Every couple of weeks, the woman i'm in love with tells me that we're just too different, that she worries about our future. The night before last, she said it again with emphasis. we can't be partners, we have different paradigms.
now the truth is that we slept together that night and last night too. but this morning i told her that these ruptures make me physically sick: that just as she worries about our 'incongruity' giving her cancer, i see our ruptures working on my heart.
she explained again about all the ways in which we are different. she went over every incident of my handling something in a less friendly, less relational way than she would have. she says i'm 'sub-social' and what's worse, i blame my sub-sociability on others. i don't chat because x doesn't seem interested, i make a sharp response to what i see as rudeness.
these episodes are the mythic tales that form her perception of me. they have changed in her re-telling. changes in myth are interesting, they reflect the shifting social basket in which they're held. what makes me sad and sick is that the changes don't seem to me to reflect any growth on my part. all of her re-tellings instead seem like adding another course of bricks to the wall between us.
she also tells me again how difficult it is to be with a man whose main energies are not directed to personal growth. i see myself as an advocate for her feelings and i see how it would look that way to her. i also hear the tone of her description getting darker and darker. she says that maybe we can't be together at all, she wonders if we could be friends, not partners, not lovers.
and what i'm hearing is that she's already made up her mind. maybe she doesn't admit it to herself, but she sounds like someone planning the kindest, gentlest break-up in the history of love. she promises to let up on the relentless barrage of earnestness that sounds so angry and tests the limits of my growing residence in my own self. even the quality of her voice has become softer, less strident.
--
so: back to me.
i ask her for a reprieve. i say 'let's explore these differences for a fixed period' i suggest that we talk for a few weeks-'til new year's day. i ask for her co-operation in my pursuit of non-defensiveness. i ask her to be as skilled with me as she is with her clients. i remind her that she has a lot to gain and grow from being with me (she thinks of me mostly as entertainment, not education)
at the moment of asking her to take her time with this separation, i'm thinking 'if i can persuade her to support my growth, she'll see that the gap between us is narrowing'. it feels to me that if she gives us a chance, we have a chance.
but i'm also thinking that this is a shot at some personal growth that doesn't come along often. suppose i just assume that we're not going to make it. suppose i use the next two weeks as a growth intensive. how can i do this knowing that the outcome is going to involve a heartbreak? how can i not do this?
so there's the Irony Angel-i have to keep my head about me and my guts inside while going through a tragic loss. the payoff will be attaining that state of non-defensive, loving being that i'm being faulted now for not having. my lover, who is no longer invested in the long-term with me has become kinder. one possible outcome is that i will become who i want to be and who she says she wants me to be and lose her at the same time.
and my poor twillow? she will think herself better off, she will certainly be more at peace
here's why i hate the irony angel:
•in order to endure the next two weeks, i will have to act as if i didn't know this is the end and acting inauthentically in order to acheive authenticity is the self-defeating instruction of all time.
•twillow may leave me authentic and authentically in mourning for our love: i may end up loveable and without a love.
so: here it is my dear. i'm greedy to continue the work i started at hoffman, i'm hungry to be my self,
to find a calm center from which to reach out to the world. if i pursue that in the hope of keeping you in my life, then i'm not really pursuing it, i'm pursuing you-which is self-defeating. so i have to calm my yearning for an 'us' in order to find my 'me'. and if i calm myself by assuming that you and i are done, then i may be fulfilling my own prophecy, acting inauthentically in the process and doing myself the second-greatest damage imaginable.
what i need to say to you is this: i want to be me. that's primary. and one thing that 'me' wants is 'us'. i am torn. part of me needs to pretend that we're finished in order to pursue my hoffman mission without giving it the secondary job of keeping our relationship alive. and an authentic part of me is so sick at the thought of losing you that it's hard to imagine standing in that space and functioning as a seeker.
ps. maybe that's the key. maybe i have to be in the misery to be true to myself. maybe i just have to shut up and do it anyway. wish me luck.
