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Marc and I have been through some pretty rough periods in our marriage. These always happened when we stepped/fell out of our moment. As I talked about in Magical Moments, Marc and I share a moment of eternity that we manage to stay in almost all the time. However, I also mentioned that we learned how to do this through trial and error. In the course of learning to do this, we learned a great deal about what to do to make things work even when outside our moment.

Outside the Moment

We fell out of romantic love on occasion - sometimes for months. Our main misunderstandings came from the order of the roles we saw each other playing in our lives: I saw Marc as my best friend first, husband second and lover third. Marc saw me as his lover first, his wife second and his best friend third. This came from our experiences prior to meeting each other. In Marc’s case, he was a loner and a fighter prior to meeting me. And by fighter I mean he had calluses on his knuckles you could put a cigarette out on. He became this way from intense bullying. He didn’t trust anybody, so he’d never had the experience of a “best friend”. In his mindset, a true lover did not betray the one they loved - they backed you up and so-called “friends” were really only out for their own interests.

In my case, my home life was horrific and the only way I learned how a healthy relationship was supposed to be was through a friend I had for five years. She knew what was happening in my home, offered me a place to stay on many occasions and told me often that I was exceptional and didn’t deserve what was happening to me. Being valued like that was what I was supposed to have from my family, but never had. She became as precious as gold to me and I made sure she knew that. We were inseparable - best friends. In my mindset, where the most important people in my life were out to hurt me, a best friend was the one person I could count on for real love, support and protection.

It took a long time to sort this out because first we had to learn to properly communicate with each other. What I mean by that is, we had to communicate the right things to each other: Not just what was important, but why it was. Each of our mindsets were so deeply ingrained, we had long ago thought of them as screamingly obvious and of course requiring no explanation. We were so very,very wrong. It took a while for us to figure out that we did NOT see the other’s point of view on such fundamental precepts as obvious. Or why they were so important. All we knew was that we desperately loved each other at a fundamental level and couldn’t figure out how we were hurting each other so badly.

Interspersed in all this were experiences of that moment of eternity. We would just understand each other whenever they occured. Not all the outside, mindset stuff - just the other being who shared the moment, as we were and not as some construct we had of each other. I think it was this trust and understanding thta allowed us to love each other properly, that kept us seeking to remain in that moment.

What We Learned to Do

Of the two of us, I’m the one who needs to get to the bottom of things, then cut all the “weeds” out so that what I’m really after stands out clean and clear. I’m also the one who can express myself objectively and accurately, although not always clearly. On top of that, my survival depended on being able to read other people lightening quick and accurately. However, all of this requires a certain ability to remove myself somewhat from a personal relationship in order to be objective. This hurt Marc whenever I did it, signalling to him that I somehow didn’t love him as much as he loved me. In point of fact, these abilities are a byproduct of Chronic PTSD: You need them if you are going to come out sane. At the time this condition wasn’t even recognized, so we had no place to turn for an explanation for Marc to understand what I was doing. As it hurt Marc so badly and that was the last thing I wanted to do to him, I put away my abilities.

However, as time went on, it became necessary for me to pull out these abilities more and more. Finally, I just gave up, hauled the abilities out fully and felt that he would just have to accept me for who I was. So, here I was, completely able to be objective about almost anything and there’s Marc who has enough passion for about five people… I need to mention something here about Marc: Due to the fighting Marc engaged in (which was often), he had also learned to “read” people, plus he’s extraordinarily intelligent. For him to do this “reading” requires him to also cool his emotions - I put mine aside. However, when it comes to me, this is an unacceptable state to be in: He loves me passionately and that was the way he was going to be. This dichotomy led to some pretty rough times, but it also led to Marc finally expressing how he was really feeling. If we were in a fight, I would simply move into my mode of “reading”, which meant I remained objective in the fight. I could tell when he said something that was truthful, whether about me or him, without getting my emotions heavily engaged. If what he said about me was true and was my sole responsibility, I would acknowledge it and promptly adjust. However, if Marc was simply projecting his stuff onto me, I would challenge him.

