Hi Faber

Relationships can be complicated yet maybe also simple, the key perhaps is paying attention and taking a breathe when we feel ourselves panicking.

I recently completed a Book by Fredrik Backman ‘Anxious People’. A complex simple story about a lot of things but maybe mostly about how we are all need and rely (co-depend) on others, even if we don’t always know how. Being co-dependent can be the most beautiful of experiences someone ever has and also the most painful.

I think here of fathers and sons… my father recently passing… In memory I wonder about the times I was dependent and times I was depended on, sometimes failing yet I trust most times… good enough, doing the best we could. The bitter and the sweet giving life its flavor, maybe the error we make, if their is a error, is in the way we measure.

I like the way the book begins.. I wonder if it might not be a good way to start our stories.

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you’re trying to be a reasonably good human being for. ”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Peter.

So Im struggling to understand: how can we know if we have a healthy indicator of unmet needs in a relationship VS we’re being unreasonably needy and totally codependent?

Hi Faber

My understanding with regards to codependent behavior is that at some levels it is always present in relationships. At its best each person inspires the other towards their betters self’s. A loving relationship with health boundaries a safe place to heal and grow.

Negative codependency stifles growth enabling people to remain stuck in unhealth behaviors.  The challenge is that we bring our best and our worst with us into relationship, the relationship the crucible in which everything is mixed together and the task is to sort out the wheat “from the chaff”.  Like attracts like but also repels and some of our “ghosts”  fears and hurts picked up from our past will sometimes feed off each other and create a negative codependency.

Reading your post the thought that came to mind is that each of you may be speaking a different “language” of love. How you experienced being loved and how you expect others to “hear” you as you express your love.  The book ‘The five languages of Love’ may be a interesting read. The intention is to become conscious of ones language and their partners and work together to become bilingual.

It sounds like your struggle with uncertainty my be moving into the director of depression (it did for me) so I’m glad your taking steps. Well done.

I like listing to the sound of waves to help me to sleep when such anxieties arise. It also help when I stop worrying about not sleeping.  I would get in a state were I was worrying about worrying, feeling bad about feeling bad… really unhelpful but in hind site funny? (I can say that now, but not at the time) I still do that, worry about worry, wishing if only this or that…, but am quick to notice and instead of beating my self up, acknowledge the feelings, and do something. Getting a glass of water is often enough to ‘reset’.

Other helpful advise I was given. Uncertainty is linked to Fear and more often then not a Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. (F.E.A.R) That is why when you shine a light on fear (be present in the moment) it disappears.

I was also told about the Rule of Charity which goes: If there are many possible explanations for a experience you have, and its not possible to determine which possibility is the more likely, or your not going to invest time to determine which is most likely, then choose the better story.  I have avoided a lot of worry, hurt feelings and the waste of time of ‘being offended’ with being kind to others as well as myself. (Not wishful thinking, but a honest check to see if we need to do something about what we think/feel happened or is happening or we are upset about what we imagine happened or might happen. – note the latter tends to move us into the past or future, seldom the present moment)

Lastly, That we work for that which no work is required. The calm and grace you seek is already within, the only requirement is to say Yes. Just as it takes a healthy ego to let of of ego, control, fear…. we have to work to get to saying yes to life as it is which allovers us to engage it with intention, without forcing it) And so we return home.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. – TS Elliot

If that resonates in anyway you may enjoy  ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho

Anyway I wish you the best. There is a time for all things, be kind to yourself.

Hi Dee

My experience in relationships should always be where I am evolving and growing? The experience should be an ebb and flow? Where there is conflict and pushback concerning love whether it be from me or the other person are key signals that should alert me?

I think your story cough my attention because its something I also wonder about. When do we know when were asking for to much or not enough. In relationship we seek out a ebb and flow of balance.  I think that feeling of being alone and sadness that you describe so well is a alert that something is out of balance.

Knowing what it is that we authentically need is one thing. Learning how to ask for what we need in relationship is another. Both require work and a relationship ought to be a safe place to do that work (play with that balance). Of course even here balance and discernment is required. Few enjoy a relationship which is under constant analyses and work.  (I like the perspective of play here. Few things tends to be either or. Healthy flexible boundaries, there is a time for all things)

Counseling I suspect could help, personal and or couple. Not about blame, we all fail each other in some ways. Its a question of about better if better is possible. I related to your feeling of loneliness you described and I can’t believe that is the best we should expect from relationship and doubt Love/Life will accept loneliness as growth.

May I ask how you experience the giving and receiving love?
I ask because most of us assume we know what love is but my observation is that we don’t and so accept less then what we deserve.  Or worse don’t believe we deserve better. Better the experience we know then the uncertainty without it?

In my life, there’s been heartache and pain
I don’t know if I can face it again
Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far
To change this lonely life
I wanna know what love is

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Peter.

I apologize that the above is so abstract and likely unhelpful.

I have spent so long saying no to life and trying to fix it. Trying to make life  conform to how I thought it should be. Following the rules in hope of a future reward… so never being in the moment. Judging, measuring and getting it wrong more often then not, Its exhausting.
The challenge today is staying engaged with life and avoiding the trap of indifference. To say Yes, and lean on Yes even when I am uncertain.

You may find the book, “Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life” by Philip Simmons, helpful.

Philip found away to say Yes to life and engage it even as he was dying.

Now I find myself in late August, with the nights cool and the crickets thick in the fields. Already the first blighted leaves glow scarlet on the red maples. It’s a season of fullness and sweet longings made sweeter now by the fact that I can’t be sure I’ll see this time of the year again…

We have all suffered, and will suffer, our own falls. The fall from youthful ideals, the waning of physical strength, the failure of a cherished hope, the loss of our near and dear, the fall into injury or sickness, and late or soon, the fall to our certain ends. We have no choice but to fall, and little say as to the time or the means.

Perhaps, however, we do have some say in the manner of our falling. That is, perhaps we have a say in matters of style. As kids we all played the game of leaping from a diving board or dock, and before hitting the water striking some outrageous or goofy pose: axe-murderer, Washington crossing the Delaware, rabid dog. Maybe it comes to no more than this. But I’d like to think that learning to fall is more than merely a matter of posing, more than an opportunity to play it for laughs. In fact, I would have it that in the way of our falling we have the opportunity to express our essential humanity…

Here is where we go wrong. For at its deepest level’s life is not a problem, but a mystery. The distinction, which I borrow from the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, is fundamental: problems are to be solved, true mysteries are not. Personally, I wish I could have learned this lesson more easily—without, perhaps, having to give up my tennis game. But each of us finds his or her own way to mystery. At one time or another, each of us confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering, joyous, or terrifying that all our efforts to see it as a “problem” are futile. Each of us is brought to the cliff’s edge. At such moments we can either back away in bitterness or confusion, or leap forward into mystery. And what does mystery ask of us? Only that we be in its presence, that we fully, consciously, hand ourselves over. That is all, and that is everything. We can participate in mystery only by letting go of solutions. This letting go is the first lesson of falling, and the hardest….

We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear G_d let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Peter.

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 4 years, 1 month ago by Peter.