Marriage: A Beautiful Opportunity for Growth
At a young age, we come to believe that within every love story lays an understanding, a promise of sorts comprised of real life and fantasy. A blueprint crafted on childhood dreams and fairy tales of one day finding your prince charming, falling in love, getting married, buying your first home and raising a family. Identifying marriage with hope, devotion, desire, and everlasting joy; setting up a false expectation that marriage and love is one of continued bliss and romance. I have come to realize the beauty and richness of relationship lies beyond the surface and layers of love, within the raw, exposed moments that influence the individual experience and shaping a unique course of love.
I was not prepared for the intensity and collection of emotions at the onset of marriage—laughter and joy, passion and intimacy only to be tailgated by sentiments of doubt and angst. Disheartened, I found myself on familiar ground. A relationship founded on love, little by little brewing a seeming disaster, exposing wounds thought healed, bringing to light reservations thought dissolved. Herein lies a tale of love and loss, shame and judgment, and triumph over terror. How my spiritual practice supported my ability to sit in discomfort, quiet the mind, face my fears and awaken to exposed truths, remembering to stay curious and compassionate.
Almost immediate, post-nuptials were the external and internal questions once distant, now amplified. Would we have the ability to bear and raise children on shared values and income? The overwhelming sense and domestic pressure to purchase property in a city born and raised, in a neighborhood that once held childhood and teenage reminiscences were supported by an ideal to secure and strengthen personal, spousal and lineage roots. A place called home where closest family and friends settled and are raising children. Discussions once founded on mutual desire and curiosity, shifted to fear-based debates supported by fabricated financial concerns and challenges, questioning the ability to afford to raise children, with rising health care costs, an inflated housing market, not to mention the ability to obtain financial security and save for retirement. I found myself increasingly observing and participating in conversations that amplified such and encouraged habitual reactions, conditioned and societal values. The practice of trusting and going at my own pace was tainted and crippled by comparison and envy.Before marriage, I was predominantly single for 8 years. I dated and entertained short and semi-long term relationships. I had become comfortable in my independence and more curious with my connection to Self. I dedicated time to self-realization, committing to my yoga practice; curious about meditation and incorporating the ancient traditions and philosophy of yoga into modern day life. Months before meeting my husband I was working with a mentor and intimacy coach, devoting my practice to healing and connecting to internal peace, love, and happiness. By the time I met my husband, I was closer to love. After a few months of dating and courtship, I soon found myself not only closer to my truth but falling in love with my husband. The first month of him moving into my one bedroom apartment was fun and exciting. No soon after marriage, I was finding it difficult to create space not only in our studio but space to nurture and develop our marriage and with my relationship with Self. It was posing to be a challenge. I now had to learn to balance time between a husband, my practice and self-care, family and friends, work, and my cat, Jax.
Through guidance and support, I have been challenging a mindset 30 plus years in the making, comprised of conditioned patterns, habits, behaviors, beliefs, and stories. I was becoming more aware and curious about my thoughts and questioning them for accuracy. I found it a struggle to express the essence of my practice to my husband and my intention and influence I wanted it to have on my life and our relationship. Would my new tools, mindset, and way of ‘seeing’ hinder or help my marriage? My husband has never taken a yoga class and comes from a culture where male participation is not encouraged. How could I expect a man who was not aware of the physical aspect of yoga to understand and comprehend the philosophical and intention of traditional yoga, the realization of one's true nature? I felt doomed.I attracted the healthy and loving relationship I worked so diligently on calling into my life. My intuition was on point. I was aware and conscious. For the first time, I had let go of past assumptions and judgments on intimate relationships with the opposite sex. I had a sense of freedom from attachment to another. Marriage was fun, especially with someone whom you adored. Oddly enough, a few weeks post marriage the seriousness of our discussions and arguments increased, and we reached another level of communication. The glamorized “honeymoon” phase was soon a thing of the past. I found myself in a turbulent head-space swarming with thoughts of mistrust. Questions of doubt plagued my mind.
Where did the love and intimacy go? Did I marry the right person? I shouldn’t be feeling these feelings if he was my soul mate, right? What does soul mate even mean? What happened to the trust of my intuition? I started to focus more on our differences; culturally, spiritually, and gender-specific, as obstacles. Would it have been easier to marry someone from my hometown, someone who was part of my past and history that had a better understanding of who I was and where I came from? I was now in a relationship with no expiration date. There would be no walking away when emotions ran high and faced with challenge and choice. I was upside in a committed marriage and with no guidebook to navigate my way back.I was drowning in fear, familiar and self-inflicted. I watched how the smallest of trigger, tone, word, or reaction would cause my mind to spin. I felt out of control. And yet, was trying to control his life, our life, and even mine. I felt restricted and tight. What happened to my expansive and easeful mind I had been so diligently cultivating? I am taught to hold witness to my symptoms of fear--anxiety and worries, agitation and anger. My once luminous and bright reality was now messy and dark disconnected from self and husband. I practice and study weekly, I am encouraged to trust and support my own pace. I study tools and learn techniques to implement my practice and interrupt the intense and sometimes forceful momentum of perpetual fear-based thoughts and behaviors. I do my homework. But, lately, it seemed as though I was dancing with the fear, and I was not leading. I should know better. I was failing, once again.
Suffering is resisting what is. I was the witness of my own distress. In truth, the craft of a successful marriage begins when the honeymoon is over, and the real work of love is not in the falling but what comes after. Relationships are designed to shine a light on areas not only beautiful, loving, and joyous, but also can prove to be a painful and tender reflection of one's wounds and scars from years past that require respect, awareness, and healing. Marriage is a beautiful opportunity for growth, expansion, and self-discovery. To remain open and curious, while holding space for the others process, freedom of being and pace.
As I reflect on this time when the potency of these truths was most alive, I am able to have a grand appreciation for the suffering and self-inflicted torture. For the uncertainty, aggravation, and discomfort it bestowed; because, in all actuality, I was able to pause and put my practice to use. Though, not a pace I wanted, I eventually interrupted the momentum of past fears and samskaras (mental impressions left by all thoughts, actions, and intents that an individual has ever experienced). I was reminded of the power of choice. I regained the knowledge to trust my innate wisdom without the outside influence of others, tainting it with perceived doubts and fears. My husband’s sweet and generous heart has encouraged me to trust and love not only myself but trust in us. My decision to marry was a choice founded on love and not one of torment and fear. Turns out, my husband, my marriage is one of my greatest gifts and teachers. My practice has not suffered but has amplified and taken me to a whole new level of study.