often portrayed as two kundalini snakes intertwined, a healthy tantric relationship cycles in and out of a connected place.

I am learning that when there is a conflict in a relationship I do two things. First, I bring the focus back to my center, to my needs and wants. I use the “Connecting to Spirit” meditation, putting my roots in the Earth and my branches in the sky. I talk things out with someone or write them out. I pray for guidance. I do my best to come back into a place of center. Second, I try to have compassion for the other person’s needs, to get the hawk’s eye view of the situation. Sometimes I even go into meditation and ask Hawk or Egret, two of my animal helpers, to help me see more clearly or be more compassionate and patient. In a healthy relationship, I trust that my partner is taking similar steps and that when we come back together, we will have more understanding of our part and compassion for our partners.

When I took these steps in my own life, in my own disagreement, I came to see clearly that I was over-reacting to the matter at hand, and that what was really disturbing me was that I had just spent a difficult weekend preparing my former home and spiritual retreat in the country to be sold. I realized that I am in the midst of a deep grief process, and that it is coloring everything else in my life, including my relationships. I realized that the disagreement I was having with my business partner was reminding me of old disagreements about my work with my ex-husband. So on many levels I was hitting on grief and dreams that had died. It wasn’t really that I was unsupported, rather it was that I needed to grieve. I also needed to be in the present, and not in the past.
And here is where Spirit is a help to me. Lately I have surrendered to letting Spirit direct my life, and I have learned that when I stop trying to force my will into every situation, that beautiful new things come into being in my life. I know within my soul today that the old place I’m letting go of will create space for a new one that resonates even more strongly to Spirit’s purpose for me. With this awareness and willingness, I can let go of holding on to a grudge about the disagreement with my partner. This is new, and something Spirit has taught me. I have learned that it’s okay to disagree, that it means nothing except that we have different viewpoints on an issue. In a healthy relationship, it’s okay to be in that place. Because I am allowing Spirit to run my life, I know that I don’t have to know how the disagreement will be resolved.

So as we go deeper with each other, as we grow more intimate, as we get more into the state of divine union, I’m convinced these differences will still be there, because we are different people. But it won’t matter. To me that is the secret of true intimacy: to know the depths of a person’s soul, to hold their unique beauty in awe, to love them unconditionally, to know they are both different and alike, and to dive in headfirst to the ecstasy of sharing energy with them whenever it is the will of Spirit.

Namaste,
Kypris