Ending is easier than mending, but… Leaving is very often done a number of times before the final leaving. If you leave, understand you may be back one or more times before all this is over so don’t burn all your bridges on your way out the door! Ask yourself – is this an end, or the end?
In case you need them, here are some reasons to go back to your marriage and give up any ideas of leaving:
- I don’t want to let everyone down – kids, parents, extended family, church, friends
- I’m not worthy of anything better than what I have
- I won’t be able to find anyone else
- Getting divorced is the single worst financial mistake a person can make in their lives
- People like me don’t get to have fantastic relationships
- “A divorce will put a gash on your children’s hearts that will not heal for the rest of their lives. Know that you are doing this to them.” N.M.
- It’s too painful, it’s too stressful, I can’t take it!
- I can’t afford to leave
- What God has put together, let no one put asunder
- I can’t leave this safe harbor. Something in me starts shaking when I consider it seriously
- I actually really love this person and want to be with them
- Often the high income spouse can’t get a mortgage after divorce (see below)
How to know if it’s time to go:
Is it so bad that the thought of being alone for the rest of your life is preferable to staying in your marriage?
Do you know in your heart that now is the time for you to leave?
Do you think the pain your kids will experience is less than the pain they and you experience in your current situation?
Do you understand that sometimes, love just isn’t enough?
Are you willing to pay the emotional cost of ending your union?
Are you willing to pay the financial cost of ending your union?
The more you answer Yes to these questions, the more likely it is time to leave.
Before the end, it’s a good idea to really count the costs and determine if you’re willing to pay them:
The emotional cost of leaving – on you, on your kids, on your spouse, on your family, on your friends, on your community – is enormous. And, life will go on.
Financial costs are enormous. Divorce is the single worst financial mistake anyone can make in their lives. And for most of us, it’s worth it.
You may not be able to get a mortgage afterwards as spousal support (alimony) and child support are considered to be debt payments, with no recognition given that spousal support in Canada is tax deductible. And your debt payments (including mortgage and car loan/lease payments) are not allowed to be higher than 40% of your net income. I ended up getting a subprime mortgage even though my credit score was excellent. If they still say no, increase the size of your down payment. Another way to get around all of this, if you have the cash, is to do a lump sum payout so you have no ongoing alimony or spousal support obligations.
Our society has made ending a marriage an extremely painful, stressful, terrible experience with devastating long term consequences in multiple areas of life. You have my deep compassion for your struggles with this decision. I hope we can all come together one day and change the laws to make this a more kind experience.
The question you might find yourself asking over and over again is: Is this an end, or the end? If it’s an end, you will return home again and give it One.More.Try. If it’s hard to figure out which it is, it is likely an end. But trust me, when it’s the end, you will know it in your bones and in your heart and in your soul.
For those interested in more detail on this question, here is a previously unpublished chapter by Doug Moseley, gratefully published here:
Commit Deeper Or Quit
Is It ‘An’ End or ‘The’ End?
By Doug Moseley
Naomi and I believe all alive marriages come to turning points. Those times when it’s most serious it’s like a bomb has gone off in the middle of a marriage, with all the pieces up in the air. It’s a very difficult time because neither partner really knows where they will all land. If both partners heed the wake up call and get on with a determined effort to do what it takes, the pieces, as they land, can be reformed into a new, healthier than ever marriage. When partners don’t take urgent personal action or engage primarily in finger pointing or hide their heads in the sand denying any problems, the outcome is entirely different.
Partners may not be fully conscious of how it happened, but the fuel for the explosion was a need for some major shifting. Chances are the bigger the explosion the bigger the need for change in the relationship (and the longer the change was put off). If the marriage is going to reform successfully that change has to be taken on by both individuals, no matter how strong the appearance that one might be at fault. Like we say it is a very difficult time and made worse by the fact that neither partner was prepared for the moment. They didn’t believe it would ever happen to them. Not being prepared for the intensity of the experience, too often, they end up calling it quits rather than take on the challenge that is being called for.
