I’m sipping a can of iced coffee from the office fridge, preparing to start the work day. Today feels ordinary, aside from the lingering warm glow of being in love. Steady love. Years of enduring affection. Comfortable intimacy. I do adore my Traveling Partner. We enjoyed a lovely Valentine’s Day evening together. Nothing much more to say about it. It “ticked all the boxes” I personally hold dear for a healthy relationship… thinking back to my blog post a couple days ago, I’m referring to these:
Mutual respect
Mutual consideration
Mutual encouragement
Mutual support
Shared values
Compassion
Clear expectation-setting
Clear communication without mockery, contempt, or condescension
Skillful listening
Equitable distribution of labor
Yesterday felt like all of that. It was refreshing and delightful, and clear “proof of concept”. 😀 Feels like a win.
I slept well and deeply – second night in a row. So nice. The commute into the city was a bit icy, and a bit foggy, but there was very little traffic, and the drive was pleasant and uncomplicated. A good start to a new day. I think I’ll just go ahead and begin again. 😀
Some years I’ve spent Valentine’s Day alone. That hasn’t been a problem for me. Other years I’ve enjoyed the companionship of friends, or in the embrace of a lover, or with my Traveling Partner. In the abstract, I enjoy the idea of a holiday celebrating sexual and romantic love very much. I still think it is super weird that card giveaways by multitudes of school children have anything at all to do with that. Just seems wildly inappropriate to mix all those things up together, is what I’m saying.
Last night my Traveling Partner looked over at me, “I didn’t get you anything for Valentine’s Day” he observed with a somewhat regretful tone. “I didn’t get you anything either.” I replied, rather matter-of-factly. I immediately felt that perhaps I should have – although most years we haven’t done anything much about Valentine’s Day besides love each other. Last year was unusual – fairly spectacular, honestly. This year I made plans to make a really nice dinner for the two of us, nothing exotic, just good cooking. I am even counting on myself not to be shy about romance and instigating some adult fun after work. My anxiety can sometimes get in my way, and the awareness of it alone can provoke it, but I’m feeling good about myself and the day, and my partner, and love generally, so… I have hopes for a pleasant evening of companionship, love, and romance. Expensive gifts are not a requirement.
It hits me out of the blue; intimacy needs presence not presents. I could have taken the day off and spent it in the company of love. Fucking hell. How is this only now something I think of? I make a reminder on my calendar in the distant future – a year away, minus a couple weeks, “Get Valentine’s Day Off!!”. Along the way, I notice the long weekend coming up with unexpected relief and delight; I apparently thought ahead to planning Friday off in advance of the 3-day President’s Day weekend. Damn, I hope I don’t blow it with my bullshit… we could really use a lovely long weekend spent enjoying each other’s company.
“Lovers” 1991
Love takes work. Not one day of cards, flowers, gifts, and chocolates – real work, every day. Real commitment. Real consideration. Real respect. Real caring. No faking it with love, either. Love sees through fakery pretty easily, in spite of all the “love is blind” shit we hear. Love can be hurt. Love can be damaged. Love can even be destroyed – how tragic that is! I take a breath, and think about love. I sigh out loud in this quiet space, and remind myself how many delightful wonderful experiences still take some effort, or some practice, to really “get it right”. I think about love for a few minutes, just sitting here smiling and sipping my coffee.
…I’m fortunate to be so well loved…
“Cherry Blossoms” 2011
I yawn and stretch, and watch the dark of night give way to the pale blue gray of a wintry dawn. I think about my Traveling Partner, still asleep at home, unaware of the snow that fell during the night. I hope his dreams are pleasant. I think back on all the things he’s done to make life better for us over the past couple of years since he moved back in with me… it’s been, what, about 4 years? December 2018, I think…? Wow. We’ve come so far together in such a short time. 😀
I sit here just smiling for awhile, thinking about this human being I love so dearly. I think about yesterday’s bit of writing, and better ways to demonstrate my affection day-to-day…
Imagine trying to build something you’ve never actually seen and don’t have a detailed description of. It would be predictably quite difficult, wouldn’t it?
What does a great relationship actually look like, for real? Not “what is perfect “, because that’s not a thing. Certainly not whatever the fuck the dizzying fantastical first 6 months of passionate certainty that “this is for real love” is (although the vibes of new love are amazing, that rarely seems to last beyond a year or two at best). I mean that spectacular, deep, reliable, hilarious, fond, and comfortably intimate love that develops (for a lucky few) and deepens over time – what does that really look like? What are the rules? The guiding principles? The obvious necessary practices that sustain the energy of adult love over decades?
There are relationship books aplenty. I sometimes find some useful tidbit or practical suggestion in such books, but rarely more than that. There are therapists who specialize in relationships and family therapies, and no surprise there are plenty of relationships and families that need help. But what does a healthy relationship even look like? For real? (And who said so?)
