Loving Someone Requires...

 

Making Space

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest of human beings, infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side-by-side can grow, if they can succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible to see each other whole against the sky.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

          This is a very famous and well-known quote by Rilke. I’ve read it many times and quoted it before in my writing, but it bares repeating. I think in our Hallmark world, we’re told that true love remains the same forever, that it is everlasting in its same passionate form, and on top of that, lovers should forever be best friends. We rarely think of love and distance in the same breath, especially when love is new. I can tell you from my own experience and from watching others, that love does change over time, at least, the expression of love changes—and this is a good thing. Love may deepen when people are together for a long time, or it may come apart, and the key factor is the distance we allow between us as two distinct human beings.

          Once passion is expended, once familiarity has reduced lust, we begin the journey of discovery. We move from being dominated by the physical to exploring the totality of the person. What sometimes happens is the little things begin to pile up to the point they can’t be ignored. “He throws his clothes on the floor instead of putting them in the hamper.” “She talks constantly to the point that I have to shut out the sound of her voice to even think.” “I can’t stand the way he chews his food.” “That piercing cackle of theirs is getting on my last nerve.”

These little annoyances chip away at us, especially if we are constantly together and if the “happily ever after” clauses are in play in what we expect from our love relationships. We get into the “I don’t want to hurt his/her feelings,” and, “it won’t do any good to talk about it,” and “it seems petty to even feel this way” stage. Before we know it, we’re stuffing our feelings and “collecting anger trading stamps” to cash in with a temper tantrum. Being able to talk about things in the moment can keep the building-up process at bay for a while, but it also runs the risk of constantly complaining about little things.

It's only when we can step back and take a longer view of our lover that we are able to deal with the fact that this is a whole other human being. He/she/they are not me, and they have their own ways of being, doing, speaking, behaving, that are different from mine. I am a separate person, and I like being who I am. We are not the same, we don’t always agree and sometimes we even clash—and that is NORMAL in relationships. It doesn’t mean the end. It doesn’t mean you’ve made a terrible mistake. It only means that we are different, and now, because we love each other, we must work out—see beyond, negotiate, come to terms with—those differences. I can see you “whole against the sky” and you can see me. When there is some space in the relationship, we know the other as an individual who is different from us. Then when we come together we see both our separateness and our wholeness. And, that’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane