Giving up pursuit of what hasn’t happened and and maintaining kindness with what has
Inside the skin of marriage, with skin being what everyone else sees and the marriage itself being the innards, is an unfolding miracleLike the mysteries within our own bodies, the ceaseless interaction of system upon system, our marriages are complicated beyond very accurate description.
As the systems give and take of themselves they both grow and remain the same. What remains the same is the nature of the various interacting pieces. This I will call love. What changes is the moment to moment perception of the systems and their “results”.
As relationships change so do our perceptions of them, unless we are extemely disciplined in our thinking and emoting. When our loved one’s smile has disappeared or their tone has turned cranky, we may well imagine that love has disappeared and we are alone.
We may think because of the missing smile or sharp comment that we are without love. We may think that our loved one no longer loves, and therefore we stop loving. If we do this, if we separate from love, this act of awareness and will by us will result in pain for our self and perhaps for our loved one.
Accepting that our loved one has lost the sense of love offers for us the opportunity to see this happening, and for us to be, to literally experience ourselves as the love they are overlooking.
This act of kindness, understanding another’s imagined separation from love, feeds the marriage, feeds the relationship like a mother feeding her young.