Dealing with an end in a marriage doesn’t quite fit with the happily-ever-after myth, but it’s as natural as the seasons passing. We come together open hearted and full of acceptance but, in life, nothing holds constant forever. We are ever changing organisms. Different parts of us emerge at different stages. We experience different feelings, different ways of looking at things, different needs and priorities. In order to keep up with all this, a relationship needs to keep changing as well.
Turning points are not as intense when partners stay alert to the need for reevaluation and admit when things are not going right. Perhaps stagnation has set in. Partners have forgotten to appreciate each other. Some character flaw gets in the way of a nourishing relationship and can’t be tolerated any longer. Partners have gone too much to their heads and forgotten how to be in their bodies and feelings. Perhaps partners have become too absorbed in children or money and neglected each other too long.
The first problem is that we tend to avoid reevaluation in order to avoid any experience of tension. We want to stay comfortable. The second problem is that the ‘reevaluation’, when it does come, tends to focus heavily on the partner as opposed to making a significant effort to search inwards, where the real roots of the difficulty can be addressed. It is especially easy to do in a crisis, where the other’s flaws have a way of becoming highlighted in glaring lights. The problem, which is closely connected to the second, occurs when the ‘victim’ takes over.
The victim, in an intimate relationship, believes all unpleasant events and feelings are due to events outside of themselves. And who is the biggest event in an intimate relationship? Our partner, of course. When the victim is running our show, practically all of the effort gets directed towards pinning blame in that direction. It’s a habit that contributed greatly to the development of the crisis but when a relationship enters a wobble, the victim really takes off.
When each partner is viewing the other as the primary source of discomfort and unhappiness, and each is holding a righteous conviction they are occupying the high ground, ending the marriage becomes an increasingly attractive option. [Solve the problem by getting rid of the source of the problem!] Years of neglect make it even more tempting. Heaps of unspoken resentments and piles of anger (often ‘hidden’ or thinly disguised) cloud partners’ visions. Because at least one partner has resisted seeking it for so long, truly useful help seems far away. Pulling the threads out of a long history of tangled knots appears to be an overwhelming task.
And now it is time to answer the question “are we finished as a couple or can we bring life back to our relationship?” When a couple comes to our practice in this position, one of the first questions we ask is ‘is this “an” end or is it “the” end’? In the first place we want to wake them up to the idea that there is a difference. Secondly, if it is truly, unequivocally “the” end, our experience has been it is a complete waste of time to do patch work. Almost any couple can be helped to higher functioning for a short period, but in these cases it always falls back. The only truly useful function Naomi and I can serve is to proceed with attempting to separate with as much clarity and awareness as possible. When “the” end has truly been arrived at, there is no turning back. The switch has been flipped.
Most couples will only admit to “an” end. And we support this. If any doubt about ending it still exists, it isn’t “the” end yet. When a relationship is at an end, some part of it needs to die. Maybe it’s not clear yet what that part is -and defining that is one of the first tasks. Often couples can’t see clearly because huge clumps of unresolved resentment, anger, disgust and disappointment have encrusted them. That needs to be worked with. We hold that both partners need to expand to somebody bigger than they have been and that’s a major piece. Perhaps partners have to let go of parts of themselves that have been dominant for too long, parts that have out grown their usefulness and need to be updated; again, something needs to die in order to make way for growth.
The decision to view it as “the end” is painful to be sure, but in many ways it is an easier path to follow. Ending is easier than mending. Both partners can entrench themselves in the victim position and not have to engage in serious introspection. Once partners are committed to the path, separation becomes associated with relief: relief from difficult feelings, relief from taking personal responsibility for failure, relief from this oppressive person who somehow got in the way of true love. When partners opt for “the” end tracking, they have a very strong tendency to fortify and harden against each other. Numbing as that is, it is easier than allowing the full intensity of all the feelings that are present when a marriage is in jeopardy.
