Thursday, July 16, 2009

Musings on Relationship and Love - for a wedding of a dear friend

A dear friend has her wedding ceremony tomorrow and these are the thoughts that came thru as I composed an email for her:


I like to start unromantic.

Have you ever heard a song about one of the core issues of relationships ?
No, it is not sex, not money, not body stuff. I mean 'compromise'.
A successful relationship is one, where the art of compromise has been mastered by both 'parties'.

Love will grow in a relationship when the art of 'negotiations' is practiced.

Any relationship at our times, because of both partners ability to support themselves on their own, starts with challenging odds.
We don't need each other to the same degree all of our fore'mothers' and fore'fathers' 'needed' each other.
With that gone, our personalities now have a lot more freedom to claim its ways. In other words, the little ME has become bigger and bigger and now there are two big ME's struggling with each other, which one can get the better parts of the cake.

We are the most selfish society that ever existed on the planet. That doesn't mean we are 'worse' then our ancestors. The difference is, our generation has the possibility for this selfishness, at least in the western world, in the rich countries. No other generation has had that option.(Of course there were always some very abundant people, and they had their relationship struggles then already, remember Henry the VIII and friends)

In Freudian language, the ID has a heyday, the inner child demands its needs met, more then ever. It couldn't even 100 years ago, survival was everything for the masses.

This is the particular challenge of our times for making relatinoships work.

Now we truly need to learn to compromise in a way that none of us has more reasons to to leave then to stay.

Part of 'compromise' has to do with 'sacrifice'.
Not a very popular word nowadays. Also not found in love songs.
Love songs are written mostly from the ID's perspective, the inner child, and a child has no idea about sacrifice. It is literally all about 'ME'.
I have a wonderful teacher on a daily basis, my 5 year old. And I call him the little prince to indicate his position. And it is appropriate for him to have it all about HIM.

So back to sacrifice. Forget the catholic overload. There is the word 'sacred' in it. To be willing to let go of a part of my side of the cake without getting anything back, is something sacred. Why ?
Because it goes against the instinct of the ID, or the ME.
We can do it the easiest with our children. Why, because they are still extensions of our ego personality, so its relative easy, because we still give to ourselves.
With the 'stranger' over there, is another story. Not in the 'fallen' part of love, later when the personalities have been exposed, the shadow has been seen.
Then still to practice giving something up..... is the challenge.
Why...because some inner sense senses that it is just right to do so....
This is one way how love starts to grow.

Another thought here.
Love is something that grows. It's a paradox. In a way, love is always present, actually it is only present, when you and I are in the presence.

So whenever this presence appears, or is felt, that we name love,
(Remember a time when you really felt this presence of love....very likely you will
see, that actually 'you' as your little big ego personality, were not really present. The ID or ME part within us has temporarily withdrawn, retired, is behind the stage.

So LOVE and you and I are actually never truly meeting. When love is really present and palpable, the 'I' has withdrawn, temporarily out of 'order' or business.

So when I say love grows, I mean moments of this are growing, are happening more often.

Going back to 'sacrifice', this is one of the ways where we learn not to be 'present', not to feed the ME, ME, ME.

To complete the 'sacrifice' theme, the challenge is, not to sacrifice as a martyr, but from the overflow of 'JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO', not from the Super Ego/Moral judge/Pusher complex, I should.....

Thank you for reading my ramblings. If you want to use them in any way, feel free or just delete.

They just came thru, were not even 'mine'.