I feel like I just got dumped on, first thing in the morning, with no recourse to either withstand or refuse it. How do I be supportive of the man I love even as I am close enough to see precisely how his own leadership style creates precisely what he bemoans? I mean, we all do it–create the conditions for our own spiritual challenging into growth–but my marriage is a particular dumping ground for him to refuse to see such patterning in himself. Which, of course, as he’s emoting is not the time to point such things out. And for the most part, I did well enough biting my tongue and allowing his venting. But I still begin the day, feeling dumped on without any recourse. Ugh.
So what is my pattern to change here? What is my invitation? Is there any meta-reflecting that could both relieve me of the energies that are not my own here and suggest alternatives, for us both? Considering I haven’t been driven to the page for such reflections, it’s clearly load enough to bring me here. That’s noteworthy, actually appreciated. I’ve missed writing, even as I’ve also not felt particularly drawn to more words until now.
First, I do empathize with the man. He’s the central cog of a declining machine, an increasingly low-level commitment ‘community’ doing what it knows, which is often not very communal. His sense of duty is astronomical, keeping him in place to bear up under obligations and isolating-caretaking leadership, amidst deep valleys of anxiety, grief and sometimes concretized fear (i.e. Israel discernment, of late). His soul is unmothered, not to mention his body, which is observable in his own wounded ancestral lineages. Everyone really did the best they ever could have…yet leaving him (like most men) without the emotional toolkit to allow, metabolize, and be constructive with his own emotional weather. He’d rather vent onto others than do his own work in the opportunity for changing himself in the system. No one has required him to do so, really, though I’m sure he’d refute that statement. I’ve required more of him than he would like. :) But I don’t think I actually know many men who do or even allow themselves to perceive such work. Irwin Kula may be the only one I know, come to think of it. Most look to their women or subordinates in professional environments. Or in my paternal family, the written word. Which is what I’m doing, to be clear.
Because my own family lineages and woundedness don’t really help him here, though my own fierce attention to these things for decades might-could, in a universe I imagine (as a Two). I’m more frustrated with his emotional ventings today because I know if you set your mind/heart/body to the work, you can learn how to allow, metabolize and be constructive with emotional signals, cues. They can become nonreactive signals that something in me yearns to be different. I’m better at this than I have ever been, but I’m still slow and learning. Generations (and my own decades) of habits are hard to alter, after all.
So I find myself playing out my mother’s version of marriage, being the energy dumping ground for whatever the man we love knows not what to do with… I grew up with this pattern. I took on this pattern to stay close to my father. And now, naturally, it’s a significant part of my marriage to a pastor.
Let’s imagine things I’d never have done but could have…
As soon as I felt it overload, I could have said aloud, “I’m overloaded with things that are not mine to receive, solve, or address. STOP.” Had I attempted it, it probably would have come out poorly, being received as a “I don’t care about your pain,” which is not true. I do. I just feel it intensely and do not have boundaries enough to be convicted in “this is not mine to receive or metabolize.” When I don’t set the boundary, when I don’t perceive soon enough that “it’s too much,” I get suffocated and need to physically leave the space to protect myself. (i.e. escape to Pettibone, and fantasize now about spending the evening in an artist date of some kind, by myself).
Setting the necessary boundary requires me to perceive the overwhelm much sooner than I am currently capable (apparently). I remember Paula Jeanne Teague having me do an exercise with another student in the circle, a guy I really enjoyed named Jeff. She told him to walk toward me. My instructions were to tell him to stop when he was too close. Simple enough, right? His pace of walking and my capacity to discern safe-distance, however, were not a match. I couldn’t say it in time, he drew too close to me (even though I enjoyed him, was not aware of any threat at all), and a belly-sob erupted from me. Poignant to me today, but still instructive. The same dynamic goes on all the time in my marriage. I don’t perceive my own emotional responses in time, often taking up to a day or two. Not helpful. How do I speed it up? Can I? Is this a time when faster would actually be better? I think so… I wonder if the energy work will assist me here…?
Come to think of it, I have been experimenting with such a line, emotionally, this week. I shared some things with Brian I would not normally–about my own spiritual learning path, about things I’m exploring which he does not respect nor consider of much value. I shared the most significant moment of my day yesterday–singing a song at my aunt’s grave–and the emotion was too much for him. He began to mock-sing the song, with a roll of his eyes and a teasing or making-fun-of tone. I think it was mostly unconscious for him, so he could deny it when I called him on it. Neither of us trusts the other with this kind of emotional depth, beyond his/my capacity to receive it. I receive emotional depth elsewhere in my life, where it feels easier, more welcome.
Which is not to say I’m not happily married or content to remain in this conundrum that is my covenantal life. It is what ‘invites’ me to grow, be uncomfortable, reclaim myself again and again. Of course I wish there were more romance or ease between us, but that would require more emotional risk than either of us seems willing to engage. Or speaking for myself, more than I have stamina for at the moment. It’s easy to blame the church or his leadership style that makes his experience of church what it is in the cultural decline of it all. Those things are relevant. But if Brian and I were truly willing to risk more than either of us is right now, these things would be held differently. Intimacy is not for the faint of heart, after all. Brian and I are both too faint of heart for sharing the emotional work each of us has to do on his/her own.