On Spiritual Partnership
Relationship, I believe, is where we are bound to learn about ourselves. Spiritual partnership transcends me-ness and us-ness. The idea that we can autonomously learn everything we need has natural limits. When we enter a relationship of any kind, we choose to learn: we enter collaboration at work to learn, parenting to learn, intimacy to learn. Anyone who denies this — who holds that a person can exist fully and autonomously in a relationship without self-reflection, introspection, and sharing — is signaling they don't want to be in a relationship, or worse, that they feel they have nothing to share or learn.
There's a paradox here, as in everything. I'll tell you plainly: most people choose relationships for the wrong reasons and don't have a deep one. So the pent-up anxiety of never having dealt squarely with themselves — and resentment that the other can't fix it for them — becomes almost inevitable. Too many people live in quiet desperation over their choice, a choice derived directly from their failure to do the necessary depth of work on themselves before entering the relationship.
I hold that we ought not process our shortcomings — our "issues" — inside our relationships. When we do, we kill the relationship. We must come to relationships whole — not to be made whole. No one makes another person whole.
I also believe romance has nothing to do with relationship. All the feelings we associate with romance can be organic, intimate, and real without the overlay of infatuation or obsession. Many people — myself included — have tortured themselves over exactly this: the ego, the not-whole self, seizes on a deep unresolved need, or the sex, or wants more emotional support than a partner can muster, and the relationship suffers. Most people overlook this entirely, believing a partner should be everything: spouse, therapist, friend, co-parent. We cannot be anything for anyone but what we naturally are for ourselves.
On a practical level: real relationships, where the individual is fully celebrated, let the other person emerge fully and be free fully. Yes, concessions and compromises must be made. But what happens when one partner needs the other? We must find someone whose needs are based on ours.
And never ignore day-to-day compatibility. Can I live with this person's moods, quirks, needs, even faults, and still fully love them — with a deep respect that never makes them feel dumb, ashamed, or less worthy for behaving in ways I don't like?
The Dalai Lama was once asked: why be a monk? Isn't there great value in intimacy? He answered, "Yes, of course — but that is a yoga I have grave concerns about."
Today I believe that unless two people have an explicit, long-winded, knock-down, drag-it-all-out, put-it-on-the-table conversation about what relationship is — perhaps over an initial period — the risk is greater. At 46, I'm not willing to risk my heart without examination, thorough exploration, and real connection. I've had many disappointments — not because of other people, but because I didn't take my own needs seriously enough, because I was motivated by the wrong things.
Chief among my concerns — maybe the most important — is having a spiritual connection front and center: paid attention to, cultivated, encouraged, every day. Then the "work" of a relationship becomes a practice, and less like work. Relationship IS the spiritual path. With respected freedom and autonomy for the individual, and spirituality at the core, there can be something more than two people making eggs. Two individuals come together out of choice, without compunction or pressure — two people choosing to love one another with the highest measure of consciousness they can muster.
