Fix you

I have been contemplating the whole ‘connecting with my needs’ thing for two weeks now and the one thing that’s been really bugging me is the (for me) logical question of “what next?”.

So I am in touch with my feelings and the underlying need but what do I do with it then?

To me the logical next step was all about how to then get that need met and I’ve been analysing whether or not I’m entitled to expect someone else to meet my needs or whether and if so, how much, I’m responsible to meet my own needs.

I haven’t quite found an answer to that particular question but I now moved on to a different question: do all of our needs need to be met?

I remember the trainer who did the non-violent communication training saying something about it sometimes being enough to just acknowledge a need and the fact that it is unmet.

Well, that didn’t really appeal to me. Patience isn’t one of my strengths and I tend to go after what I want with quite some determination.

And yet, during a conversation I had tonight with some Dharma friends via Skype about dealing with negative emotions etc. it really struck a chord with me when someone said that it all comes down to being alert, mindful and aware.

I’m not saying “don’t go after your dreams” or “don’t try and get your needs met” – I wouldn’t do that, trust me – but maybe (just maybe) sometimes loving yourself means simply noticing and acknowledging what’s there and showing yourself some empathy and compassion.

Maybe it isn’t always about fixing things.

Beneficial frustration

I have been off work for 5 days now and not being busy for most of the day has made Tony’s absence only more obvious. So I miss him a lot and am daydreaming about him a lot. I also miss Germany quite a lot although I hardly ever felt home sick before in all the 8 years I have been living in England.

Having travelled a lot on my own for extended periods of time, I know these sentiments well and I am wary of them. I have done this kind of idealising before and it has always been quite a disappointment when reality finally met the ideal I had conjured up in my head. A friend of mine explained this phenomenon quite nicely to me one day. She said: “You see, Yeshe (she insists on calling me by my Buddhist name), when we are not happy or don’t feel safe in the present, we tend to look for happiness or safety in the past or in the future.”

This is very true (she’s a very wise woman).

Thinking about her words I am wondering what it is that makes the present so uncomfortable. It is obviously not simply the fact that Tony isn’t here but the effect that this is having, the way I respond to it.

The main effect is that I have a lot of time to observe, think and analyse and because I’m spending a lot of time on my own, the object of all this analysis tends to be me. It’s like being on some sort of retreat myself and like any retreat, while being incredibly useful, it is hard work and often uncomfortable because you are confronted with some home truths you’d rather avoid looking at.

I won’t go into any detail regarding the truths that are staring me in the face, mainly because they relate to Buddhist concepts and ideas and I don’t want to give people wrong ideas about Buddhism by sharing my limited understanding of it. But I read something yesterday in Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s book “Not for happiness” which I would like to share as it cheered me up and might be useful to other people too:

“Practising dharma is necessarily a frustrating business. What practitioners, especially beginners, often fail to realise is that frustrations are the signposts of our success. An exasperating lack of concentration, devotion or inspiration might be just what you need to make the extra effort to tune into your practice fully. Alternatively, of course, it may topple you in the other direction and stop you practising altogether – a temptation you must resist at all costs. Always remember, though, that frustration with your spiritual path is often an indication that you are becoming a genuine dharma practitioner.” 

J

Loneliness

Okay. While yesterday’s post was more of a warm-up to get back into it and a playful post that didn’t even scratch the surface of how I feel inside, I will lay myself bare with this one (well, not quite).

First of all, I’d like to say that naturally, my thoughts and feelings change all the time. I have days when I really miss Tony and days when I’m absolutely fine. 

When I do miss him, I miss his physical presence, cuddles, kisses and all the rest but I also miss someone to talk to about what’s going on inside of me, the heart stuff. I realise how much I depend on Tony because he’s the only one I really open up to about the deep stuff. I think there are two reasons for that. One is, that when you’re in a relationship, your partner automatically becomes your first point of call and other friends move in the background a bit. The other one, however, has a lot to do with the fact that we share the same spiritual path. For me, a lot of the deep stuff has to do with being on this path and with how to apply this path in everyday life. Someone who is not a Buddhist practitioner often doesn’t even understand my problem to start with and even other Buddhist practitioners can sometimes have a very different understanding and therefore don't quite get me either.

