This is an interesting week for me to reflect on relationships.First, my sister celebrates her 17th anniversary today. While I'm proud of them, I just realized that my longest time in a continuous monogamous relationship spans less than 17 consecutive weeks, and that was back in 1999. I get suffocated easily. Temptations arise. There's something in me which gets restless. Or universe conspires to provide a relief in some form. Or something or other.
The other thing that put me in a contemplative mood is the realization that 07.07.07, or my supposed "wedding" date is near. I was in a CNG when I realized this two mornings ago, and even with the burden of three finals, two term papers and some massive deadlines all this week, I started laughing hysterically. It's the kind of thing that I can now safely look back and shrug and ask "what the hell was I thinking?"
The third thing is almost straight out of Annie Hall. In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer buys Annie all the books with titles like Death and Western Thought, Denial of Death, only for Annie to realize in an analyst's session (that Alvy paid for) that she was feeling suffocated.
My room is now full of uplifting and spiritual books, remnants of my last relationships. I wanted to read something on the toilet, and picked one book from the shelf. It happened to be Conversations with God, book one. And the page I opened absentmindedly said this:
Losing of the Self in a relationship is what causes most of
the bitterness in such couplings.
Two people join together in a partnership hoping that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, only to find that it's less. They feel less than when they were single. Less capable, less able, less exciting, less attractive, less joyful, less content.
This is because they are less. They've given up most of who they are in order to be - and to stay - in their relationship.
Relationships were never meant to be this way. Yet this is how they are experienced by more people than you could ever know
Amen.
P.S. The pic is of Sara in Jan, when I just had my accident. I just remembered how I used to suck my thumb every night, and how that would comfort me in times of stress. It's all appeasing nerve endings, I suppose.
