S. has always been a rather introverted guy. He’s relaxed and funny and has a good time in social situations, likes to hang with our friends. For the most part, however, he has been content and fulfilled with the idea that our family is his main source of community and support.
On the other hand, I have always needed a very strong social circle and a sense of outside connection, and have developed a fabulous network of support that more than meets these needs. Over the years I have often encouraged him to seek out a circle of friends because I felt that deep down he really did need it, but he really wasn’t ever all that interested (translation: he basically ignored me in an indulgent husband kinda way).
Obviously though, recent events have changed things. Now, instead of being a very tight, insular family network, more often than not we’re just two people living essentially separate lives. We come together to take care of our kids and the mundane household stuff, and to have deep, emotional discussions about our future. We are both always aware of the bond of love and time and life that stretches between us, but the comforts of the daily routine – that us-against-the-world-togetherness that is the central core of a solid relationship – these things are not so easily accessible these days.
There are brief glimpses, snippets of time where our fragmented souls come together again for an instant. It might be when our eyes connect across the breakfast table over a shared memory. Sometimes it happens when we’re in the midst of the craziest of bedtime tantrums and there is a sense of shared torture grounded in bottomless love. Other times it is a brief goodbye that turns into the most tender of hugs, the whole of our commitment to one another transmitted through touch in a briefly frozen moment in time.
In these moments I can sense us both grasping, frantic to hold on to the essence of us as long as we can. These moments are as elusive as the wind, and they slip through our fingers and leave us once again in our separate corners. I can tell, as we gaze at one another with questioning eyes, that we are both wondering the same thing; how on earth to traverse the distance between two broken hearts when you are no longer hoping to fix something, but instead yearning to create something new.
Because of my social network, and my extroverted nature and the fact that I am the one pushing this journey along, I have had places to go and people to help ease this transition. When I didn’t already have people in my life to fill the roles that needed to be filled, I managed to fill them through personal effort, blind luck and sweet serendipity. He, on the other hand, basically had nobody – and we all know that isolation makes a bad situation seem so much worse. These past four months have been a long, lonely, painful road for him. In recent weeks he has been taking those first steps to reach for connection. He’s joined some online meetup groups, and has been attending social get-togethers, regular weekly hikes, etc.
I’ve been really happy for him, although sad at the same time to see further evidence of our separation and division – another sign that we are growing apart, and not together. But I know that that he needs this, badly needs to find a network of support and people he can interact with and have fun with to distract him from the difficult realities of our situation.
This weekend he went out on a hike with a woman named K. A hike that stretched into a seven hour date. They’ve been exchanging emails seemingly non-stop since some time last week, and they are going out for coffee and dinner again tonight. He showed me her picture, and she’s pretty dang cute! It’s just friendship at this point, he says, but I know him (better than anyone on this planet, as a matter of fact) and I can tell he is interested, but unsure of himself.
What an odd, almost inexplicable place for us to be in. Obviously, if he finds someone he cares about it will make my life easier on many levels. We’ve been stagnating in a not so healthy place, and this would help things move on. Aside from that, I care about him so much, and I want him to be happy, and, let’s be totally honest, quite frankly it would ease my guilt a little.
But still, it feels a little lot weird. With this new development there is both a new level of ease and an uncomfortable level of strangeness between us. I wrote last week about how impossible it seemed to imagine myself with some nameless, faceless ‘her’ in the future – and it seems just as impossible to imagine HIM with some nameless and faceless ‘her’. When I let myself think of it, I am suffused with the most bittersweet ache.
Why, oh why, I want to ask the universe, do I have to loose this man in order to find myself? This sweet, soulful, tender, dedicated, doting husband who has cared for me with every bit of himself for a third of our time on this earth. This man who has taken pleasure in being provider and pillar of strength and who is never happier than when spoiling his wife and daughters with love and affection. This man who was to be my companion and guardian through the years as we grew old together. Why does stepping into myself have to mean stepping away from him?
Truly, I don’t really expect to ever find again the kind of partnership we shared. That’s not pessimism speaking, but rather what feels like truth in my heart, I don’t know that anyone gets to be that lucky twice. And that is what finally told me that this is real for me – that even knowing what I will lose, I must risk it all to be true to myself. I have to risk it, because I cannot bear to live as only half of myself any longer. All this is true, but still, I had no idea how much strength it would take for me to set him free.
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin.
And that is the crux of it right there. I could stay here, in a space of the utmost comfort and love, in an environment of caring and commitment, and I could slowly but surely suffocate from the efforts of denying myself. It hurts so much to do this, to walk away from a beautiful reality and an even more impossibly beautiful dream. Yes, it hurts beyond hurt. But this – this path, this truth, this journey – this is where I finally begin to breathe deep. This is where I begin to know myself. This is where I begin to blossom into the person I have always been, but have never given myself a chance to become.
In my most tender and hopeful daydreams, we are able to make this transition with love and grace. We somehow find the strength to love each other through this, not out of obligation or guilt – but precisely because we were blessed beyond measure to find each other, and to spend the last 11 years together. I picture a future that includes love for both of us AND between us – some sort of divorce-utopia (think those paparazzi pics of Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and their kids and significant others all watching some random parade and totally cool together). Can this be our reality?
“The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was, nor forward to what might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.” – Anne Morrow Lindburg.
To sit here writing this now – while my husband is across town in some restaurant, sitting across a table from some cute blonde almost-stranger, engaged in conversation and probably feeling that little electric pulse that defines the beginning of anything unknown – this is a reality I never imagined for myself. This reality slips from bizarre to liberating to heartbreaking to frightening to a place of hopeful peace and then back again in one fluid instant that stretches ahead of me into an unknown future.
I just paused my writing to go chat on the phone with a new, but already dear, friend. We were talking about her new relationship, and about the process of not being attached to outcome.
It is unrealistic, I argued, to think that we can totally give up that attachment. It’s in our nature to want to manipulate our circumstances, to want what we want and to attempt to get it. But then I sit here and contemplate my own argument and wonder about its validity. For what else is there to do here and now but release the outcome of this to the universe and accept that what will be, will be. To come fact to face with the fact that I am ultimately powerless, that the energy of our relationship has it’s own emotional force, it’s own karma – and that this is something I cannot even begin to understand, let alone control.
It is true, I believe, that all of these emotions – the hope, the sense of loss, the desire to dwell in the past, the fear that I will never again have what I once held so dear, the need to hold on to what was – these are all attempts to control, they are all evidence that I am very invested in the outcome of this situation. I’m not sure how to move beyond that, and I’m not even sure that now is the time to try.
For now, it will have to be enough to recognize my emotions for what they are, and also to realize that I have to work on relinquishing our relationship to the universe. I need to stop holding on so tightly, to non-judgmentally recognize my need to control, and to start letting go.
I need to set it free, for if I don’t it will never have the freedom to find it’s new form. I sense that this is necessary, that our relationship (as if it were it’s own physical entity) needs to stretch and grow and curl itself into a ball to cry for hours, and dance and meditate and daydream and work on knowing it’s center and it’s edges – just as much as S. and I need do this as individuals.
In the end, it all comes back to trust. Can I trust enough to do this?
I think I can.
Yes, I think we can.
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