Say Yes

“To give oneself over to love and marriage is to say yes to death”

~Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

You cannot stay 100% you and be in a love relationship; there are parts of you that must die for the union to live. The sooner we understand and accept these points, the better our relationships will be. Besides marriage being a merger of two hearts, it is also a merger of two wills, two personalities, two identities and two Beings. That is a lot! Attempting to coexist as a couple with all those extra things would make anyone claustrophobic. But if I prune my stuff, and my husband prunes his stuff and then as we draw closer other things just fall away, we are both in a comfortable space to give, take and receive as needed.

Another element of this is like attracts like. So, in many ways I have attracted a mate who is much like me. If I am selfish, stubborn, prone to jealousy, independent, and impulsive, I can expect these traits to show up in my mate as well. I once had an argument with my partner because he wasn’t sharing enough of his time. He paid more attention to his iPad and phone than to me and this made me very unhappy. So I shared my feelings. As the conversation went on I threw out the word selfish.   I said,” You are selfish because you do not want to share your time with me. Yes you are here but you are not here. And you see it bothers me but you continue to play in your electronics anyway”. As I heard myself say these words to him, I had to admit: I am selfish too. He looked up at me in surprise and laughed: “Oh really?!” I don’t think he could believe I would admit such a thing. But I did. “Yes, I am selfish because when you are here I want you and your attention all to myself. I do not like to share you”. He laughed again, shook his head, threw his ipad to the side and his attention never wavered.

Being my 100% self, I would have never been honest with him. I just would have kept on ranting about his faults, his shortcomings and why he should listen to me. But when we are in a love relationship, those parts of us that do not serve the greater good of the relationship must die, die, die for any type of love relationship to live.

What will you die to today to ensure your relationship lives?