“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.” Maya Angelou
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I was listening to Suli Breaks riff on how crazy people change the course of history, whether in business or the arts. To avoid becoming redundant in relationship, we must embrace change. All too often, we try to encase our relationships in unchanging concrete. We try to preserve the relationship in our mind and actions at the apogee of our experience. That could be the first day we met, the first time we had sex, the wedding day, the one year mark, the three year mark – whenever.
This need for security, unfortunately, goes counter to life. We live in a world of ceaseless change and to deny this reality is to place ourselves in the path of a juggernaut of painful consequences. When we do not bend, we snap, and the crack can be heard throughout our world.
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Looking back over my fifteen year relationship, I see where I was excited, complacent, expectant, secure, irritable, questioning, and hopeful. There was the intense and crazy first six months of joy and happiness of finding someone following a fallow period after my divorce. This new relationship was a long-distance one. We were on the phone three times a day and flying back and forth every month – it was an exciting time.
The first major shift in the relationship dynamics came at the six month mark, when we decided to live together. We felt we knew each other from all the phone conversations and our 2-3 day meetings every month, but really, this was a big step. And things changed. The most notable was our sex life. From the intoxicating headiness and elevated intensity brought on by living in different parts of the country to, in a day, living together 24/7.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw
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I thought the sex was going to stay the same. Wrong!!! What was I thinking? OK, I wasn’t. I was just assuming nothing would change. But they had, by the mere fact of our moving in together. Very quickly, the frequency level was dialed down and after a while we discovered a quantity and quality of sex that was workable for the both of us. In the moment, this change felt revolutionary for me, but when I examine the process through the lens of fifteen years of relating, I see that it was an evolutionary step.
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Living together was the beginning of a long and slow process of getting to know each other beyond the sharing of hopes and dreams. We were now working, in real time, on those hopes and dreams. Part of those dreams included how we were going to be in relationship. This was a process. My wife is an introvert, I am an extrovert. I am a talker, she uses her body to communicate, as she was a professional dancer at the time. This led to misunderstandings at times. As well, we had two completely different ways of engaging our day. I was a workaholic running a business and was a full-time student obtaining a PhD. My wife taught dance and yoga, looked after the house, and took care of herself. There was not a lot of time for the relationship.
Fortunately, my partner is a wise woman and was able to gently guide me to see where I needed to engage in the relationship so that it could evolve into a more satisfying partnership for the both of us. Each step was a movement upwards on the evolutionary ladder towards a healthy and successful union. This was not a one way process. I too, was able to share what I knew and needed. It was this two-way dialogue that always seemed to arise when one of us was not feeling right about how the relationship was proceeding.
Ongoing communication contributed to the evolution of the relationship so that revolution was not needed. Communication, however, is not enough. It is the first step, after awareness, that something needs shifting. The hard part is taking action and taking action on a consistent basis. This is where I have to constantly remind myself to be vigilant. It is so easy to default to taking the other person for granted, becoming complacent, or using excuses like, I am tired, or busy with work.
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How we do road trips is how we do our relationship. When we start a trip, we have high expectations. We are excited to get out of town and head off into the sunrise (or watch it in the rear-view mirror when heading West). Then it starts. Within the first hour we are bickering and sniping at each other. We don’t worry about it anymore because we know this is our pattern. It is as if all the unsaid irritations and resentments that have been unsaid since our last trip come out in full regalia. Oh, what a show! We kind of enjoy it now. It is an unburdening or expurgation of all the emotional and mental riff-raff that has been stewing behind our love and respect for one another. This is one of the problems with being a little too nice and polite.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.” Victor Frankl
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Then, after an hour or so, we enter calm waters, and from here on the journey is an opportunity to be with each other without distractions. We get to talk, read to one another, listen to favorite music, and watch the country-side roll by for hours on end. We sink into a reverie of shared experience as our connection, love and understanding for one another expands.
Our trips are long, and like a long-term relationship, we get sleepy, our bodies protest from being strapped in one position, and it becomes necessary to acknowledge our discomfort and take a pit stop. This is a moment to stretch out, breathe deeply, consult the map, see where we have been, and where we are going. Refueling also happens, for the car, our bodies and our minds. This is necessary, because relationships, like driving, can be hazardous to your health if you fall asleep at the wheel.
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When we pay attention to our relationship on a regular basis, the opportunity for an evolutionary process increases. If we avoid, ignore or forget to attend to the relationship, we set the stage for revolution. Either way, change is going to happen.
Sometimes, revolutions are needed to wake people up. Revolution is a bloody process which is full of drama without predictable outcomes. Highly stressful. Evolution, on the other hand, though stressful at times, does not threaten the fabric of the relationship.
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Anatole France
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The big question is, are you change friendly? Most of us become less amenable to change as we get older. This is a problem. My experience is that women become more sure of themselves over time and start to make demands that many men find difficult to fulfill. First there is the shock of the demand in the first place, and then there is the big question – what does this mean? Simply put, change is required. If you are change averse, life is going to get difficult.
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There you have it. Evolution or revolution? The choice is ours to make. Ultimately, we must wake up to the fact that the only constant in life is change.
Photo: Flickr/Anders Illum Evolution of light