I am for sure no expert. My early-life relationship models were all absolute train wrecks of relationships, shitty experiences if not explicitly abusive. So… of course, I do find “getting it right” quite difficult, even after years and years of therapy, and a couple “do overs” (I’m on my 4th long-term relationship). My relationship with my Traveling Partner is by far the best and healthiest romantic relationship I’ve ever had, free of violence, free of intentional mistreatment, with it’s foundations clearly based on a deep and lasting affection for each other. It’s still a relationship with me in it, though, and I’ve got issues. I could definitely “do better”.
partnership
Hold on a minute… No, I’m not missing the point that there are two of us here and we’re both very much responsible for the quality of our relationship. I write about my life from my own perspective, and it would be both an injustice and also beside the point to make statements about what he could be doing about things; that’s for him to handle. I’m accountable for my own thinking and behavior, and making changes is within my hands. My work. My practices. Reasonable for me to discuss. I can’t do those things for him, or on his behalf, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to be making assumptions about his thinking, or what he “needs to do”, and it is an opinion of mine that attempting to do so would be, at best, ineffective. So, I stay focused on me. What I can do. What I understand. Where I find value. What does or does not work for me.
“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012
What do I want from love, and what does it require of me? Am I truly up for it, once I am confident I understand what it takes? These seem like important questions to ask and answer, preferably before getting all tangled up in a relationship based on love. My Traveling Partner and I have been together 13 years. In May, we’ll have been married for 12 (seriously?? where has the time gone…?!). Here I sit, though, thinking about love over my morning coffee, and wondering whether my expectations and understanding of love are… realistic.
What do I think a “healthy relationship” looks like? I listen to a drenching rain pounding the roof overhead and think about it. I think (for me) a healthy relationship would be characterized by:
Mutual respect
Mutual consideration
Mutual encouragement
Mutual support
Shared values
Compassion
Clear expectation-setting
Clear communication without mockery, contempt, or condescension
Skillful listening
Equitable distribution of labor
I read that list back to myself, thoughtfully. If this is what I want, myself, how well do I deliver on these qualities in my own relationship, right now? I think about the “wins” with some satisfaction… I probably do very well at … 4 of these. Fucking hell. Really? That’s it? 4 out of 10? 40%?? So… yeah. A failing grade. Altogether fairly shitty. Wow. I will admit I did not see that coming, as I wrote… I’m betting my Traveling Partner won’t be particularly surprised.
I’m now understanding a bit better some of his beefing about “us”… and I am a bit saddened by it. I’m also feeling… encouraged and hopeful. Easier to practice something when I’ve got a clear idea what success looks like. Keeping the list limited to practical qualities that would appear to build and support a healthy relationship instead of listing desirable results seems to have had the intended outcome, too; I can see more clearly where I miss, and what I can work on for best long-term results over time.
I find myself wondering what my Traveling Partner would say characterizes a healthy relationship? I wonder how he would score his success? I sip my coffee thoughtfully…
Looks like a lot of fucking verbs in that list. A lot of practices to practice. …And a lot of changes to make. As daunting as that seems, it does put a lot of control over the outcome in my hands. I’ve just got to do the verbs. Practice. Recover from my failures. Savor my successes.
Weird weekend. (I could stop right there, honestly…)
“Baggage” is a tough challenge for people who have been traumatized. It can be super hard to put that shit down, and properly “begin again”. Our baggage tends to linger in our hidden corners, tucked away carefully where it’s difficult to see how problematic our thinking has become. We struggle with decision-making and outcomes that create an unpleasant experience or prevent us from thriving in our lives. It’s hard sometimes.
I’m hopeful that a particularly painful and difficult conversation with my Traveling Partner really does have the promising positive outcome it appears that it may… I’ve just got to set down some baggage and back away from it, then do some things differently going forward. Him too, I suppose, although in this instance the focus was for sure on me and the chaos and damage I sometimes struggle with.
Love and words. So many words. So much love.
Once we were “on the other side” of that difficult conversation, we enjoyed our evening together. I woke this morning feeling loved (and hopefully he did too). I’ve got a massive headache, still managed to enjoy a cup of coffee with my partner before I left for the local co-work space I sometimes work from. So far a promising start to the day and week. Nice.
Moving back into my studio was a sort of mix of manual labor and thoughtful work and careful selection. Now that it’s finished, I can’t fathom why I stalled for so long. I find myself returning to my studio again and again, thinking about creative projects. I’ve rekindled my eagerness to finish a particular manuscript that has been languishing in a file on my hard-drive for awhile – almost a decade. Long overdue, and I did not understand that two things were holding me back: 1 poem I had included that I had serious second thoughts about, and those journals tucked away in a bin. Funny; I took care of the journals, and now project after project that had been stalled seem to percolate to the surface for their moment.
What’s holding you back? When will you tackle that?
How much baggage are you dragging along every day? How much can you “just set down” and walk away from? Are there things you could let go of, that you… just don’t? What is that doing for you? (Seriously, you probably wouldn’t cling to some of that sticky bullshit if you weren’t getting something out of doing so, if only the strange comfort of familiarity – which is totally over-rated.)
