wise words

lately i've been chewing on ideas about marriage. one thing i know for sure, marriage is hard.

sometimes extremely hard. and occasionally it's run-out-of the-house-screaming-and pulling-your-hair-out-leaving-for-mexico-and-never-coming-back-hard.

alright, i'm being a tad dramatic. i haven't reached the fleeing to mexico bit (with the exception of inside my head) i'd like to say that reading wise words like those i'm about to share help keep me in a sane place. realizing that in those times of flight or fight rather then looking to my partner as the culprit and cause of my lunacy, i instead need to take a long hard look at myself and start digging deep to find the imbalance. i operate in a way that if the scales are tipped in my internal equilibrium i immediately begin to kick up dust to cover up my craziness. i point fingers, throw tantrums, and pick fights. sometimes it takes me a few days, or weeks, to come to the big realization that no one else controls my moods and happiness, but me.

anyway, this past week i had been kicking up some major dust and ran along this bit of wisdom. it is from crescent dragonwagon's site, a remarkable cook, writer, and woman. thanks crescent for throwing me a reality check.

Their marriage, like all marriages, was not exempt from difficult times, because difficult times are the way marriages grow and change, the way individuals in marriages become more emotionally resilient and fully adult... paradoxically, more themselves as separate human beings as and while they develop the ability to be more and more fully with each other. This is how it happened with Ned and CD, as it does for every couple willing not to not walk away, nor just to hang in there as a couple suffering, but to actually do pick-and-shovel work on themselves, individually, as opposed to thinking the partner should change. It’s mysterious, glorious and surprisingly strange that only in a deeply committed relationship is one given this opportunity quite so clearly. And eventually it turns out that “problems” in a marriage, though unpleasant and painful, aren't problems after all --- they are just part of the way marriage works.