With Tony however, I feel like we know where each other are coming from. It wasn’t always like this, don’t get me wrong, we spent a lot of time at the beginning of our relationship arguing like mad because it seemed like we spoke in different languages or about totally different things. Over the years we managed to find a shared language and I really feel like I cannot talk to anyone about the Dharma like I can with Tony. With a lot of other fellow practitioners, I still meet this problem of feeling like we are talking about different things or using different languages.

So I do feel quite lonely at the moment and I did during my retreat. A lot of new insights, thoughts and observations are emerging that I find hard to implement or hard to digest. Like always on this path, everything is turned upside down and although I know that this is a good sign it is not necessarily a pleasant experience.

Luckily, Tony decided not to be quite as strict with the whole “no contact” thing and every now and then he drops me a text message or gives me a call.

A couple of weeks ago he called me in the evening when I was just pouring my heart out onto a white sheet of paper and he noticed straight away in my tone of voice that I wasn’t okay. So I started sobbing down the phone about the internal battle I was fighting and he got me. He just got me. He totally understood what I was going through and he was able to help me make sense of it and ultimately move on.

Sometimes all you need is for someone to get where you’re coming from and in my case the person who does that is Tony.

Our kind of marriage

Now the neighbours are starting as well…

This morning as I leave the house I bump into the lady next door. I say “Hi. How are you?” and as always I’m hoping to get away with that and not end up having to engage in any kind of deeper conversation. This morning, she doesn’t let me off, though. She has obviously picked up that Tony’s not here. (Thinking about it, I might even have volunteered that information myself the other day when I was mowing the lawn at the front and couldn’t avoid making conversation). “So when’s your husband coming back then?” she asks me and I say: “In the middle of July.” “Oh…” she says. Feeling like I owe her some sort of explanation, I say: “Yeah, he’s on a meditation retreat in Belgium, you know?” And then I add “And when he comes back, I will be off on retreat.”

I don’t know why I threw that one into the conversation but it seemed a compromise between not saying anything and overwhelming her with the whole extent of the situation. As I’m making my escape towards the car, she tries to be funny and says something like: “Well that’s the kind of marriage to have” and I reply: “Yes, lots of freedom.”

I’ve seen the expression on her face on many people’s faces before when they hear how we lead our lives and the freedom we give each other.  It’s a mixture of disbelief, pity and something else that I can’t quite put my finger on.

The thing is, that when those same people tell me that they and their partners are “always together” or “have never spent a day apart” it makes me shudder. It’s the worst I could possibly imagine.

I need space and freedom and I hate commitment. I also get bored quite easily, love to ride the waves of change and am full of desire for new, exciting experiences. As a friend of mine put it: I’m not really marriage material and I actually never intended to marry.

So how did I end up being married to Tony? Well, it wasn’t really a rational decision. I just suddenly knew in my heart that it was what I wanted to do. So I did.

I do have “my phases” (as Tony calls them) that I periodically go through; times when it all gets too much and I just want to quit everything and run off somewhere.

I think it was difficult for him in the beginning of our relationship and back then he often made the mistake of trying to stop me from feeling that way – which of course just made matters worse. Luckily Tony’s quite stable and confident in himself which helped and nowadays he’s more like a rock against a raging sea when I get like that. It just washes over him and when I calm down again he’s still there and so am I.

He can bear my unstableness and the fact that I’m unwilling to give him any guarantees. That in turn, makes me feel like I’m loved the way I am and makes me want to stay. On top of that he enjoys his own company as much as I enjoy mine and is more than happy for both of us to do things on our own – something I really need in a relationship.

So, no: I don’t need pity from anyone who thinks that what we do is really difficult - or even dangerous to our relationship - because from my perspective it’s not. Quite the opposite.

