We have joked since early on in our relationship that we should write a book titled, First You Find Your Soulmate, Then It Gets Hard.
What do you do when you are with the person who connects to your mind, heart and body in so many ways and yet is also so very different in disposition, life experience and basic personality? How amazing to find someone who shares similar passions for kayaking, camping, opera, cooking, music, writing, gardening, bird-watching, book-reading and art-making as well as a commitment to understanding and helping to heal human mind and spirit! And how surprising to find that the said person is not you, and often interprets and reacts to situations quite differently than you do. What a shock!
There is an expectation that finding the "perfect" someone means we live happily ever after and that then there is an end to emotional turmoil. As adults we discover that many of the beliefs we have absorbed from our culture are untrue. Clinging to images of what Should Be renders us incapable of being with the As-Is moment and working towards what could be. After an adjustment to our beliefs, with gratitude for the opportunity, we chose to use our relationship as a cauldron for change.
Nourished by our satisfying and enlivening connections, we find, with greater frequency, the fortitude to stay present and remain willing to do the difficult work of accepting the very different, As-Is other. We made a commitment to each other and ourselves to be curiously compassionate and not to avoid or judge as “bad” the challenging opportunities for growth that regularly arise. Each incident of misunderstanding, every conflict and activation requires that we do what it takes to maintain our connection.
We use the tools we teach. Or, rather, we teach the tools we have used and developed as we worked with the barriers to understanding and connection in our own relationship. In other blog posts we'll write in more detail about Circles of Compassion, Dragon Eyes, Sticky Beliefs, As-Is vs Should-Be Land and more. And, after so many years, we still use Speaker-Listener, the communication technique we teach clients. Achieving clarity and expanded awareness of our own and the other person’s experience through vulnerable dialogue, enables us to make adjustments to our habitual interpretations and defensive reactions. Our relationship is an organic work-in-progress.
Supported by our daily practice, by letting go of judgment and avoiding Defining Verdicts, our moments of challenge are less frequent, less intense and more quickly resolved. Being with someone you consider a soulmate doesn’t make it easy, it just means you may be more willing to do the hard work.
And we also realize that this work does not require a committed, partnered relationship. Our lives and our connections to all other lives, from the person who serves us coffee to the one we choose as partner, are impacted by the choices we make moment by moment. Change is a gradual process created by the accumulation of each of those choice-filled moments.
In this As-Is moment, what choices will lead you in the direction of the values you hold for your relationship?