I’m no therapist, just saying – lightening the load makes for an easier journey. 😉
I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. There’s a garden to plan. A life to live. Love to embrace and nurture. Already time to begin again.
Maybe skip this one today? This entire article is mostly me just beefing about shit that irritated my consciousness after reading through the business news this morning. Mostly irrelevant to the usual themes, and if that’s what you are seeking out, this may be a disappointment. I do get there eventually, but… tl;dr? Do your best today. Do better than that tomorrow.
Cities are not built by gold. They are built by labor, and by working hands.
I am sipping my coffee and reflecting on items in the business news this morning. Layoffs. A relatively tasteless (in context of layoffs) comment from a CEO that “ChatGPT is a free employee” that businesses need to learn how to use. Massive greed. Fraud. Companies paying for luxury entertainment at fancy conferences – while doing layoffs. Shareholders looking for another nickel. More frauds. Crypto scams. People being treated as machinery. Businesses looking for new ways to pay people less for more work. The media working hard to peddle controversy and keep my attention.
…I think we’re getting a lot of this quite wrong, somehow…
How do you define success? Take a while on that one, please. No rush. It’ll be important to you later on.
What about “greed”? How do you define greed? Do you apply the same definition to your own behavior and standards as you do to those around you?
What are your thoughts on how businesses treat employees? Is that a reflection of your own perspective as a working human being?
What do you think about pay equity? Should people doing the same job be making the same money? Do you think it matters where they live or what demographic they are part of? Why?
Perspective really matters on a lot of this. The perspective of someone in the position to be an oppressor is unlikely to be the same as the perspective of someone among the oppressed.
…The perspective of someone looking to cash in on simply having an opinion for sale is quite its own thing…
[I wrote some relatively radical pro-labor ranting, which I subsequently deleted. I’m not here for that. Not really. (I really should not read the news in the morning. Not even the business news.)]
This really isn’t even about that.
I’m thinking about how much I’ve personally grown over time. How my thinking has changed. The woman I am today, and how I seek to treat the people around me, is not the woman I was at 19. At 25. At 37. It’s been a hell of a journey of evolving thinking and changing values. (That’s a good thing.)
One of the things I’m finding … interesting… is that the woman I was at 19 would have been defined today as a “conservative” but made shit wages in a low-skilled job with far fewer protections as a worker than exist today – and often voted to prevent that from changing for the better! I work very differently now. Think differently. Vote differently. I’m definitely not “conservative”. I seek different outcomes – equitable, beneficial, positive outcomes that provide for the betterment of folks who need that support most (instead of for “the shareholders” or “the company” or people who are already affluent) I’d ideally like to get that result without destroying the one planet we have to live on right now.
Why would anyone want to get rich at the expense of the survival of the entire planet?
…Why we’re at it, why is “getting rich” such a common measure of success for so many people, at all? Seriously. Is counting money all that damned interesting once you have everything you need in life to thrive?
…Wouldn’t it be interesting if businesses took their measure of success not from their gross margin or profits, but from their contribution to society in the form of taxes paid and outcomes achieved?
Why aren’t we (as a global society) making sure that (all) people have the basics that they need in life to thrive? Globally we appear to have the resources to do it. Solving the “how” is what matters… so… why does so much of the discussion seem to be about whether we should?
My coffee has gone cold already and I haven’t even solved global poverty, the plight of the working class, or figured out the easiest way to communicate how problematic greed is. lol Oh, I wasn’t really trying to. I’m just trying to say “we could do better than we do right now” and that we could put some fucking attention on that… even if only over our morning coffee.
…Isn’t it important enough to talk about? Rhetorical question. Of course it is. It’s just necessary to also do more than talk.
I sip my coffee. It doesn’t much matter that it’s cold. I’m privileged to enjoy this cup of coffee. There may come a time in my own lifetime when coffee isn’t so widely available in such good quality. I make a point to appreciate it, in the early morning quiet.
My Traveling Partner finished building a new sit/stand desk for my office space at home. It’s the same space that is my art studio. I feel “wrapped in luxury and good fortune” to have an office at home – or a studio. It’s beautiful, and functional, and I feel loved. Amazing. Took a lot of work and time to get to this place. It required some lucky breaks. Some thought. Choices. It absolutely required a good partnership – one that supports my growth, and my fondest desires. I did not get “here” alone.
Alone? Alone I’ve only ever gotten… nowhere.
…My emotional wellness has been a similarly long-time, challenging journey – the success of which has been built on luck, effort, happenstance, choices, time, practice, failure, and a good partnership (or many). Just saying; we don’t get where we’re going alone, even though we’re walking our own hard mile.
…And we can almost always do just a bit better than we did… before we knew we could…
So.
It’s time to begin again. Do better though. Do better than yesterday. Every day.
Evening Light 