Where this led was, Marc would blurt out something significant in the middle of a fight, I would file it away, watch afterwards and we’d repeat until I had enough “blurts” to start asking him questions when we weren’t fighting. Sometimes this would work and sometimes it didn’t due to the fact they were so unconscious to him. When that happened, I would get, “I don’t know.”. Just so you know, those are the 3 most hated words of the human language for me - I learned how do a lot of deep breathing during that time. However, I decided I would ask the questions during a fight when he was in “blurt mode”… at a safe distance. Believe it or not, this worked most of the time, at least insofar as me getting the information I needed: Marc would storm out of the house, but this left me time to mull over what he’d said.

Over time, I managed to string enough of the “blurts” together to get complete sections of the puzzle. I was always careful to make personal changes that were necessary and to challenge him on feelings and ideas (assumptions) about me that weren’t objectively correct. When I had enough information, I used it to start explaining myself to him in a way that he would understand. I showed him that I loved him for who he was and to prove that he was the center of my universe. Knowing definitively that the amount I loved him matched the feelings he had for me, led to some interesting changes: 1) He calmed down almost immediately. 2) As I told Marc in this way, he would accept what I’d tell him and then watch the results. If it matched, OK. If it didn’t, he would use his own ability to read people to see what he needed to poke at.

This became plainly uncomfortable for me at times, but it also stopped all the fighting, not all the problems, but the dissonance between us had ended and that was when the moment of eternity came on really strongly.

Advice From Our Experience

We realize that our situation was in some ways unique: Not everyone has the abilities or the strength to do what we did. However, there are some things anyone can do.

First, is to recognize your own assumptions about your significant other.
Second, and this is easier, is to recognize the assumptions your partner has made about you.
Third and hardest, is to learn which assumptions you’ve made about yourself: Some of these will be accurate and others won’t be at all.
Fourth, the only roles that really matter in relation to each other are the following: Friend, Partner/Spouse, Lover. You need to know in what order those three are for you and why.

Get yourself a notebook or journal to do this for the following two reasons: 1) It gives you a very important record of yourself and your relationship that you can go over to gain more insight. 2) Writing down what you learn and think is going on, can teach you to be more objective about what’s actually happening.

I want you to understand one VERY important thing you must do if you’re going to try this: You must be scrupulously honest with yourself. No “squiggling” the truth because it makes you uncomfortable and especially not if it fulfills your anger. Our assumptions are actually lies we tell ourselves to try to understand what’s happening. Take for instance my assumption that a best friend is always a place of safety. In truth, a real best friend is someone who tries most of the time to do what’s best for you, but is also doing so in self-interest: You make each other feel good and comfortable, so you tend to want to make that continue. If it doesn’t, say due to personal growth, the situation can become quite difficult because the comfort zone for one is gone. In other words, you’re dealing with a human being who is flawed and often vulnerable, just like you. This is also true for you and your partner. Neither one of you is better than the other. Understand and ACCEPT this about both of you and you will find you really can make progress.

A Special Note to Parents

The Parent role, for those of you who are, is part of who you both are together, although for many women who have small children, the primary role they will see themselves in is MOTHER. The problem is that a lot of men who really love the Mother of their children, will tend to see her as even more sexy as a result of being the Mother of their children. The problem might not be such a large one as it is for many couples, if the Father tells the Mother this clearly.

If the Mother has a problem seeing herself as Mother and sexy, then you have found your first personal assumption that needs to be addressed. North American society tends to want to see Mothers as “virginal”. Add this to the idea that children here are taught that “sex is bad/sinful” and you start to get some really weird ideas about being a Mother. I cannot emphasize the following enough: THIS IS COMPLETELY STUPID!!! If the child was conceived (and born) in love and commitment, there’s NOTHING bad or sinful about how they got here. Anyway, there are other processes involved, but these are ones you can do something about because they’re about how you see yourself.

Relationship Math

In a relationship 1 + 1 = 3: You make 1, your partner makes 2 and what you create together makes 3. This is for better or worse - it’s up to both of you, your choice, what you create. I tell you this in the hope that you’ll understand that both of you are far greater than the sum of your parts: You are NEVER locked in to what you believe, how you are right now, or what others believe of you. You can create yourself and if you can do that, you can create anything.

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