I’m going to do my honey and I an online outing. We both have really bad and childish tempers. We do pretty well in any argument – to a point. Then we fall apart and break down and resort to suckish behavior. It’s embarrassing. If aliens were looking down and preserving the argument for later viewing, I don’t think I could stomach my own behavior. And I’m sure he would probably get one of those travelling cartoon cracks that start in one part of his body and travel throughout his entire being so that he crumbles into dust on the floor if he saw himself as well!
With our combined readings and random philosophizing, you’d think that we’d be prepared for any potential Showdowns. We’ve pre-discussed how our next fight should be. We know all about Right Speech, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness.
We spoke of how we are going to incorporate Right This, Right That and The Other Right Thing into our parenting efforts with Humanling. Naturally she’d see our example and learn. Naturally our home is now and will always be swirled in love.
So kids, how’d it go?! The Deets! Must know the deets!!!
Well we had a lovely span of time with no disagreements. We felt honeymoonish! Aghast at how our former pre-Buddhist (and in my case I prefer a pagan-buddhist hybrid) acted out during disagreements. Such folly! What jerks! How Unenlightened!
It crept in out of nowhere. I’d spill the beans on how it started but who really remembers how any fight starts? I’m so bad at remembering how a fight starts sometimes that I just feel like calling a truce based on Why are we Doing This, again?
I suppose it doesn’t matter how it started but it had something to do with and ex girlfriend calling the night before….which triggered my memory that an ex boyfriend (who is currently on a completely different continent) had contacted me via Facebook to mention that he’d be in the country in May. And not on the other side of it. He wanted to get together for coffee and words. Those two things happened the night before. We used our Buddhist wisdom to talk through it in a newfound calm plane of existence. We went to bed happy and without incident.
Somehow, by the next morning, something about it festered and mutated with a Darwinian punch and what ensued was nearly something that sent the relationship to ash over the next couple of days.
That’s where it started. It’s hard to really find that moment where things go from Ok, We’re Trying To Stay the Path and Argue at the Same Time…to…Oh My Lotus! I Can’t Stand When You Bring That Up Every Time!
Needless to say, we were terrible. A big fat, flaming with gasoline ‘F’ in application of Buddhist philosophy in a moment of Ugly. We found ourselves lawyering Buddhist ways against each other to support our own position. Never stepping into the Same River Twice being a crowd favorite. We took each other’s deepest and most tender dealings of past bad decisions and opened fire with it. The secrets and issues we’d discussed at an earlier time with understanding and compassion, were now used as weapons.
Unfortunately, we are the couple you will hear yelling for one of two reasons. One…..heh, heh….The Good Stuff. Two….an Embarrassing Abandonment of How to be an Adult during a Disagreement.
For damage control, I’d purchased earlier last week, “If the Buddha Married” by Charlotte Kasl. I figured that if I read ahead of time, before the next blow out, we’d be armed with some major new knowledge that would help us out so that we could spare ourselves yet one more explosion of word shrapnel. I didn’t quite get past the Introduction in the book when the fight ignored its post dated moment and decided to show up early.
Yesterday morning, after wasting the entire Beltane holiday in the throes of a new argument low, I sat outside in the grass of our backyard reading some of the book. I got to a part that resonated strongly – especially with so much raw and unaccounted for emotion and hurt still woven throughout. It goes like this:
Take a moment to think of your partner (or special friend) as your beloved. Take a deep breath, relax your belly, and let the meaning of the word drench your heart – this special person who wants what you want – to be loved, to be free of suffering, and to experience joy. This imperfect being who has chosen you as you have chosen him or her. This one whose touch, voice, habits and smells are embedded in your senses. This one who shares the journey with you for better or worse.
How that hits me. I’m one of those weirdo mates that has to walk by an unsuspecting and comfortably sitting partner and simply bend down to bury my nose in his scalp, like a fresh bouquet of boyfriend! His scent is something that conjures up nothing but warmth.
Now when it comes to these bouts of Nasty (and I don’t mean the Come Hither Miss Jackson kind), my own beloved will tell me, no matter how angry or hurt, that I am the one he is in love with and wants to have a life with. I don’t know what kind of fight can cause anyone to not soften up a little when that sort of vulnerability is thrown at them. When he tells me these things, my defenses immediately spot a park and recklessly leave me for a shady tree. That is probably one of the best things for one of us to do. It does not necessarily mean that the fight is over. Or that there won’t be another ascension into a fiery tirade for the neighbors to hear. But it means something.
And whether or not I have gotten very far into If the Buddha Married, Buddhism supports direct learning experience over teachings. Teachings are important. But teachings without experience don’t mean enough.
When I read Charlotte Kasl’s passage above in the yard, I was overcome with such remorse and sadness and longing for my partner. Yes, she understands perfectly! And if you have or have ever had one of those Significant Other sort of things, then you do too – their specific walk, scent, the way they move or have a way of placing their things in a specific order in the house. I’d miss it!
I think what counts for us is that we truly want to be together. The love, attraction, desire, passion and will are all there. Our problem is confliction style. His mostly. Ok, that was a joke.
However, we did just learn on the heels of my beloved’s two hip surgeries, that he also has a Lyme’s disease relapse. More blood tests are needed to see exactly what is happening to him. There is a lot of stress if we allow it to get to us. His being that his body that he really kept in great shape for so long and that had so much strength is now not where he enjoyed it being. While I tend to just imagine that the wind will blow in what we need for a bill or two here and there, he bases his worry about our finances on reality since I am the only one working. What a buzzkill!
My stress is usually based on something like “ How come I had to ask for a cuddle this morning in bed instead of him just offering?!” Nice, huh? His love is beyond the physical….I am on a rickety jalopy to Buddhism with my focus being so much on the physical. He gladly cuddles when I ask so my perception of him not wanting to and then getting impatient while I wait for the golden offer is not based in reality, or the Truth as it Really Is.
While we figure it out, we are hoping to go back to that Aloof version of ourselves…you know – the couple that doesn’t have that bratty temper tantrum kind of fight that alerts neighbors that we aren’t naked and enjoying the other sort of noise. I’m sure experience is going to whip us well but might as well enjoy a few painful lashes along the way!
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