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Love is Hard.
Approximately one year ago, I asked a much-married friend of mine exactly how hard "hard" is, and her response was "slightly less hard than you can stand", with the caveate that, if every year you like and understand your partner(s) more than you did the year before (and that, presumeably, this regard and understanding are mutual), you're doing pretty well and things are going as they should be going.
I remember wondering how much more "hard" I could take, since I was nearing the point where it was drop this burden or watch myself buckle under the strain.
She also commented that, in a love-relationship, keeping things private is fine, but keeping things secret is... at best, well, a very bad sign.
At the time, I didn't understand the difference.
Maybe (probably) that's because, in a relationship with no boundaries, to keep something private is to keep something secret. In a relationship where both parties expected to spent their lives in merged, indivisible bliss, to reserve a part of oneself as separate is to... hold out, hold back, keep something hidden. Because separation isn't supposed to be happening.
That's the marriage I was in.
The more I think about it, the more I'm glad that I got out when I did. BUT it also makes me sad because, if we (both of us) had come into the relationship with a significantly better sense of when we each began and where the other ended, with a significantly better understanding of what was healthy togetherness and what was walking over each other's sense of self (or at least my sense of self -- I wonder how much he felt like this, too, though) and refusing to let the other be a separate individual... I wonder if we'd both had better boundaries (instead of defenses, for example), if we might still be married, in love, and happy. (Or, for that matter, if we might never have gotten married but parted ways amicably after two years of dating without the "goal" of 'Til Death Do Us Part looming large in both of our minds).
But, yeah. It's been about a year since I asked that question, about how hard is "hard" supposed to be... I'm only now starting to understand what kind of hard "hard" is.
Like a Seed is Hard
love isn't hard
like a mountainside is hard
a stone to be shouldered
heaving and straining against the weight
of a burden that can't be budged
love isn't hard
like a wall is hard
insurmountable
unasailable
a rampart that needs no maintainance
a rampart
against which you slam your head
again and again
in frustration or dispair
love isn't hard
like a cynic is hard
growing bored and jaded
as the years are paraded
calcifying in stilted sameness
over decades of discarded expectations
hopeless yet unwilling to mourn that hope
no
love is hard
like farming is hard
the daily work
of tending the land and trusting
it will give you what you need
love is hard
like a seed is hard
sealed and protected
but able to open
take root,
lift, leaf, flower and fruit
in soil that will support it
love is hard
like this kernel of truth
planted under each other's bones
whose burgeoning bloom
allows us both to grow
Approximately one year ago, I asked a much-married friend of mine exactly how hard "hard" is, and her response was "slightly less hard than you can stand", with the caveate that, if every year you like and understand your partner(s) more than you did the year before (and that, presumeably, this regard and understanding are mutual), you're doing pretty well and things are going as they should be going.
I remember wondering how much more "hard" I could take, since I was nearing the point where it was drop this burden or watch myself buckle under the strain.
She also commented that, in a love-relationship, keeping things private is fine, but keeping things secret is... at best, well, a very bad sign.
At the time, I didn't understand the difference.
Maybe (probably) that's because, in a relationship with no boundaries, to keep something private is to keep something secret. In a relationship where both parties expected to spent their lives in merged, indivisible bliss, to reserve a part of oneself as separate is to... hold out, hold back, keep something hidden. Because separation isn't supposed to be happening.
That's the marriage I was in.
The more I think about it, the more I'm glad that I got out when I did. BUT it also makes me sad because, if we (both of us) had come into the relationship with a significantly better sense of when we each began and where the other ended, with a significantly better understanding of what was healthy togetherness and what was walking over each other's sense of self (or at least my sense of self -- I wonder how much he felt like this, too, though) and refusing to let the other be a separate individual... I wonder if we'd both had better boundaries (instead of defenses, for example), if we might still be married, in love, and happy. (Or, for that matter, if we might never have gotten married but parted ways amicably after two years of dating without the "goal" of 'Til Death Do Us Part looming large in both of our minds).
But, yeah. It's been about a year since I asked that question, about how hard is "hard" supposed to be... I'm only now starting to understand what kind of hard "hard" is.
Like a Seed is Hard
love isn't hard
like a mountainside is hard
a stone to be shouldered
heaving and straining against the weight
of a burden that can't be budged
love isn't hard
like a wall is hard
insurmountable
unasailable
a rampart that needs no maintainance
a rampart
against which you slam your head
again and again
in frustration or dispair
love isn't hard
like a cynic is hard
growing bored and jaded
as the years are paraded
calcifying in stilted sameness
over decades of discarded expectations
hopeless yet unwilling to mourn that hope
no
love is hard
like farming is hard
the daily work
of tending the land and trusting
it will give you what you need
love is hard
like a seed is hard
sealed and protected
but able to open
take root,
lift, leaf, flower and fruit
in soil that will support it
love is hard
like this kernel of truth
planted under each other's bones
whose burgeoning bloom
allows us both to grow
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