A Vow to Self
"Behind all resistance is fear. Behind all fear is a lack of faith in oneself." ~Dina Bachelor Evan The thing that I love about marriage (besides not being married at the time I am writing this) is that it is a vow, an amazingly brave vow to take. It basically says that you will do the hard work it takes to learn, grow, be vulnerable, not hide, accept, love and support someone, even when you want to run away… it is, in truth a vow to your Self to work on you through your relationship to another. Marriage is a crazy beautiful ridiculous impossible rewarding thing, even when it doesn't work out. Vows are powerful and scary, beautiful and breathtaking, magical and mysterious. They matter when you make them and they matter when you break them. The truth is, many people don't ever imagine a time, when they are getting married, that they wouldn't want to be married to the person they are with, until it happens.
My father refuses to talk about death, scares him shitless. It is going to happen, to him, to me, to everyone that is alive. Death is a promise the moment you are conceived. It is the ONLY thing you can count on from the very beginning. Well, falling out of love with someone is the promise of falling in love with someone. What if, instead of avoiding the inevitable, everyone started discussing what they planned on doing when things get tough with their significant others, how they planned on moving through the struggle? What if we recognized that growth was inevitable and a potential 30, 40, 50 years with someone would yield at least 1-5 years of rough patch territory; seriously. A few years of struggle ain't so bad in the grand scheme of things. When you are looking at eons, a couple of years is a drop in the bucket. Besides, what is the point of getting married if you aren't going to do what you can when shit is going south? That is called dating and it is awesome because you can just get the hell out of dodge when someone is annoying. The downside to dating is that you can get the hell out of dodge when someone is annoying. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not one to tell anyone to stay in something that is shitty. On the contrary, I break up with friends when I feel that the friendship is no longer serving me in a healthy way. I know that everything ends. I know that what happens is what is meant to… so it goes. I do believe, however, if you have the chance to do your work, take it, especially when you made a promise to do so.
No matter how far away you go, you will still be where you are. Leaving one thing to go to the next doesn't actually solve the issue, which is always, my loves, you. No matter how much you would prefer the other person to be wrong, fucked up, and unworthy, you only see in another what you have within yourself. The best part of commitment is commitment. You will learn to stretch and grow and do more and go farther and suck it up in ways you would never if you weren't committed. It is like being committed to a workout plan as opposed to just working out when you feel like it. The part that is hard, really really hard is that you have to face the fact that the only way to make things better in your life is to truly love, cherish and honor yourself and that your understanding of how to do that is archaic and often just plain wrong. When you realize that you have to say the hard thing, do the hard work, and look deep inside and face the dark stuff, you may want to run. Wanting to flee is often a response to not wanting to see…. not wanting to see how you gave yourself away thinking you were taking care of your partner, when you were, in actuality, giving your power away to someone who was giving their power away too. Both partners feeling powerless and thinking that they are helping the other out in whatever way they thought they were supposed to, only to get angry and blame the other for their unhappiness at a later date. Relationships can force you, when pushed to their powerful potential, to deal with your Self, in ways you would never if given the chance to just cut and run. Of course, you don't have to deal, but the blessings that come when you do are immeasurable.
Now just because you work on your things and potentially heal your wounds with your partner does not mean you will remain partnered… your work together may be over after that, this healing may be exactly why you joined in a union to begin with. It is also the case that you must have a partner who is willing and ready to work on things in order to actually heal with them. If you have a partner who has given up you may need to move on. I have been there, I was married, have been in long term relationships, I get it. Nothing lasts forever, nothing ever could. My hope is that you receive all of the gifts an experience is here to give and from that place of strength make choices from your highest most ideal space to take your next beautiful steps.
Love, love and more love.
xo a