“An” end, taken seriously, is quite a different story. It requires soul searching. It requires the willingness to tell painful truths along with the ability to hear them. It requires great degrees of vulnerability. It requires coming out instead of closing off. It requires expression of bottled feelings. Often it means effort at changing some deeply entrenched ways of being. Partners dealing with an end have to expand enough to be able to hold the tension it takes to experience love and hate, joy and disgust, resentment and excitement and much more, all coming at the same time. It means a period of finding and building a new self, as opposed to blaming the other for not having one.
The problem is “an” end and “the” end look the same, and for partners who take this stage on seriously, it might even be impossible to know the difference at the beginning of the crisis. It is only after partners have fully gone through the an-end discovery that the heartfelt answer comes clear. A few partners eventually do carry it through to “the” end and ultimately decide to call it quits. At least when they get there, they know no stone was left unturned. Full responsibility was taken on both sides for the break down or perhaps one has proven beyond a shadow of doubt he or she will not make the effort it requires. Inside the heart, instead of blame or defendedness, along side the pain, there is the sense of integrity that comes from knowing all that could be done was done and failure couldn’t be averted. After that point, delays in separating just prolong the agony and partners get on with it. They took their pain up front and ending it typically goes smoother.
From what Naomi and I have seen, the majority of couples who refrain from leaping to “the” end and fully take on the challenge of working through “an” end (even though it might take a year), eventually come back together in a loving way. After it’s over, it becomes clear the crisis arose to tell them both it was time to wake up to parts of themselves they were hiding from or denying. It was time to grow more in touch with deeper needs and get sharper about expressing them. It was time to move off self centered positions and start giving again. It was time to change what was necessary and become more accepting of the rest. In short, it was time to commit to a deeper level.
Now we know from the statistics that too many leap across to “the” end as opposed to struggling through “an” end. For those who don’t want to follow that path (again) what are the answers? Maybe we can discover more by looking into some case examples.
The first couple, Kim and Jim, has been together 13 years and the second couple, Dennis and Sylvia, 23 years. Jim is close to what you might call a “stonewaller” and Kim can’t take it any more. Dennis and Sylvia have neglected each other for a long time and are asking themselves whether there is anything left in their marriage.
Kim & Jim
Jim is the kind of guy who appears very amiable on the surface but keeps his emotional self very guarded. Kim learned about his tendency to close off early on in their time together but assumed he would open up more as their love deepened. To her dismay it actually went the other way. After thirteen years, she wants more. If she can’t get it, she is willing to end the marriage.
An earlier version of this crisis manifested about three years ago. The children were finally all off to school and Kim began to wake up to how empty she felt in her marriage. She said Jim was ‘there’ but he wasn’t really there. (By that, she meant to say he was present in his physical body but barely present emotionally.) She felt starved for something more personal, something more real, more truthful. Haltingly, she brought up her feelings about this with Jim, but in true stonewaller form, he completely denied any problem. He didn’t see their relationship as empty at all and if there was any problem it must have to do with something inside of her. She persisted and he did go to a couple of sessions with a therapist before he proclaimed that there was no point to it and stopped going.
Kim reminded him that he put on his best face with the therapist and they were just getting started when he quit. Jim was adamant about not going and insisted on holding onto a more ideal vision of their relationship. She decided the only option was to carry on with the therapy herself. It helped her a lot but had one unfortunate side effect. She became clearer than ever how empty she felt in her marriage, to the point now where she was threatening to leave it.
Living with a detached and aloof person, who doesn’t even know how detached and aloof they are, and is defended against finding out how detached and aloof they are, is an empty experience indeed. In Kim’s case, the gentler attempts she made to get through the wall a few years back didn’t result in any significant change. As she sees it she has no choice but to escalate and pull out the biggest guns. It is a matter of survival for her. At first Jim didn’t believe her (and wanted to blame the therapist). Shocked that she was all but finished, he agreed to therapy.
Naomi and I wish we had a dollar for every time we came across a variation of this situation. Looking in from the outside you ask yourself ‘why on earth did the partner who is dragging let it go so far’? It would have been so much easier to work on it three years ago. When it takes one partner almost being ‘out’ before the other makes a decision to come ‘in’, you have all kinds of additional difficulties. Not the least of the problems is that the partner who is threatening to leave has reached a point where there is so much anger and desperation, the first thing the hiding partner meets when things begin to open is a storm of powerful, bitter feelings.
