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Wedding Bells
are Ringing!
by Kelly Tobey
For many years I told myself that getting married was an act of redundancy for two people who were already living in union.
I saw it as just another place to pay money to the government for a license. So whenever the subject of marriage would come up I could quickly trivialize its importance and deny that it would have any effect in my life one way or another. Well finally my bluff was called. "Well, Kelly, if marriage doesn't mean anything one way or the other, I guess you have no objection to doing it". I had nowhere to run from that statement. It brought me smack up, face-to-face with my own created reality.
I discovered that Webster's didn't have to give me a definition of marriage; I had lots of definitions of my own. I also started to realize that others had their definitions as well and they didn't necessarily look anything like mine. To allow myself to actually consider marriage was to discover that my pretence that marriage is meaningless was only an avoidance of the feelings I had surrounding marriage. My exploring of marriage
also meant I was to explore my fears of abandonment, fears of commitment, blocks to receiving gifts, fears of enmeshment, fears of inadequacy, unworthiness issues,
and control issues. No wonder I was putting off marriage as having no meaning, to really look at it meant that I was being called to look at just about all of my biggest fears and pains - much easier to deny it instead.
I started to see that marriage certainly wasn't meaningless to me; in fact, it represented a high water mark on the shore of my personal growth that I hadn't reached yet. Time and time again as I reached toward marriage another issue
would step out of the shadows and seem so huge that I would cower in fear and once again
postpone the marriage.
I learned how little
of true giving and receiving I had in my life. I saw how much I had invested in
what I called my giving, how I held a running account of what I gave and had already decided what I was to get back in return.
I learned how I thought marriage meant security. "If I'm married I won't have to worry about abandonment."
But in fact, I would have to worry, because to have Jerri,
my potential wife stay, I believed I would have to "earn" the right to have her. I would have to keep the books balanced.
Yet when I looked at my history I
saw how, in my mind, I had been abandoned time and again - so I thought, "Obviously I'm not capable or worthy of 'earning' someone's company. I can never do enough." No matter how hard
I have tried to control someone's
staying by doing things for them, or by giving up my own needs for them, it has never worked. If I abandoned
my own integrity and gave my power
away to them in a desperate attempt to get them to stay by pleasing them, that very act
of self-betrayal ensured that I
got abandoned whether or not they stayed. It meant the person abandoned me that I needed the most, myself.
To further the issue - my needy, clinging demands that I tried to put on the other person to fill my holes with their love (after all, don't they owe it to me, look at what I've done for them, attitude)
was bound to scare them off. At some level, conscious or unconscious, they were aware that they
could not fill my bottomless pit. As fast as they would try to fill the hole with love and caring and respect,
I was shoveling it out the other side by going into sacrifice, doing things I
did not really want to do, but thought would earn their love. This, of course,
was showing no love, caring and respect for myself. So they poured it in and I poured it out the other side. Truly
I had set up a bottomless pit that could never be filled. This came from me not knowing how to
receive and from thinking I had to sacrifice to earn anything I got. From that perspective, of
course marriage scared the hell out of me. It looked like a death sentence. Committing to being in sacrifice all my life just so Jerri will stay around to fill my holes and nurse my
wounds, yikes.
The other side of the scenario is that I have always got tired of sacrifice in the past. It would wear me down and then
I would leave - I had been a "flying boy" most of my life. There is a part of me that knows
sacrificing my integrity does not work.
So, dilemma time. Here is an opportunity to marry this precious woman - to receive this incredible gift
- but I do not know how too. I keep saying no. Solution: I have to be willing to give Jerri up completely. Let go of my attachment to her. If I don't depend on her to fill my holes then I
do not have to sacrifice
in an attempt to try to control her giving, to try to earn her love. If I can let go, then I'm free to truly receive the beautiful gift that she is. I can open to the grace of her, without pouring me out the back.
So what happens then: If I am already full from being true and loving to myself and
then I open to receiving her, she fills me up more, I start to overflow with love and it runs back to her and everything we touch is sprinkled with the excess love that flows through us.
But wait, before we venture too far into the bliss of this ideal openness, let's take a look at the guardian that stands at the gate of my letting go of Jerri.
If I let go of my attachment to her, rather than holding the illusion that I can
control her with my attachment strategies, I have to directly face the
possibility that she may leave. This opens the door to me dropping into the feelings and pain that surround every belief in abandonment I've ever had. How I believed past mates abandoned me - the unfelt pain I buried there. How I believed my parents abandoned me - the unfelt grief buried there. It leads back further,
to me looking at how I abandoned my own self at a very early age and went into sacrifice to try to please my
parents thinking it was the only way to get my needs met. I carry a lot of guilt around that choice
that I made. What the guilt is attempting to cover up is the incredible amount of grief that will surface when I finally let myself feel
what happened as a result of abandoning myself. Feeling the results of splitting off from my
essence and going into sacrifice to do what my parents and the rest of the world
wanted, rather than staying true to my essential self.
