Hi Relic

We fall in love, we fall out of love…  it seams we are always falling and so if we are falling let us hope that we fall with grace to grace.  What is this love that can be falling into and out off?

I can’t give advice about your experience but would like to take a shot at the question you asked

Does Buddhism promote deep commitment to marriage, deep backbone through hard times, showing up in all the ways emotionally and being warm, kind and caring?

I think and feel that in its intended form it does. The practice leading to being fully present to oneself and others.

My observations however is that the practice often leads to indifference rather then the intended ‘detachment’  and engagement with life. The middle way is a difficult balance.

Sitting quietly by a lake its a great experience, engaging in life from a place of stillness not so easy. Life is messy and when starting the practice one might not be aware of the desire to remain at the lake and mistake that for engagement with life and being present to what shows up. Such detachment were nothing is allowed to touch us often becomes indifference

TS Eliot put it this way

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” ― T.S. Eliot

Being still, we discover becomes the source of movement, fully present to life, we dance.

May I ask why you chose the handle Relic?

Relic: an object surviving from an earlier time, especially one of historical or sentimental interest but now outmoded.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Peter.

Dear Relic:

You are welcome. I am trying to understand your original post in light of your recent second and third posts. In your original post you wrote that your husband “rarely expresses subtle emotions”, and that you are “getting a lot of intellectual abstractions instead of actual emotions” from your husband. Recently he told you that he was falling out of love with you as a result of the “inability to communicate” problem in the marriage.

You wrote about your feelings and motivation: “I’m deeply scared and saddened but open to seeing my role to play in the dissolution of his feelings. I believe in staying married for life and sticking it out”.

In your second and third posts you wrote: “I am trying to keep a clear head and an open heart. These are dark and tough times… I am making conscious effort to connect with my emotions at the deepest level. Intellectual abstractions are one of my favorite shields against the vagaries of life too. Perhaps it the habit makes me so crazy because it holds up a mirror”.

I am not sure I understand the last sentence. What I think that I do understand is that you are in the habit of distracting yourself from your own emotions via intellectual abstractions, and that you think your habit may have led to your husband to do the same. And that as a result of the two of you not connecting to and communicating your deep emotions, your husband said that “he feels no connection with (you) on a deep level”, and that he fell out of love with you. Did I understand correctly?

I have a suggestion as to how you can better connect to your emotions and better communicate your emotions to your husband: simplify your language, use simpler words.

Here is a sentence you wrote about how you feel: “It feels as though this heightened religiosity is coinciding with him no longer expressing any emotions like ‘gratitude, fear, pain, shame'”-

-if you want to, you can do the following exercise: re-write this sentence in a language/ vocabulary and syntax that a child is likely to use. Do not use words like religiosity, heightened  and coinciding, remove the quotes before gratitude and after shame, and make it a direct sentence from the heart. Notice you started this sentence with “It feels”- then focus on feeling instead of being distracted and carried away by thinking.

anita