The Spiritual Practice of Commitment (Part 2)
Tending the Wounded Heart: A Voyage of Self-Discovery and Courage in Commitment
For the past few days, I have been getting in touch with my inner child on a daily basis. She needs me now.
The emotional pain that she inflicted on me during the acute phase of her last outburst was accompanied by thoughts along the lines of: “He doesn’t love you, you are never chosen, you are worthless. You can’t trust him. He will abandon you.”
I yelled incredibly hurtful things at him on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, to make sure he heard me right, I also put it on paper. I told him we are over. I told him that I can’t trust him. I told him many things.
It is interesting how things happen in a specific sequence, as if everything is coordinated to provide the answers that clarify the drama — to give me the answer of why a part of me is so triggered by the thought that he is having not only sex, but more than that, that there is love and the desire to have a “real” relationship with this woman.
Fear of abandonment. Fear that he will leave me for another. Or perhaps even deeper, it feels as though this fear is ingrained in my core.
“And this is such a strange thing, I think, because I myself am active in the tantric community, which means that I go to retreats and parties where I am more or less sexually active and involved with other people. And I don’t feel in any way that I am out of what I call “integrity”.”
So the univers provided me with the answer.
I remember when I first went to a tantra retreat. My wounds were so deep that eye gazing made me cry. And my inner child was so in need of love that every friendly gesture (and the people in the tantric community are very friendly) made my mind go straight to strange places. I used to instantly add meaning to the hug, the smile, the touch. I used to imagine that it was more than just a hug, a smile, a touch. And then my mind used to develop a fixation on that person. I used to think that I was falling in love.
That was not what was happening. I had the symptoms of what was coined as “being limerent”. And I used to develop a bad case of it, with all that it entails: intrusive thoughts about the person, longing for reciprocation, my mood being dependent on their mood (or my interpretation thereof), as well as an intense aching of the heart.
It is interesting when you start to recognize the patterns that pull you in. On Thursday, after the drama, I was at a tantra retreat. I felt an instant connection to another participant. It felt like a wave of energy was created between us, like we were the poles of two magnets attracting each other.
I guess that is why it’s called attraction, after all.
I could see so clearly how he was becoming infatuated with me. I could feel his gaze following me. He was telling me how, when doing practices, his mind wanted to do them with me. And by the end of the third day, the confusion in his mind was at its peak. He was not only in that state of craving for me, but also judging himself for it, beating himself up for doing it again: interpreting the openness and friendliness of a woman as more than it is.
That is exactly what limerence is: a craving.
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Last year, I noticed for the first time that my tendency to attach meaning to friendly and even sexual interactions, as reflecting more than simply what they are, has considerably reduced. My mind stays clear, I am where I am, and I engage in what I engage with my full attention. Yes, it does sometimes go places, but I have stopped judging myself for it, and I can gently redirect my attention to the here and now. I can stay with myself, and when getting distracted, I can refocuse, getting back to pouring my attention back to me, to what I was doing.
In a tantra retreat where you practice full-body massages, including yoni and anal, there are many distractions, both outside and from within. It is a great context for practicing coming back to the now, not attaching stories to whatever happens, or seeing the stories that arise. Even in this charged field, I have become insensitive to the romantic story that I previously attached to being sexually intimate with someone. Experiencing pleasure or attraction remains just that: I have experienced pleasure or attraction.
So then, why is it that I feel so threatened by him seeing this woman?
As much as I would like to rationalize the pain and explain to my inner child that she is just irrational in her fear, it is not working. I tried that. And the more I tried, the less she felt heard.
Her pain is real. And I can spend countless hours talking, thinking, and analyzing where it comes from, but it still doesn’t make the pain go away. I tried that too.
My mistake was that I believed that I could “fix” myself. That I could get rid of these parts of me, that I could control them, that I could exert my willpower and overcome them.
I was in a war against myself.
The more I tried to fix, repress, or rationalize my feelings, the less they felt heard. And the bigger the split within my psyche.
And the angrier they became.
It was me against them, and that is a war that is lost from the start. The pain and anger that they can inflict can be so intense that I cannot bear it, I cannot breathe through it, and any of those fancy tricks that I have learned to manage my emotions are useless.
Awareness. Acceptance. Action.
I am and have been aware of my inner wounds, but until now I have not accepted them. I hid them, ashamed of them. They made me look bad, after all, not that “enlightened”, not that “developed”, not that “healed”. Definitely not perfect.
“And who could love such an imperfect creature?” Yes, I recognize you, voice inside of me reflecting that core limiting belief that “I am unlovable. There is something wrong with me.”
And so, while I was aware, I was not accepting what was happening inside because I was too identified with these voices. Otherwise, why would I feel shame about them?
I certainly believed them. My actions reflected that. Otherwise, why would I have hidden them? I was trying so hard to be the perfect, open-minded, evolved woman. Because maybe, if I am perfect in my appearance, he would not see how defective I felt inside, and he would love me.
Because maybe, if I am the best in school, my parents will love me.
Because maybe, if I have a perfectly toned and groomed body, he will love me.
And then maybe, they would not abandon me.
… so many maybes.
I never really told him how strong the pain within me was or what my thoughts were telling me. I was ashamed of my inner world, and I was also afraid of losing him. I pieced together fragments of conversations. He once told me: “I see myself like a boat in heaven. When I know that heaven is open and I can sail away, I actually don’t need or want to sail away”. So I concluded: “I have to keep heaven open or else he will leave me”.
Or when I thought I heard him say that he wants to be open to connections, my mind automatically equated connections with emotional involvement. I concluded that I have to be open to a relationship where he would be involved sexually and emotionally with other women, or else I will lose him.
Pema Chodron’s advice came to mind: “May I see what I do. May I do something different. May this become my way of being.”
Crazy wisdom: do something different.
So I am doing that now. I acknowledge my bleeding parts. I take care of them every day in my actions and my practice. I show them that I love them, and I relentlessly work towards gaining their trust.
And then, the action.
I started to speak their truth.
“This is how it is. Those parts in me are so in pain and they can not tolerate the situation of you being involved emotionally with others. So please make a choice. A choice that has to come 100% from you, because you want to and not because you want to please me, to spare me of the pain. I need to be honest with myself and with you. And this need to acknoledge my inner pain, to acknowledge those parts in me, what they can and what they can not, is stronger than the fear of loosing you. So I am asking you to speak your truth and make a choice.”
So here we are. We entered a process of radical honesty with ourselves and with each other. A process of openly investigating and sharing our needs, wants, and desires. A process meant to clarify the answer to the question: “Can we make this choice, of 100% choosing for each other and at the same time, being 100% honest with each other?”
It is quiet within me now. My inner child is sleeping. She knows that later today I will go to her to spend some time listening and giving her as much as I can of what she wants.
I feel that new doors and opportunities are opening in front of us. There is no predefined end goal or format of what our life together could look like in this process that we are in now. The only thing that is, is the process of answering that question with honesty and to see the form that the answer will manifest in.
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