These are big steps. I would have to take back blaming Jerri for leaving me, I
would have to take back blaming other women and friends for leaving me; I would
have to take back blaming my parents for leaving me; I would even have to take back blaming myself for leaving me. All the blaming and anger is only a cover-up that I use to block
the intense grief that lies underneath.
For some reason, I felt that the grief would be unbearable; that it would devastate
me. Yet, intellectually, I know that, that fear is based on a lie. I know that we are all
one and we are all connected; my belief that I separated from myself or that anyone separated from me is a lie. But knowing it in my head isn't enough. My body
did not believe it; my subconscious
mind did not believe it; my inner child did not believe it. They all felt
abandon. I had to go into them and embrace them in order to actually experience
the wholeness as apposed to just have wholeness as a spiritual theory in my
mind.
The only way I have found to integrate
the remembrance of wholeness into all of my being is to ask for help; step through my fear; drop into my feelings; welcome
the grief and go to the center of it with the guidance and help I've brought with
me. Then I can let the true light of wholeness, of oneness, radiate out and absorb and integrate
that which I feared. When I am really willing to go in and embrace all of whom I
am, including the uncomfortable feelings, then the sense of abandonment
dissolves into the illusion that it is.
Sounds simple on paper, but doing it is another thing. Usually I opt out and go to a movie, or start a fight, or read another book on how to do it.
Well, I do not have any set formulas for how relationship works. I've no easy answers.
But with a continued willingness to allow love in, and a willingness to stay together in spite of incredibly strong temptations to run from what we triggered in each other. Something
was caring for us and helping us. Again and again we dropped into more layers of, as yet unhealed pain, and love
burned through it and we came even closer together. Ever so slowly the scales were tilted until, in fact, we saw that we were bigger than our fears, and that we were worthy of receiving each other - we would marry. And so we did.
Update:
This article is many years old now, as is our marriage that began November 12,
1990. The growth and expansion we have both received as a result of our dedication to each other's and to our own individuation, has been tremendous. It has not always been easy, but every step we've taken together has been worthwhile.
Both of us have become much clearer channels for sharing loving energy with others. Both of us have so much more trust in ourselves and in life. We have both learned a lot from each other and that learning continues on.
Further Update:
We
have been in primary relationship for 18 years now having gotten married about a
year into it. We have decided that it feels right to shift our relationship from
being primary partners to friends. We have had an amazing relationship to this
point. And now we will both move forward to exploring different interests.
I
have grown immensely as a result of my relationship with Jerri. Outside of
Spirit’s love and my love for myself, to this point I have never been loved to
the same depths as I have by her and will always be thankful for that. In fact
many times when I had forgotten my own lovability she held it for me until I
could see it again.
As
our final decision is so recent I have not felt much of the emotions that I
suspect will be involved in this change. I do not expect much grieving over
things left undone while we were together as I feel that our relationship had
evolved to a point where I was able to live it as fully as I was called to
(given my present capabilities). I do suspect there will be grieving over not
having her and the dogs, Faith and Allegro, in my life to the same extent
anymore. I suspect there will be times when I will miss the sweet times we
shared. The other feelings that I am guessing will arise as this change sinks in
are those of excitement and curiosity about what may lie around the next corner
ready to fill in the space that has opened up.
In
spite of the tremendous value I have received in my relationship with Jerri and
even though I do not know what this new change might lead to, I trust that both
of us will benefit by our decision because when I check in intuitively it is
clear that it is time for us to transition. Every time I have followed the
guidance of inner calling in the past it has eventually led to ongoing expansion
and enjoyment in life, and I do not expect this to be any different.
It
is very different for me to be leaving a primary relationship so cleanly and
with so much clarity. Past endings have often been marred with confusion and
hurt. I did not have the wisdom or ability to make decisions in conjunction with
spirit back in those days. Often relationships had ended because my past
partners and myself had judged that there was something “wrong” with the
relationship. This transition with Jerri feels so different to me. It is
different to be moving forward into a new direction because something feels
right about moving forward, rather than leaving a relationship because something
feels “wrong” about the relationship. Yes, like in most relationships, Jerri
and I have had our share of difficulties and challenges through the years but
thankfully I have learned to see those as opportunities to grow and learn rather
than using them to judge the relationship as having something “wrong” with
it.
I
appreciate Jerri for bringing her gifts of love, strength, intuitiveness,
gentleness, wisdom, acceptance, beauty, creativity, playfulness, integrity, and
supportiveness into our relationship to share with me. I appreciate that she has
helped me in recognizing and opening to similar gifts in myself. I am sure that
her gifts will provide well for her in whatever unfolds in her future. Just as I
suspect the gifts that naturally flow through me will serve me well as I venture
into the mystery of the future that lies ahead.
