One of the newer things we’re doing on Peace Talk podcast is Sessions in The Work. These are solo sessions where someone walks through their dilemma on a topic with me and takes one concept through the inquiry process.
My next guest brings a very common dilemma to awareness; the great question of whether I should stay or I should go in a primary love relationship?
You may find it very familiar, and the story-telling and analysis we do around this dilemma, and the stress of the belief “I made a mistake by marrying this person”.
Listen HERE.
The thoughts about relationship and communicating and being with someone else (or not being with someone else) carry on like an old record playing in an abandoned city.
Maybe something very dramatic like Chernobyl.
Thoughts like:
- he abandoned me
- if only…
- I wonder where so-and-so is now (accompanied by googling or facebooking the name)
- she has a better life financially because of who she’s partnered with
- we aren’t compatible
I work with people all the time on relationship dilemmas and they have all these thoughts, and more.
Just in the past couple of weeks I’ve heard the following thoughts:
- being partnered is sooooo much better than being single–and since I’m single I’m sad
- it’s important to find someone to take care of you or to have fun with who lives with you all the time
- finances are much easier when you’re married
- I’m doomed to live a life of boredom and lovelessness in my current relationship
- I’ve lost the love of my life
- my life is over since I’m divorced
Tremendous agony is felt with all this thinking and imagining about love. Love lost, love found, love desired, love unwanted.
But is the story we’re telling actually true?
Can we absolutely know it’s true?
What happens when you think that same old thought about relationship?
For example.
I have a thing about spaces looking neat and tidy and fairly empty-ish.
This past weekend, with the help of my mom and a hired worker, there was a lot of clean-up happening in my back yard where there’s been a small building project: a studio apartment for my mother’s future home.
During the weekend, my mind erupted in a little memory of a house project two summers ago with my husband: cleaning out the shed, which also sits in the back yard.
Those two summers ago, I had put on the weekend calendar in August “Clean Out Shed” and told our young adult kids about it. It was scheduled.
Boxes and boxes and old tools and filing cabinets and bicycles and equipment and camping items all get stored in this shed in the back yard. Many boxes were unlabeled and only 1/3 full of stuff, like old papers or my husband’s stamp collection.
No one joined me that long ago August weekend. I rearranged the boxes basically, and got some stuff removed to the dump or donation.
Now, with current painting and upkeep needed for this same shed, I circled back to the desire to get it cleaned out and organized.
Yesterday, I asked my husband if we could plan that again for this upcoming summer….five or six months away.
He wasn’t ready to make the plan. I suddenly had pictures appear in my head of tubs and boxes and disappointment from the previous attempt.
It’s happening again! GASP!
The shed will never, ever, ever get cleaned out! It will always be hard to get the bicycles out! This will never be fixed in life!
Now….this is a tiny minor thing in the big scheme of relationship conversations. And it still felt like literally a momentary internal seizure, an eruption, a punch of frustration.
I demand this gets done!!
My husband said I eye-rolled him.
Oh. Sigh.
Shoot.
The jolt of believing a stressful thought, and then aware I need to inquire.
With inquiry, I pause the forward motion of the dreadful story. I notice the picture in my mind is of the past, not the future.
Image of the past drops.
I apologize. He was right.
Real conversation about expectations happen.
Who would I be without my story?
A normal, calm, kind person making a suggestion and a request and waiting for the response.
I heard that he thought “clean out the shed” meant he was supposed to throw everything he owned in the shed away.
My words have been confusing the whole time. I didn’t mean “clean out”…I meant “organize”.
The image of the future became completely and entirely different: having fun removing boxes, spreading them out on the lawn and deck. Seeing what’s inside. Deciding with delight to save it, or to give it away, or to throw it away.
Noticing the joy of sorting through stuff, that it takes as long as it takes.
Noticing the fun of making a plan for a future month when the weather is better, and that’s OK.
Noticing right now is peaceful, and images of the future are all made up–whether positive images or negative images–and I have no idea really what will happen.
All is well.
Feeling right now the present moment, with unfinished and finished all here when it comes to tasks, and nothing actually required at the moment.
Could this be also true about any decisions about the future that are more drastic or dramatic when it comes to being connected with a partner?
TurnAround: My thinking needs to be cleaned out and organized right now, we do not need to make a full plan to clean out and organize the shed (or the whole relationship) right now, today is OK just the way it is. I did not make a mistake. I made a correction. My thinking made a mistake.
Listen HERE to Peace Talk Podcast Episode 156 to explore the a key belief about relationship investigation “I made a mistake in marrying this person”.
Much love,
Grace
P.S. Spring Cleaning Retreat in May is for any thinking that feels, well, dirty. Cluttered, messy, sloppy. We will have an amazing time un-cluttering, tidying up, relaxing, understanding, clarifying. Learn more here. (Check out the new not-quite-fully-released website of all things Work With Grace and Eating Peace while you’re at it)!
Hi Grace, just two days ago I left a 12-step program that I had been abstinent from flour & sugar for thirteen years. This is a time of huge transition, and I was delighted to read today’s reading about organizing and cleaning the shed. It’s a great metaphor too. I tend to try to help others before helping myself, and so I see areas of my own thinking and beliefs that emerge when I feel a loss of control. As a former professional organizer, I have seen that we all have areas in our lives that need attention periodically. Today I commit to see and discern what is mine, and let the rest go. This includes choosing the food on my plate for nourishment, rather than self-soothing or stuffing my problems. Today I will tolerate and write about any discomfort around taking care of myself and know that all I need to do so is already within me.
Beautiful approach Gina. I love considering the discomfort and letting it live, letting it be there–writing about it can be so kind. Congratulations on your new transition and movement into something expanding. Thank you for your comment here.Much love, Grace