"4.25 years today," Nine announces after a sip of her coffee.
Lounging back on the sofa, stroking Zooey in between us, as we do every morning, I think about the 4.25 years we've spent with each other. It seems like a long time relative to all my previous relationships but at the same time feels curiously short in the grand scheme of things.
I learned early on - greatly exhibited by the two decades of my parents' marriage - that the duration of any relationship does not correlate with the happiness one feels in the relationship. I don't believe that their relationship ever went through any of the "normal" cycles of marriage. If they had started out completely enamoured by each other, any trace of it evaporated upon my arrival. Ever since I can remember, their relationship was consistently poor, with varying degrees of awful.
Our childhood experiences inform our emotional identities and shape the default ways we connect. Parents play a pivotal role in influencing our conduct in romantic relationships. It is difficult to fully unmoor ourselves from those formative attachment patterns modelled by and cultivated within the family. As much as the love (or lack thereof) between my parents informed my behaviour, their own parents' relationships informed theirs. It is a cycle that needs to be broken.
I've had my own set of failed relationships before meeting Nine and each caused me to question my approach. Yes, love is a skill. The great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh admonished that "to love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love" and just like any other pursuit of excellence, we must commit through a deliberate practice.
This has become my guiding principle. And through my experiences, I discovered three important lessons in nurturing a good relationship.
Embrace the Otherness
“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other.”
- Esther Perel
During the initial stages of any relationship, I always experience the same burning desire to merge with the other person. The longing for connection is so powerful that the thought of we as two separate beings not fusing into a singular unit is unbearable. But this same passion can also contribute to the collapse of the relationship.
I think it stemmed from an inability to be on my own, and not just in a physical sense. I wanted to eradicate even the unseen distance between me and my partner. I wanted to spend all my time with them. When we were not physically together, I was consumed by thoughts and by an outpouring of emotions and desire. The result was an unhealthy codependence, an inability to focus on personal growth, and the projection of my ideals onto the other.
For me, being in a relationship used to mean both parties operating with a common goal: that everything we did should be in service to the relationship regardless of our own desires, capabilities, and boundaries. In the end, this only served to subsume our identities. I lost myself in pursuit of these unrealistic expectations and therefore built a kind of prison. True love makes way for space, because paradoxically separateness is the precondition for connection.
Cultivate a Safe Space
On the surface, this seems easy enough, but we are primarily reactive beings. We are quick to reject, dismiss, and sometimes offer advice that doesn't always meet the needs of the other. It takes a tremendous effort to hold space where two people can take turns expressing their joys, worries, struggles, and emotions, free from judgement.
In my relationship with Nine, I have come to learn that patience, presence and acknowledgement make up the ingredients needed to facilitate such a space so that the other person can comfortably lower their barriers for conversation. This doesn't always happen immediately. If we are suffering emotionally, we don't always have the words for why we feel what we feel. Being patient sets the tone for discussion and can aid in the processing of each other's feelings.
Presence requires us to listen actively and attentively. It demands our full and undivided attention away from distractions. That means carving time into our day to have these conversations and not while we're at work or thumbing away on our phones. It helps to also hold our words as thoughts until the other person has finished speaking. It's just as important to engage and reply appropriately afterwards.
Sometimes what is being said may not be what we wanted to hear. Our own personal problems aren't always separate from the relationship's problems but it is important to validate and acknowledge how the other is feeling even if we don't always agree.
Seek Resolutions, Not Retribution
It's not about who's right or wrong. Disagreements can be worked through together if the aim is to seek solutions rather than to win arguments.
As with any relationship, Nine and I have had our fair share of issues, but these have gradually diminished over time because our goal is never to out-argue or put down the other. We are constantly striving to improve upon our mistakes and misunderstandings.
In the heat of the moment, the urge to retaliate is powerful but revenge is an immature response which only threatens the emotional safety of the other. A relationship cannot thrive if we stop looking for ways to resolve our problems.
It may be that our priority of being loved, rather than loving, is why love is so often intertwined with frustration. Erich Fromm suggests that we approach love the same way we do any mastery: to first command the mastery of the theory and then the mastery of practice. And until we make it a matter of ultimate concern - above money, power, prestige - love will not triumph enduringly.
Perhaps I concern myself with the practice to love well because I do not wish to repeat the mistakes I have witnessed and suffered at the hands of my parents' loveless marriage. Or perhaps I have an innate desire to prevail against the fate of their relationship. Or perhaps I desire to forge something far more everlasting and beautiful than the ones before me.
All the same, love needs no reason, only understanding.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading.
The references I made above are from some of these books and resources I highly recommend checking out.
How To Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art Of Loving by Erich Fromm
The Course Of Love by Alain de Botton
A Podcast Series: Where Should We Begin by Esther Perel
YouTube TED Talk: The Secret To Desire In A Long-Term Relationship by Esther Perel
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Till next time,
Happy Valentine's Day!
Al