By putting his head in the sand Jim has now got taller hurdles to cross. Here he is sitting behind a wall, ill-equipped to deal with feelings. He has persistently refused to go out and get any equipment, preferring to hold himself above needing to do that. Now he has a storm of feelings coming at him -it’s his worst nightmare come true. And it doesn’t stop here.
All the way along he has been building a thicker walls as her unmet feelings have been getting stronger. She has been challenging him to uncover his buried feelings and he has stonewalled that demand, too. Rather than acknowledging his co-responsibility in creating the crisis at hand, his tendency will be to grab onto the victim position. As he occupies ‘victim’, all he can see is that what has happened is her fault (or the fault of the therapist). She is making some kind of personal attack on him. She is not accepting of who he is. She is an out of control, bad-tempered person.
All he wanted was a gentle, accepting person, sweet as sugar, and pliable too. His partner ought to keep on smiling, even when stonewalled. Better yet this person wouldn’t ever engage in any behaviors that would activate his wall because this person would always be treating him as he deserves to be treated -gently with acquiescence.
We’re getting a little dramatic here but we want to make a couple of points. The first is that the stonewaller is essentially occupying an infant-like space, more looking for a mother than a partner. Secondly stonewallers really need to develop some bigger place within themselves for their own benefit as well as any intimate partner they might connect with. Thirdly we’re hinting at how difficult working through this process of discovery is going to be.
In our case example, Kim’s demand that Jim become more than a stonewaller is not a personal attack, even though he is likely to perceive it that way at the beginning. The crisis is simply challenging him to make a major leap: to come out from behind the wall in order to develop some new aspect of self, some new capacity to go deeper, some new capacity to feel, some new capacity to expand and grow into a more well rounded adult. The leap will be good for him in the long run but at the beginning he will trapped in this own stuff because, sitting behind his wall, it is very difficult to take a message from anybody. Stonewallers don’t do that easily.
All this has been going on for so long it has arrived at the point where a bomb needs to go off for anything major to shift. Will Jim move off the victim position and admit there are things he needs to learn about life? Will he be able to get hold of the idea that he has played a role in creating the crisis and that change needs to happen for his own good, for his own development as a man? Will he be able to grasp that Kim feels so strongly because she still cares? Just maybe, if he wants Kim bad enough. We can be sure of one thing. After all these years of entrenchment it is good to take a major effort. And, with partners pitching against each other as they are right now, it probably won’t happen unless they seek skilled mutually respected help. Sadly, it too often requires a repeat of the same circumstances in another marriage to create the wake-up.
Let’s not let Kim off the hook here because, we know by now, it always takes two to create a problem in intimacy. She has been doing some therapy on her own and that’s commendable. That therapy helped her to become more whole. What she doesn’t quite get yet is that her therapy helped her to build a self outside of relationship but living inside a relationship (and bringing that newer self with her) is a bigger challenge than she wants to admit to herself. She would much prefer to see herself as ‘healed’. The way she hides is to position herself, inside her own mind, as light years ahead of Jim in development. He must be the problem because she is so advanced. She positions herself as the teacher, the one who knows. This is her form of defense, her stonewall.
Just as Jim can’t see himself clearly, she just can’t see that her positioning herself in this way creates an equal and matching wall to his. Just as he protects himself in a way that is very habitual and thus has not been available, she is defending herself in a way that is habitual and has be1en just as unavailable. Just as his wall has been unfeeding to her, her wall has been unfeeding to him. Just as the crisis is calling for him to expand and grow, the crisis is challenging her to do the exact same. Trouble is, she is totally focused on him as the problem. She’s the victim!
