Friday was Jasmin and my 22nd wedding anniversary. I can say without doubt that I love my wife more today than when we were married. I still don’t love her perfectly, or unconditionally, but I am learning more about love everyday. I’m also prepared to go out on a limb and say the ability to love is essential for the continuation of the species. I used to be more concerned with big picture stuff like racial oppression, international violence, and getting my next bag of weed than learning to love. While I still find those things interesting (except the weed), I now believe that nothing is more compelling than learning and practicing how to create a Sacred Relationship.
A Sacred Relationship is simply a bond between two people that serves God. The relationship becomes a vehicle to bring God’s love into the world. Like in AA, non-religious types can substitute Higher Power for God and each person is responsible for developing her own understanding of what God is. It doesn’t matter to me whether you call God Christ, Krishna or Quan Yin. The important thing is having something more expansive, compassionate and intelligent than the partners to guide you towards love.
In this post, I want to touch on two elements of a Sacred Relationship. First is communication. The ability to send and receive information effectively is essential. However, basic as this is, I still screw it up almost daily and remember way worse examples from my own life. We all know how to listen. When we first meet a person we feel drawn to, we listen great – sometime for hours at a time. But soon we’re cutting off our loved one, disagreeing nastily, refusing to talk and frowning our foreheads at the very sight of her.
Learning to really listen to Jasmin and share how I feel prompted a fundamental shift in my awareness of love. These skills (listening and sharing) have created in me an ability to love that did not exist before. This form of intimacy is so much more important than sex. In fact, sex is just one simple method of communication. If you don’t learn emotional intimacy through communication, sexual intimacy is impossible. You might have good mutual masturbation, but you’ll never understand the true potential of sexual union if you cannot communicate with your clothes on.
The second element of a Sacred Relationship I want to briefly mention is forgiveness. You’ll never get past the honeymoon without practicing forgiveness. One of my teachers says, “You start out as soul mates and end up as cell mates.” Half the couples who get married will divorce. Why do so many intelligent, prosperous, loving people make public commitments (often initiated by expensive ceremonies) and a year, or a decade, later decide they were wrong? Lack of forgiveness surely plays a role.
We’re less than our best most of the time. We and our partners will make mistakes. We and our partners will compound our mistakes by not communicating about them. If we cannot accept our partner’s mistakes, we put the nail in the coffin of our love. We might as well bury it. Of course, some patterns of severe emotional or physical abuse are best forgiven from a long distance, say, several states away from the offending ex. But most relationship conflict is over money and sex, not violence. Both problems are workable with more effective communication leading to deeper intimacy: emotionally, physically and financially.
Let me wrap this up with a quick review. One, I am happier in my relationship today than when I was married 22 years ago and believe advocating Sacred Relationship is one of the most important things any of us can do. Two, learning to communicate: to send and receive information from our partner is fundamental to Sacred Relationships. Three, forgiveness, accepting life with all its apparent flaws, is crucial to love. All of us are incompetent at intimacy to some degree. Consequently, forgiveness is essential to deepening intimacy. And, if you’re wondering whether patterns of abuse in your relationship are cause for forgiveness from a distance, consult a therapist who understands controlling behavior in couples.
