Thought From an Empty Mind
Relationships...Part One...What is a Relationship After All?
It will be harder than we thought it would be when it started. It is more than compromise. It is embracing our differences. Respecting each other's values. Listening to each other's hearts and allowing for tenderness towards each other. There has to be humor in life and in relationships. We have to see the lighter side and the silver lining or we are hopelessly under some serious cloud cover.
Copyright@2004 Judi Rosen
"A Summer in the City by the Sea"
Relationships...Part Two...The Truth of the Matter
We are all looking for a man or woman who will challenge and inspire us intellectually; a mate who will ignite the Roman candles of passion in our soul, and allow us to pursue our own agenda, as we allow them to pursue theirs, ready to compromise rationally when there are conflicts, as there inevitably will be; a playmate who is in touch with his child/animal at his core and ready to let that feral creature romp with our child/anima, climbing mountains, swimming seas, having sex, pushing the envelope of the male/female connection. Or, to borrow Yeat's metaphor, "to be the dancer who leads me into the dance of life". D. H. Lawrence came up with the best metaphor for an ideal relationship -- "two separate planets, locked in a mutual orbit". Between the ideal couple there is powerful, undying attraction, but no abdication of identities. You have to be happy together and happy apart. Too many people look to their mate to fill up holes in their life and holes in their hearts. That never works. Your love and loyal support should strengthen and refresh your mate to fight their own battles, but they have to be fought alone.
If you can share a good bottle of wine, a conversation that seemingly never wants to end, that feels as effortless and playful as two dolphins sporting together, that opens minds and eyes to truths you'd always known, but were now being made to understand, as if for the first time, through the honest passion and clear vision of another.
Then the intellectual and the physical part are easy. After a month or two together, you can tell almost for certain, if you have found someone who will always fulfill you on these two planes. Either you delight as much in hearing their thoughts as they delight in hearing yours, or not. Either you can satisfy each other sexually, or not. That's the easy part. The hard part is whether you are compatible spiritually...whether your mate can allow you to fulfill your own agenda and you can allow them to fulfill theirs. This is because the workings of the human heart are such a mystery. No one really knows exactly why we do what we do or feel what we feel. We all spend our lives trying to figure this out. We get glimpses of the truth, and come to partial understandings, but the soul remains, on the whole, a mystery. The only way to discover if you are truly compatible with someone on this level is to live together and find out if it works on a day to day basis. And even then, you can't be certain, because people change. Some things you just have to take on faith.
~Judi Rosen~
Copyright@2004 Judi Rosen
"A Summer in the City by the Sea"
© Copyright,
As seen in the May Issue of Main Street Magazine.
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