Once again, we’re making this example a little bigger in order to get the point across. And the point is both people will have to move into very new and challenging territory. That means new discoveries about themselves, new ways of coming forward, and new ways of receiving the other. Both partners will have to come down (him out of his head and her out of her attitude) and get real. If they are able to do this, the possibilities for their relationship are wondrous. In fact they will be able to start a whole new relationship with each other. But like we say it will take a lot of effort, probably some help, and a huge effort to fight against the urge to run (or retreat back into habit).
It is also possible this crisis might pass without working much at it, just like it did three years ago. This can happen when security needs are very high and security needs are very high when both partners are quite infantile behind their walls. The problem is when partners run from problems or dive back into hiding, they still will have themselves to deal with. That part of it never changes!
Dennis & Sylvia
We see a lot of couples like Dennis and Sylvia. During their 23 years together, there has been a lot of caring and shared experience. Their children are mainly out in the world and finances are stable. Each has found a measure of success in their communities and by all criteria they ought to be having the time of their life. But their marriage is flat.
Recently they attended a wonderful 25th wedding anniversary party. It got them talking. They came to realize there was no way they could get up in front of family and friends and say such sweet words or look so lovingly at each other if it was their 25th. The disappointment and sadness crystallized into a decision to make some serious effort at bringing life back to their relationship. They knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They set a date, a year away, and a made commitment to give it their all until then. If, a year from now, they couldn’t restore their marriage to the point where they could authentically celebrate togetherness at their 25th, they would seek divorce.
A commitment like this, alone, was enough to get some spark going, but where do they go from here? The first step for a couple in this position is to locate themselves in the truth of where they really are. As the story came out, it was as if they had merged to the point where some essential ingredient or individual spark has been lost in each of them. Both partners did what they needed to do, but seldom directed any amount of sustained loving attention to each other. It was as if both were co-existing side by side, each experiencing low grade depression in their marriage.
The way Sylvia put it, she couldn’t stand his neediness. She was a mother all those years for her children and when he came forward with his neediness, which had been happening a lot more of as he got older, she felt overwhelmed. She could barely take care of her own needs let alone his. Dennis was so self centered. And what about her needs? She just found herself closed off to him.
The way Dennis looked at it, Sylvia was so critical and difficult to please, he just gave up. Pretty well all her love went to the children. In earlier years he tried, in a lot of ways, to spark things up between them. Whenever he came forward she had a way of finding fault with him. Whenever he stood up for something he believed in, she would judge him. He knew it sounded kind of silly to say it but it was as if Sylvia didn’t really want him to have an identity separate from her -and yet she held him in derision for what he has become.
So let’s stop here and check in with what we already see with this couple. We have the usual scene where each is blaming the other and that is going to have to be worked with. It is also very obvious that there are years of grudges and resentments, along with heaps of unexpressed anger. Partners are shut down to their feelings and thus feel depressed. We’re also seeing two people who have merged into one another to the point of collapsing into each other. As individuals they are lost. If we can work with these three things alone, a lot can happen.
The first thing is the blaming. Partners impulsively blame when they have no training on how to be inside themselves. Neither is fully conscious of how much they are out of themselves, and this is a big part of the shift that needs to happen. They made a good first step by making the commitment to do it all it takes. But adopting the victim position is a very big habit. Pulling the pointed finger back and learning how to express from inside is much easier when some mutually respected, neutral person is there to catch the blaming, every time it happens (which at the beginning is a lot!). Hopefully that neutral person is skilled enough to help partners to express what they need to express, from inside.
Many therapists appear to believe that difficult feelings like grudges and resentments ought to be bypassed in favor of heightening the positive. Naomi and I would love to go along with this thinking -it would make life as a couple’s helper a lot easier. The only problem is, from what we have seen, bypassing or glossing over powerful feelings like these, when they have built up over years, doesn’t work. Everybody would prefer to bypass them but they just end up popping through or bleeding through after the attempt to ‘be positive’.
