Relationships have always been hard for me. I just never quite understood how they worked exactly. Couple that with the fact that instead of trying to genuinely learn how they worked I just let every guy I dated ( which is a very loose term) lead by the absolute worst example by the time I was at the age where society says you should start taking dating seriously my idea of a relationship was like looking at abstract art. I knew there was a bigger picture there, it definitely could not be the way I’m seeing it now. But no matter how I turned my head and squinted my eyes I just couldn’t see it fully. After a while I had accepted the fact that for me the picture just wasn’t there and maybe it was never going to be. I had gotten used to the constant of me always chasing and the guy always pulling away. There were always the extremes present. I was always either really happy (full of lust is probably a more accurate description) or really sad. And the guy, whoever he happened to be at the moment, always seemed to have one foot out the door and so in preparation I always did as well. Never fully in and never really out. Now a few years older and wiser I see that this was all just a reflection of how I saw myself. Not fully being worthy of real true stable and reliable love, only something that looked kinda like it. So I settled for whatever I could get at the time, taking whatever came along with it not knowing if I would ever get that close to it again.
I had gotten lost in the land of extremes and pretty comfortable there too. Because it was familiar. I knew how to operate in it. Stability for me in any capacity seemed as unattainable as getting into crow pose. So I stopped seeking it all together even though deep inside it was all that I wanted. There is a beautiful quote I read once that goes something like,
“Yoga is not for the one who seeks to do too little or too much, it is for the in between. The one who seeks balance.”
This is easy to apply when we’re on the mat in Warrior One. Not too little effort but not too much. Honor yourself, trust the process. But the more I started to pay attention the more I saw demonstrated that this is a quote for life. A Recipe to cultivate a life of contentment. One where you can be unconditionally internally happy while you wait on what is to come. In Yogic terms and also as one of the Niyamas it’s called Santosha which translates to contentment.
You know how they say when you stop looking for things that that’s when they find you? Meeting David was like that. Full disclosure, I was on a dating site “actively seeking” to find but I what I really expected to find was a lot of the same. So much so that on the very day I decided that I was going to cancel my account and go all “Whoa is me” again. He messaged me. It was the last message I would respond to before cancelling the account forever. He came in like warm heat from a space heater on a winter night. So welcoming and needed that I couldn’t resist wanting to wrap myself up in him and let his heat consume me. He was more than willing to take all of me in. In his eyes there was calm, acceptance and openness. I didn’t have to look for ulterior motives or hang on his every word so I could read between the lines. Everything he said he meant. Everything he felt he expressed. He was not extreme in any sense of the word; he just simply was who he was. What a strange animal.
I thought meeting someone like him would be the end all be all. My relationshipitis had been cured! I am in fact genuinely likeable, even lovable. I was still happy, don’t get me wrong but also to my surprise still very unsettled. Because I had no idea how to operate in the land of sane and stable everything with him was new and questionable. When things were going perfectly fine I found myself internally searching for things to be mad at just so I could stir some shit up and get that extreme going. Of course I never found anything because he’s perfectly reasonable, but I wanted to so badly, to catch him in the act being just how I expected him to be. I can remember a desperate moment when I came to my sister distraught because I feared that he liked his cat more than me and I just didn’t know if I could take it ( its funny because its true!). Similarly, when things and he weren’t absolutely perfect and lovey dovey, when I wasn’t overthrown by feelings of lust towards him, I found myself doubting if it was ever even real to begin with. You know those days when he comes home from work gives you a kiss, grabs a beer and heads straight for the couch to NOT cuddle. I’d be absolutely shattered in private and preparing for the worse. Because he’s obviously not just tired from working all day and wants to put his feet up, open a beer and relax at home. Nope, its clear he’s fallen out of love with me the no cuddling is a dead giveaway. Get ready for the other shoe to drop my dear because it is coming right at you! Here he was a literal gift from the universe signed “sorry for all your troubles,” and I was so caught up in looking for the extremes (drama) that I was used to that I couldn’t see what actually was. An adult relationship with a person who respects me enough to not leave me with questions, which means there is no drama.
Once I got so upset with him at a party for making a very factual statement to someone that I wasn’t his wife ( I’m not) that I carried that anger with me all night. Smiling at him on the outside but seething on the inside. As if by him saying that I wasn’t his wife then meant that it would never be. So what’s the freaking point of this relationship? I never said anything to him about it because I knew I was being irrational. Like what would my argument be? “why did you tell that person the truth? No. I knew I had to go deeper, this was a me issue. In meditation I asked myself why the comment hurt so much. More accurately it went something like “how dare he say that,” to “but why are you mad,” because the true self always knows the right questions to ask. And it was revealed after several minutes of arguing myself down that I put a lot of pressure on him to be all the things I wanted him to be instead of who he was and letting him love me that way instead of how I thought he should which had no basis in reality. I also realized that although I was brave enough to let him get close to me I was still afraid of what bad might happen. The act of letting him in actually bred more fear because it meant that if I trusted him and then turned out to be wrong then that would put me back at square one. Therefore this thing has to work out, he has to be the one and I have to be the one for him because I CANNOT go back to square one again. Another extreme. It has to be this or that or its nothing. The truth is I don’t know if he will ever ask me to marry him or if we will be together forever and ever or break up tomorrow. I don’t know if we will end up kissing every day or arguing every night. Right now it isn’t for me to know. And I’m ok with that. Why is it ok? Because during our time together in every second of every minute I have gotten to love and be loved fully, freely and with everything I have. He has shown me things and made me feel things I never thought I’d get to experience in my lifetime. And no matter what happens I am eternally grateful to be able to tell the tale. Even though I don’t know what is to come, I’m learning that we can’t escape the ebb and flow of love and relationships they are as constant as the tides themselves. But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t enjoy the waters when they are calm and cool and inviting me in for a swim just because there may be something bad lurking underneath. Stability in relationships doesn’t look like not being able to keep your hands off of each other. That’s just another extreme. Its looks like understanding when the other is too tired, or hungry or busy to be the person you want at that moment but still loving them fully anyway. And true, stable reliable love is not something you have to fight for or endure. It isn’t an extreme at all. It’s the calm that you are seeking and the warmth that you need while you wait on whatever is to come, good or bad. It is contentment.
Yoga and The Real World 