Since I’m getting ready to teach a six week telecourse on relationships, I’ve taken close notice when clients or friends talk about views they have of relationships lately.
Especially love relationships.
(Although in this teleclass, people wind up choosing any one relationship to look at closely if it’s been bugging you a long time: mom, dad, teenager, co-worker…anyone who disturbs your peace is a great place to start).
The other night, I had an interesting email exchange with an old friend.
He was pining for someone he had a crush on at age 13.
But before you think he’s over-romanticizing the past, or being stuck in teenage love, before you judge him as someone trapped in the limited world view of first-young-love is the best….
….just think a minute about how you, or others you know, sometimes drum up images of former lovers, crushes, the one-that-got-away, those dreamy days when you felt the flame of love, that wild intense unstable romantic fling, that weekend with so-and-so twenty years ago.
Often, we humans like to review our past history of relationships, especially romance, it seems. We love to tell our relationship stories. I dated this person, then that person, then this other person. With person A it was 2 years, person B it lasted 3 months, person C I married then divorced, person D it was a one week fling.
It was like this, then that, and then….
It’s funny then how the mind can rate time with a partner as “fantastic” or “troubled” or “dangerous” or “a mess” or “complicated”.
And the mind can really tell a story of how there’s a relationship out there that’s ideal, in the future or in the past.
My friend was saying his relationship, the teenage one so long ago, was “pure”. Sweet, easy, uncomplicated, innocent, fresh.
Then I noticed a little irritated thought arising in me, as I listened to him.
He should wake up and ask himself if it’s really true that his 13 year old first girlfriend was true love. AS IF.
Yeah.
Why is he thinking this way?
He needs to get a life. He’s stuck in some kind of false loop. What an unrealistic way of thinking. It’s sooooo sad.
All kinds of advice began to arise in me, for him.
He’s so blocked, needy, delusional. Ick.
And then….the question popped in from somewhere on the side of this whole list of judgments against my poor old friend, so “off” in his thinking, and my feelings of irritation.
Is it true?
Oh. Hmm. No idea.
I don’t know really what he’s actually thinking when he says he’s dreaming of his teen years. I don’t know what he’s suggesting, or even talking about, or wanting, or remembering exactly. I don’t know what purpose it serves him.
Why do I find it worthy of such inner disgust and criticism, when my friend says he still remembers that 13 year old girl he loved and confesses he thinks of her?
How do I react when I believe he needs to stop going over past relationships and get a life?
I’m grossed out. Dismissive. I’m thinking he’s delusional. And lost.
I move away from him internally. I go on a rant about romantic love, thinking it’s ridiculous what people expect. And impossible, and sad.
I imagine myself to be above all that.
Oh, dang.
Who would I be without these judgments towards my friend, or anyone who pines for a past lover, or wants to go back to a previous time in life?
I’d just hear someone doing the thing we all do sometimes: live in the past.
Without the belief that he shouldn’t think the way he does (and this could go for anyone, any time) I’m free to hear him, listen to his words, and not smack his words down (on the inside).
I hear someone using words to express what’s going on for him in that moment, but without the thought he shouldn’t be thinking the way he does, the words are like the wind blowing. I’m reading words on a screen, actually. Nothing else is even happening.
Without the belief that someone should think about love differently than they do, I relax back into my own business, my own presence, the room I’m sitting in.
Turning the thought around: he’s “on” in his thinking–it’s just right for him, it’s just right for me to be taking in through email. I’m the one who’s pining for the past and can’t let go. I’m the one creating stories about love and romance that are just….stories.
How could it be a good thing I had this email conversation with my friend, and hear what he’s saying?
Well, for one thing, I see where I really want to go: I want to enjoy and love whatever’s happening now, including philosophizing about love and memories of the past. I don’t want to wish for anything that’s not happening, now (including my friend writing what he thinks to me). I want to keep on discovering this remarkable experience of being my own best lover.
I want to trust the Universe and Reality have got this….even for the people who are longing, sad, pining and wishing for love to be different than it is.
Much love, Grace