Right Here With You: Andrea Miller on growing apart

Though she’s quick to say she isn’t a “relationship expert,” Shambhala Sun Deputy Editor Andrea Miller has recently enjoyed an immersion into Buddhist wisdom as it relates to love for ourselves, for others, and for all beings. That’s the subject of the new book Andrea edited, Right Here With You: Bringing Mindfulness Awareness into Our Relationships — as well as a series of related SunSpace posts in which Andrea fields our readers’ relationship questions. (This is the second such post; click here to read the first.)

My wife and I have been married for almost nine years. We have two children and a house and a car — everything we’re supposed to have according to the American dream. But my wife and I have grown apart since the kids were born. I love my children and I don’t really want a divorce; I just want things to be like they were before between my wife and me. What can I do? –Jason K.

I very much doubt that it’s possible for you and your wife to go back to the way it was before. Things are different now—you have two kids and almost nine years of marriage under your belt. Indeed, for better or for worse, no matter what the situation is, “things” are always different now. According to Buddhist philosophy, one of the marks of existence is impermanence. There is nothing that does not change. Of course, this means that your current state of dissatisfaction is also changeable, but first it’s important to have an understanding of the nature of love.

In Right Here With You, Judith Simmer-Brown says that many of us are in love with love, rather than with our lover. That is, we’re in love with romantic love, rather than true love.

“Romantic love thrives on separation,” says Simmer-Brown. “The unattainable love is the most attractive one—someone who is married to someone else, living in a distant city, or in a nexus of the forbidden. The girl or boy next door is not a good candidate for romantic fantasy, and neither is one’s spouse. Separation makes the heart grow fonder and more passionate, because with separation the fantasy of the lover can be kept alive. The reality of the person cannot threaten the fantasy. For this reason, many newlyweds become quickly disillusioned over the mundane realities of married life. The courtship was so exciting, but marriage is too real, too ordinary.”

If we are addicted to romantic love, this will be our romantic history: We begin a relationship with high hopes, but our partner disappoints us, so we break-up with him or her. Then we find someone else and the cycle begins again—again and again. This, however, doesn’t have to be our fate.

True love can begin when the disappointment sets in—when our fantasy crashes headlong into the reality of the person we’re with. We’re not with our “type” after all; we are with a human being. But it’s in the wake of disappointment and boredom that we find the opportunity to discover who our partner really is. And what’s wrong with an ordinary, flesh-and-blood person? If you make a point to pay attention to your partner—really listen to and look at him or her—maybe you’ll see that the ordinary holds a lot of interest after all.

Erik Hansen in Right Here With You talks about how difficult it is to pay attention to the tastes and textures of a mere baked potato. Then he extrapolates from that: If it’s this challenging to be mindful of a potato, how much more difficult must it be to be mindful of his wife? “After all,” he says, “my relationship to a potato is fairly straightforward, whereas my perceptions of my wife, for example, are overlaid with all kinds of control issues, power struggles, sexual bonding, primordial needs, and so on.” But a wife or husband is also more fascinating and complex than a potato. “When I pay attention,” concludes Hansen, “I find beneath my conventional knowing of my wife a vast and profound unknowing. A big open space that inspires curiosity and leads to contact.”

If you have a question about mindful relationships that you’d like addressed, please send it to Andrea Miller: magazineshambhalasun.com.

Your Daily Destination for Buddhism, Culture, Meditation, Life http://www.shambhalasun.com/

Read more at Shambhala Sun