It’s interesting to me that everything around us is moving…nature, traffic, particles of dust, mountains shift and erode, yet we enter into relationship and expect it to be concrete.
We somehow imagine that we won’t change…our minds, our desire, our decisions.
We have expectations and we hold tightly to them with a death grip:
“Before we got married you said you were going to finish school and become a dentist, now you want to build a studio and make glass chimes?”
“You said you understood that I needed to live near my mother and now you are considering a job three states away?”
“I believed you when you said I was the only man for you and now you’re telling me you’re attracted to Steve at Starbucks?”
“Ever since you met Kirsten, you never have time for me.”
Our need for security overrides the obvious, which is that we are more fluid than we are concrete. Our fear of change is nestled in the belief that if things shift and move we won’t be okay.
There may very well be some truth in this…you may not be entirely okay for a time, and then something will shift and move and you will feel okay again.
Here’s the rub…we enter into relationship with excitement and fervor that moves us. It's new, it's fresh, it's exciting. We are driven to see each other. We feel alive!
Then, we squeeze the freshness out of the relationship by holding so tightly to our expectations that we are afraid to move. We are afraid to think differently, to allow ourselves or another to experience the desire of something new rising to the surface… for fear that we won’t be okay.
If we can enter into relationships with the same understanding that just as seasons change, we are changing too. While Liz may find Steve the barista thoughtful and sensitive because he remembers just how she likes her café latte, she may lose interest when she realizes that he doesn’t pick up his socks either.
This is not to make light of the excruciating loss of relationship or expectation. It’s only to say:
Let yourself, others, and your relationships breathe and move…to make room for excitement and new possibilities.