So we begin by encouraging both partners make a list of all the resentments that have built up over the years (the woman’s list is always two to three times as long but the man’s are just as intense). We set aside as much time as it takes, usually a couple of hours. Face to face we help partners, one at a time, to vocalize them. We work at receiving them, which doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with them or acknowledging wrong doing, just taking in the words without defense. If there is some feeling behind it, ‘I’m sorry’s” are definitely allowed. Partners get a chance at rebuttal but only after they demonstrate they have received the message. Unless we are dealing with a major betrayal, we tell partners we are prepared to help them through this process, up to three times. After that they have to let it go. Holding on would mean they are more into punishment than movement.
This is very tough work but we have yet to get to the third session. When resentments finally come out in a contained, direct way, with witnesses at hand, we have to yet to see anything but relief and softening to occur. When long standing resentments, both big and little, are cleared couples are able to get on with finding out whether the love is there to bring fulfillment back to the marriage. Stuck couples have great difficulty listening for more than a few seconds without preparing a defense, so, once again, we highly recommend getting professional help for this type of clearing.
Now we come to the biggest problem of all. Over the years Dennis and Sylvia have merged into each other, to the point of collapsing themselves. Rather than acknowledge the truth of this, and getting on with the work of developing a self, they have adopted a stance of defense against the other. Collapsed as individuals, they secretly hold the assumption the other has stolen their juices.
Merging, with conscious intent, can be a wonderful thing. At times it is very important to be able to let go of self, especially during sex. Partners who can’t let go have difficulty with full orgasm. But merging by default is quite another story and it is probably one of the biggest problems in marriages today.
Successful marriage requires two selves fully grounded within themselves. We’re not talking about a self sustained through defense or fortified ego-centricity. People inside themselves know what it means to be inside their bodies at all times. They know what their feelings are moment to moment -in addition to what they are thinking. They don’t worry about needing to trust the other because they trust themselves. People inside themselves are capable of bringing themselves forward from the inside and delivering whatever that is to their partners. Partners who are inside have no need to defend against the other.
In truth neither Dennis nor Sylvia ever had much of a real self. Sylvia became immersed in the children and developed an identity as a mother. Dennis developed a self on the basis on who he was in his career. As they both became highly involved in doing for others and keeping very busy, it seemed like they had a self but really they were lost. Neither spend much time discovering what was going on inside. Now, without the children close at hand to take up their attention, and careers taking less attention, neither Dennis or Sylvia really know who they are inside.
Without having their selves fully developed, Dennis and Sylvia tend to be highly reactive. Rather than each one coming out with their inner truth, he reacts to her. She reacts to him. He reacts to her reacting to him reacting to her. A lot of time they are lost in a muddle. Nobody really know what is what.
Here they are, both at middle age, reacting strongly to each other, and all they can see is what the other is doing to them. Not having a real self, not generating consistently from the inside out, it seems to them both like life is coming at them from the outside. Following this line of thinking, the causative factors for who they are and what is happening to them must be coming from the outside. Taking that a step further it appears as though the partner must be responsible for any difficulties they are having. If they are empty inside, the partner is somehow depriving them. The partner is holding them back. The partner is responsible for the deadness. [Not knowing they don’t have a grounded self is the biggest problem of all.]
And the funny part is that they are both in exactly the same boat. All the defenses against the other, all the blaming of the other, all the deadness that exists, comes back to not having a self, which neither of them has spent any real effort at developing. Both see the other as the problem but it all adds up to one big knot with both of them tied up in the center. If you have trouble seeing this idea, take a look at the it the other way. If each of these two individuals had a self, a self that knew what it felt from moment to moment, a self that knew what it needed, a self that could express honestly from inside itself, how would they end up in a dead relationship?
The only answer to this part of the problem is to spend six months to a year (and it will a lot longer than that without a totally dedicated effort) to find their deeper selves. Naomi and I call this work building a ‘container’. It is the work we dedicate ourselves to and before we close, we’ll try to give a brief description of what this work entails.
