I am not codependent… I am not codependent…not codependent…not

I am a kind and loving woman. I care about many people and show them and tell them – including my husband. This morning he is here even though it’s Monday morning and I usually have quiet to work. My office is right out in the middle of the house and a lot of what I do is write – just like I am writing right now. He went out to get the car smogged and came in while I was writing. I greeted him and thanked him for taking care of the car. I listened for a few minutes while he talked about what was happening in the apartment across the way – and he kept talking to his daughter about stuff that is not important that she know or I listen to at this time. Maybe he wants to spend a little more time before he settles into his working on work-related stuff. However, I need quiet when I write. I requested that he stop and he got a little bent out of shape. Although, of course, he stopped talking.

Communication Bafflement

OK. I teach and coach about relationships. Everybody knows that communication is one of the pillars of a healthy relationship. I’ve learned to communicate the big stuff – like. “You are acting like a jerk” or “when you don’t talk to me, I feel scared about our relationship and don’t know what’s going on,” etc.

But how do I let you know things like, “You have dandruff “or “you dripped on the bathroom floor or messed up the sheets?” Those things are so personal and seem so hard to communicate and so petty to boot. I just want to let them go. But then I end up resentful. You know, little thing on top of little thing on top of clean up after you and say nothing, on top of little thing and I’m ready to walk right out the door.

I’ve been in a great relationship for 25 years and I still haven’t learned the best way to do it. Any ideas?

1.  You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.  You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day in this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them stupid and irrelevant.

3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4.  A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5.  Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of Life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.  “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a  “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7.  Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.

8.  What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9.  Your answers lie inside of you. The answer to Life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10.  This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.

From the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott)

Will the Movies Ever Get
Relationships Right?

We saw a movie last night that made me think of some things. I’m not going to tell you the name of  the movie. I don’t want to ruin it because I want to tell you the ending. Here’s the setup: Pretty New York young woman with no purpose other than to find a man. She’s got a good job but doesn’t particularly like it. She just does it. Goes from man to man – drinking too much, having sex too fast and not having any relationships that last and feels worse and worse.

She finally does meet a nice man who comes from another country and wants her to come with him after knowing each other a few days. She declines and, as the plot unravels, ultimately takes a trip to that country, loses his contact information and decides to be there just for her own enjoyment.

At the end of the movie she’s on her way to the airport when missing young man walks onto the train but doesn’t see her. My husband and I wished the movie ended with her choosing to not go over to him but that’s not what happened. She goes over to him and allows herself to be taken off the train by him and in the end chooses to miss her plane. It is a big step for her to make that choice based on the personality that’s portrayed but wouldn’t it have been a bigger step (and very non-Hollywood) if she just continued to create a life where she got to know herself and became a full person first before she partnered with someone?

Man Are from Mars…..

I know my husband since Oct. of 1982. I’ve been in an intimate relationship with him for 25 years and married to him for 23 and sometimes I haven’t the foggiest idea who he is. He’s like a beautiful being from another planet that has come into my life to give me more than I could ever have imagined. He loves me amazingly. He believes in me and my abilities – often some steps ahead of how much I can believe in myself. He is so known to me and yet – sometimes I’m almost breathless with the knowledge that how this happened – how we finally found each other is like some kind of play Directed by Someone beyond thought.

Now how does that sound coming from am a total proponent in the belief that we create our own lives? But I can’t quite wrap myself around having created so amazingly while being unaware that I was doing it. How did it happen? Am I really this powerful? Is he? Does anyone else feel this way? Do I feel this way because the contrast with my former life and relationship is so great?

Senior Sex Drive

You’ve probably read or heard stories like I have about how much sex seniors have – in retirement homes, in movies. Anyway, somewhere I picked up the idea that my sex drive would stay the same because I love and am attracted to my husband. And that’s me. And he’s a man. Need I say more?

Well, it just ain’t happening that way. When we were first together I think we stretched the "all you think about is sex" part of our relationship to about 5 years whereas the old adage is "put a bean in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of marriage and then it’ll take the rest of your life after that to empty it if you take one bean out for each time you have sex". (I just noticed how exactly opposite these two tall tales are.)

The way it is happening is, over the past 2 or 3 years, we don’t have a lot of sex. First it was upsetting to talk about with a bit of blame, guilt and responsibility floating around for each of us but, as is our way, we don’t let things like that stay problematic. We keep dealing with them until we’re satisfied that we are on the same page about it. We are on the same page about it. We are both in consternation and desire to have it be different.

So yesterday we were having a conversation about it – a thing we do often on the weekend – and I think I realized something about it. I need you to imagine a line drawing here. Imagine a line across the lower part of the page and imagine that that is the level at which I lived. It basically represents at what level of happiness and fulfillment I lived in my life – particularly the intimate relationship part. Now along comes the Martian and that level sharply rises. Now one could think that the level of not too much sex represents the level at which I live but that isn’t true. If you’ve read this blog or know me, you know I live at a very high level of fulfillment and happiness. So I’m thinking that that big jump that I made when the Martian came into my life which was out-pictured by the intensity of my sexual experience is now the level at which I live.

So maybe I’d have to have another gigantic spike in energy to give to sex but our lives are so full of other things and our love isn’t new. It’s deep but we are used to it.

I think at the point we currently are, people who don’t have really fulfilling relationships or lives, probably put all their energy somewhere else. Often with another person. Neither of us is about to do that.

So we’ll keep talking and having sex when we do in the loving way that we do.

The Last Part of Our Journey

October 18th was the Martian’s 74th birthday. Two of his birthday presents were  for both of us. The first a  WII FIT and the second taking off from work for a lot of intimate time together. Both are therapeutic.  Some day I will show you a picture of how great he looks he looks but for now we have decided  to keep him in the background. because of his profession as a high school teacher In any case, his age 74 is not what I expected and I can’t prove it but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his youthfulness could be attributed to the happiness  and passion we experience in our  relationship

So why all the intrigue? What entered our relationship today? Well, nothing but acknowledgment by both of us that mortality is part of our relationship now. I guess it’s always true. It’s really part of everyone’s life but being age 66 (me) and 74 (him) it’s good to let ourselves know it. Yes, our skin isn’t what it used to be, other things have changed  as well. Yes, if you are curious, sex is different but still wonderful.

Life is a school and when class is over you leave this body. Rather than deny the fact of motality or push it away, I would rather open my eyes and wake up to the process of ageing  so my experience of life is as deep and rich and full and honest as it can be. I love the process of unfolding more about myself be it my young or old self.

Acknowleging and even embracing things you can’t change sounds like an Abraham  techniquie Whatever it is, we acknowledged mortality’s presence and we will set out to make it our friend. as it walks along  with us. Will keep you posted.