Saturday, June 14, 2008

Potential for Greater Intimacy

"Pain and difficulty can sometimes serve as the pathway to a new level of involvement. They do not mean necessarily that there is something inherently wrong with the relationship: on the contrary, relationship trouble may be a challenging initiation into intimacy."

I believe there is so much wisdom contained in these three and a half sentences. We are socialized and conditioned to believe that maritial/relationship strife/challenges is paramount to something wrong with our relationships, which in turn, implies that there is something wrong with me, my partner, or both of us. This popular notion, however, creates a significant amount of anxiety and defensiveness which generally only makes matters worse. If….we could only see and understand that relationship trouble provides a "potential opportunity" for greater vulnerability, deeper communication and understanding on both parties than maybe so many of us wouldn’t just want to sweep so much stuff under the rug. Sweeping our problems under the rug may provide temporary relief from the challenges at hand but in the long run the dust that is under the rug always seems to find a way out from under the rug and eventually into our heart...and...a heart covered in dust is a heart that is struggling to beat.

Relationship Humor

"Humor and wit are also signs of the soul. Humor allows two people to enjoy each other’s company even as they consider some of the serious and painful aspects of everyday living without falling into despair. People who have to be perfect, or who can’t admit to each other the difficult or impossible situations life presents, can hardly be intimate. Humor allows us to entertain failure and inadequacy in life without being literally undone by them."...

If I am not careful I can easily get bogged down in the serious aspects of my relationship with a "Daughter of Eve". So, in the spirit of these words of wisdom here is a bit of relationship humor to lighten the difficulties you may be facing in your own relationship with your significant other.

May those who love us love us,
and those who do not love us,
may God turn their hearts,
and if He cannot turn their hearts
may He turn their ankles
that we may know them by their limping.
~Irish Prayer



"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."


"Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn't have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn't have to hear about the way his mother cooked."


After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.


Hmmmm, personally I think that depends on which version of Eve one has in mind. Not all Daughters of Eve are the same…which leads me to suspect this quote may have been written by someone who has never been married for any length of time or a Daughter of Eve who got kicked out of the garden and is now all alone.