Todzilla,

I consider meditation to be the best framework for working with stress, as breathing alongside our thoughts and feelings has a way of letting the moot remain moot. However, I can try to repaint it in a way that may help with your focus, intentions, and help you find answers to “what do I wish to do with my relationship? My time with her?”

For a different framework for your relationship, consider that you two are perhaps matched up perfectly in a good way. You don’t get coddled, are sort of left to battle/work with your own negative emotions. It would be different if she were the source of your stress, or negligent in times where death and disease were weighing on you. However, she’s not that. It sounds more like she doesn’t like you randomly pooping in her face. That’s not good or bad, it just is how she is.

Consider a different approach. Every time you two connect, there is a nearly infinite potential of what could happen. Her heart to yours, and yours to her, opens up a rich fertility of reality. Much like a garden, where almost anything can become planted. Instead of trying to “express what I am” into the garden, such as “well, I’m angry, so I have an urge to speak about angry topics” consider “surrendering into the glow”, such as “I’m angry, but can surrender again into the warmth of our connection, and come home.”

Like a king might come back to his castle, and rather than recounting tales of battles won and lost, kingdom defended, dragons met on the field… he takes off his armor, sets down the daily battle, and relaxes in the comfort of the queen’s embrace. Perhaps her tender heart has no stomach for blood and gore, doesn’t wish to hear how heads were chopped off, how guts spilled from bellies. Can you really resent her for that? Its not from weakness that her stomach turns, its because the stories are stomach turning. Where else would the visceral revulsion/stress be coming from?

From a different direction, consider that your anger and other discursive emotions and thoughts aren’t inherent. You don’t have to get angry, its actually some kind of ego-clinging, some frame of interpretation that makes other people’s actions appear in your head as “all about you”, pushing your body into fight or flight mode, battle mode, and aggression pushes you to “stay with that moment”, “take it into the core”. Meditation deconstructs the triggers, so you can do something different, rather than taking it deep into your viscera. However, this takes time and noble effort, conscious choosing to turn away from habitual aggression.

And there rests your queen, who doesn’t do well with your aggression, excusing herself. What a blessing! What a helpful indicator that you’re mindlessly pooping into your garden! Rehashing, dumping, reliving. Instead of planting, weeding, fertilizing. Consider a different approach. If you’ve had a stressful day, consider bringing her some flowers, finding a card that sings to your heart, or writing her a love poem. Instead of trying to bring the experiences of battle to the home, show appreciation for the difference between the outside world and the special fertile garden of romance and wonder that grows between you two. Outside the gates of your castle, perhaps some days it becomes dark and stormy. That happens, the world has a way of giving us weather we don’t expect. But, inside the castle, let it be warm and juicy, which naturally happens when both of you are given space to blossom. Said differently, consider her heart a tender jewel to polish, appreciate, hold dearly… rather than a squire that should be made to help you take off your armor.

With warmth,
Matt