The truth that Tony and I are fully aware of is that there are no guarantees in life or in love. You cannot promise someone that you’ll always be with them and I refuse to do it because it would be a lie. My relationships to anyone are based on honesty and truthfulness. It’s not that I don’t want to always be with Tony but I simply don’t know what the future holds and neither does he.

I don’t find that scary. I find it liberating! I believe the challenge in life is to accept the fact that we don’t have control over how things develop, that things change and that the future is uncertain. To become comfortable with that knowledge brings great peace of mind and makes you appreciate the present moment more fully.

Dharma, love and football

HH The Dalai Lama just finished his last lecture in Manchester Arena. He leaves me enveloped in a warm, fuzzy feeling of love, happiness and profound gratitude and with tears streaming down my face.

I sit down again. I don’t want to talk to people. I don’t want to interact. I just want to stay with this feeling a little bit longer.

I wish Tony were here to share this moment with me. I’d hold his hand or rest my head on his shoulder and simply enjoy his presence. No need for words. You know you found someone special when you can enjoy each other’s silence.

On the train home I remember one of our first shared moments, which was incidentally during His Holiness’ visit to Glasgow in 2004. Somehow we both ended up in the same room one evening with a group of other volunteers and we spent 2 hours stuffing little bags with items for a ceremony that His Holiness was holding the following day. On the photo that someone took of this evening, we’re just sitting next to each other focusing on the work at hand.

That was before I asked him to take me out to watch various football matches of that year’s European Championship and before I told him that I liked him. 

We're both quite happy to be on our own, we both love football but we also both love the Dharma and decided to make it a priority in our lives. Our wedding vows, which we took not even a year after that evening in Glasgow, read:

“Today we promise to dedicate ourselves completely to each other, with body, speech, and mind.

In this life, in every situation, in wealth or poverty, in health or sickness, in happiness or difficulty, we will work to help each other perfectly.

The purpose of our relationship will be to attain enlightenment by perfecting our kindness and compassion toward all sentient beings.” (By Lama Yeshe).

Today I feel grateful and happy for so many reasons.

Have I already mentioned that the German football team won their group on Sunday and qualified for the quarterfinals in this year’s European Championship?

You might have noticed from what I said earlier that I was quite instrumental in making our relationship happen: I asked Tony to take me out to watch the football (and to be honest I didn’t so much ask as suggest) and I also took the first step in telling him what I felt for him. I went even further than that. I also hinted at some point that if he would ask me to marry him, I wouldn’t say no.

And you know what, I don’t feel one bit ashamed of that because if there’s one thing I realised upon reflection on the whole weekend, it’s this:

In life, in love, in football and in the Dharma, things don’t just happen by themselves. If you want something, you need to get your ass into gear and go and get it.

Setting the scene

My husband Tony and I have been together for 8 years and we have been married for 7.

We are both practicing Buddhists and Tony has taken 5 months off work to spend some focused time studying and practicing the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings) in first group and then solitary retreat.

He will leave on Thursday, 14^th June to go to Belgium where he will spend about a month taking part in two group retreats. After that he will come home for a few days before heading off to Spain where he will spend 100 days in solitary retreat.

While he is in Belgium we can still talk to each other over the phone and I will see him for a day or two during his stopover at home in July. Once in Spain he will enter solitude with no contact whatsoever to the outside world. He’ll be back at the beginning of November.

Our spiritual path is a priority for both of us and we have spent time apart in the past going on different retreats. I believe that following a spiritual path is ultimately an individual and very personal endeavour even if – as in our case - both people are following the same path. I feel very lucky to be in a relationship where we are both happy to give each other enough space and freedom to spend time alone on our path.

However, 5 months is considerably longer than 1 month (the longest time we spent apart before) and also, not having any contact at all for 3 months is certainly a novelty.

I’m not worried, though. Rather, I’m curious to see how that feels and how I react in my thoughts, emotions and behavior. Obviously when you live with someone you somehow adjust to each other and your energies and rhythms align to dance together. I wonder how I will dance on my own.