How Long-Term Relationships Help Us Evolve Through Conflict
And how I healed my mother wound
We were trying to rename the park.
Twenty-five years, I’ve known him, and he likes to rename things. Including himself. I had sex with this man a dozen times before finding out his surname was invented. Just before we had our daughter, he made it legal, via Deed Poll. Now our daughter and her wife carry his made-up name.
Last week, I moved two bookcases in The Games Room (a basement space known as The Pit until my son moved out) and within three hours, this room-within-a-room had been dubbed “The Professorium.” Reason? It’s where we will keep my Dad’s bureau and workbench, and Dad was a Professor.
Last night, he was busy renaming two parks on the grounds that I muddle up one with a park across the city, and call the Rec close to it “boring”. The “Boring” park had soon become Banana Chip Park, thanks to a memorable dog walk of crippling gut pain after eating too many of these moreish, fake-healthy delights.
The other park was more of a challenge. And as we walked through the dusk into dark, I hit an unexpected trigger. He was rolling through memorable events, and I spotted I’d gone elsewhere. Only half-heard the words "dog" and "bowled over" and "frisbee". The presence of three or four teenagers, playing music on a speaker in the almost-dark by the trees, had grabbed my attention.
“Sorry,” I say. “I lost focus. Can you say that again? About the dog and the frisbee?”
It’s a standard ADHD experience. It's not like he doesn't understand.
“You weren’t listening?”
“Sorry,” I say, motioning to the treeline. “My attention was drawn to the kids.”
He says, "I'm surprised you noticed them. You never notice anything on walks.”
“What?”
“You never notice anything. You're just looking down all the time, lost in thought."
Now, I’ll let you know right away, when I showed him a draft of this piece, he told me didn’t mean “anything” literally. It was one of those throwaway statements. An exaggeration for effect, the kind I so often indulge in myself.
But when it landed on me, I had a defensive reaction.
Yes, I am sometimes thinking. Constantly moving between inner and outer environments. We agree that I’m remarkably unobservant for a writer.
But I’m hardly going to miss teenagers playing loud music. Plus, I automatically scan for threats, and they were young men, so Amber Alert. I notice what moves: dogs, squirrels and birds. I note specific trees, I stop to smell flowers. When it comes to houses, he calls me nosy: I study them closely, imagine what it’s like to live in them; guess the owners’ characters from the gardens and their state of decoration. Plus, I have something of a photography habit, which leads to so much stopping that he sometimes leaves me behind.
So the patent untruth of the blanket statement "You never notice anything on walks"—which didn’t, in the moment, come across as a joke—triggered something.
Which may be a long-term partner's most vital job, if you want to evolve. Because they don’t just get under your skin. They know enough about you to get right down deep, into the goo that runs all the way to your core.
So, having launched my defence, and listed everything above, and him saying "go on then, list some more, list some more" like it makes no difference to the truth of his statement, we are close to an argument.
This man I love adores an argument. It’s his release valve. In our worst patch, he would regularly provoke one. With the wisdom of years, I have learned not to engage. But sometimes it is hard. Sometimes he still hooks me in.
From my perspective, he’s completely ignoring my clear presentation of evidence to the contrary, and laying out as a fundamental truth that he’s observant, I am not. An absolute.
I go quiet. In the dark, we’re now walking in silence, and I find myself observing my state of discomfort. Anger. Sadness. That’s its name. Sad anger. With a fringe of despair which feels very old, historical. Having noticed it and accepted it, I decide I do not want to keep feeling this way. I will note it, let it go, and return to it in the morning to investigate the cause.
This is the Tara Brach RAIN formula, I realise, now, as I'm writing it up. Recognise. (Hello, Sad anger.) Allow (say Yes, this is how I’m feeling). Investigate (scheduled for this morning: tapping, journaling). Nurture (to arise naturally when I tap).
Feeling bad is something I used to dwell in. Now I have learned it doesn’t serve me to stay there long. So I say to myself, in my head, a few times, "let it go." Breathing helps. And it goes.
The space it leaves allows this consideration: he's been very tired of late. We've had a few "moments" recently, including, on Sunday, an actual row (which is almost unheard of) followed by a five-hour stand-off. A new wave of stuff is coming up for him. A new wave of stuff which is triggering new things in me.
The timing of these disconnects is not coincidental: a long period of harmony has been disturbed by my shift on the silent retreat.
And now it makes sense. This is the next layer. I wondered what it might be, and here it is. My trusted life partner of nearly 25 years is the catalyst, yet again providing the thorns that prick me more conscious.
When I came back changed from Sharpham — so much at peace, sans mother wound — of course something had to change between us. One-sidedly, I’d altered the dynamic.
When one partner undergoes a deep shift, it's as if the energetic bond is being stretched. To get comfort, the other partner must shift in turn. But first, the tension.
For us, the pattern is bursts of anger on his side, bursts of sadness on mine, that guide me towards the next layer to be unpeeled. This is how long-term relationships — if they are the sustainable sort — create good conditions for both sides to grow.
My Mother Wound breakthrough left me with these words:
It doesn't matter at all what your mother thought of you, because she was damaged.
When this became true, I made a logical leap:
If it doesn't matter what your mother thought of you, then it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
But that was brain-work, not heart-work. And this park walk spat showed me my statement was wrong.
My "anyone" is as inaccurate as his “anything”. Strangers on the internet, yes. But "anyone" does not include those closest to me. "Anyone" definitely doesn't include the person I trust above all others to know me and love me. What he thinks about me matters very much indeed. And that is something I will now be working on.
Our perceptions are not the same as another’s intentions. They are filtered through our damage, and even if our filters are clear, theirs may not be. We cannot hold our happiness hostage to another's words. Least of all those dear, flawed humans we love the most.
Thank you for being here. Share if this resonates, and light up the ❤️ if you enjoyed it!
Below, for my paid subscribers — the ones keeping me afloat in an uncertain world — there is more as a thank you: the details of how I healed my Mother Wound.