Building A Container
All fulfilling relationships require two fully present human beings who are each ‘inside their own containers’. What is a container? It is where you and you alone live. It is inside your body. It has boundaries. It is like a bottle or a basket inside your body. If you sit inside yourself you can begin to notice your edges inside of you and can then begin to differentiate between you and your partner. Try it now. Close your eyes and pull all of your energy inside. If necessary, drop your eyes down from your head, down through your throat, and locate them somewhere around your heart. Observe the difference ‘looking’ from here versus looking from your head. Sit quietly and feel what it feels like to be inside of you. When you feel comfortable open your eyes and look out. If you’re inside, you can begin to feel a difference. When you begin to live inside of yourself you then can start to know your feelings and not get lost in your partner’s feelings. When you live inside yourself there is much less need to defend.
Container building work is much easier said than done but this would be a good time for you to practice. Next time you are with your intimate, try pulling all of your energies in before you begin a conversation. Feel what it feels like to have your own boundaries. Also notice how fast you slip out of yourself. It takes practice to live inside of your body but it is a much healthier and happier place to live.
Naomi and I see the need for a container because, as individuals, we all need a place within ourselves -within our bodies – to hold our feelings, desires, intentions, and all that makes us who we are. Without some attention to container building, no amount of insight or personal growth work will last and essential patterns of behavior will remain unchanged.
We’ve covered it elsewhere in this book (Feelings First!) but to understand how to locate one’s container, it’s important to understand the difference between being in your head and being in your body. Most of us operate in our heads. We use our eyes to look out, and we are highly reactive to the world around us. We judge, analyze and compare. We take what we see and react, often instantly and unconsciously. When we are in our heads, we are often unaware of the feelings we are experiencing within. And when we are not consciously aware of our feelings, we are not fully able to bring our true selves forward (we can only offer philosophies of how we think things ought to be).
As Naomi and I see it, the process of building a container has six primary facets:
1. The first is making a commitment to set aside time each day to meditate or walk quietly, go inward, and locate our inner being. If you are scared by the word meditation, seek help from one of the many wonderful teachers around.
2. The second facet is a commitment to an ongoing, not-for-profit-or-power creative endeavor. Through the act of creativity we get to know ourselves in a much deeper way.
3. Third is the commitment to work at completing anything unfinished, particularly issues having to do with our families of origin. Our containers are usually stuffed with unfinished business from the past, old bondings and feelings that haven’t been expressed. It’s like emotional concrete. The work begins with a willingness to bring out these old, blocked experiences to open up the Self.
4. The fourth component is to begin the work of knocking down the walls of defense and protectiveness that have built up over the years. These walls often serve us in the first half of life, but in the second half, they lead to a deadening of feelings and aliveness.
5. The fifth is a commitment to learn our feeling language – in particular how to locate, express and receive feelings.
6. Our body is our container and holds everything we have. We need to pay attention to diet and keep up with a regular fitness regime.
Some may wonder why we close off our journey together with two difficult couples who may or may not make it through the crisis they are in, as opposed to some nice sugar-coated success stories. The way Naomi and I look at things, creating highs is relatively easy, but they don’t last. Highs are great but the real work of intimacy requires deliberate, sober, day to day determination. We all know lots of couples like the ones we looked at ever so briefly in this chapter and you know what? What happened to them is a lot easier than you might think. They were loving, well intended, caring folks – just like you. Things between them weren’t that bad and they kept hoping it would get better. They just let a lot of little things slide. They let that child victim inside have a little too much say -you know, that part which believes better things should be happening to them -without having to work for it. Deep down they knew they should be spending more effort at their marriage but something else always came up. And now they are in the glue. They can work out of it – we’ve witnessed many who have – but it would have been much easier if they had started earlier.
Now, while there is still time, we implore you to start the work of container building. Update your commitments to each other. Make a date to clear out resentments when you sense heaviness setting in. Go to a couples training at least once a year. Don’t expect yourself to know when you haven’t received any training. When things are not encrusted you have the capacity to take in much more from any work you do as a couple. Even better, you have the willingness to follow through on whatever you learned that was important to you. Don’t make assumptions about happily ever after – you ought to know by now, it doesn’t happen that way, it takes work. In your marriage there can be great times and there will be difficult times. The proportion of each depends totally on you and what you put out.
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