Couples Therapy
A poem about love and attention
Love is uncompromising attention.
It reaches into the self and out towards the other in the same breath.
Uncompromised by the need to be good, do good.
Uncompromised by expectation.
Uncompromised by fear.
Uncompromised by the wish to be clever.
Uncompromised by the right answer.
Not the right answer, but attention…
Attention
A tension
A stretch towards
A stretch in
Intention
In tension
In care
Love is the gaze that stretches to see all of you.
It doesn’t compromise an inch.
It holds all of your tensions, habits, movements, sounds.
Attention to your voice and how you sound sad even though you said, “happy Tuesday!”
Attention to how I feel when I’m with you, noticing a rage even though we’re calm.
Attention to what topics make you come alive and which ones check you out.
Attention to your stream of consciousness and what emotions beget the next thought, beget the next feeling, beget the next gesture.
Attention to the dance of all of you.
Attention to what’s next!
Some words on love
Hillman: “Just start talking with anyone from the soul, about the soul, about your fear of dying, about a heartbreaking memory, about your funny estrangements, isolation, and right away, love starts happening.”
James Hillman - Love isn’t Personal
Interviewer: “So does Eartha fall in love with herself?”
Eartha: “If you want to think about it in terms of analyzing it, yes, I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me. I want someone to share me with me.”
Interviewer: “Do you indulge in any form of worship?”
Bowie: “Uh, life. I love life very much indeed.”
Bukowski:
I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathmatically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricities-
like soaking eggshells in water
to feed the plants so that
they'd get calcium
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
and by hurt I simply mean hurt.
she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I should have
helped her more
for she is the mother of my only
child
and we were once great lovers,
but she has come through
like I said
she has hurt fewer people than
anybody I know,
and if you look at it like that,
well,
she has created a better world.
she has won.
Frances, this poem is for you.
Poem from Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski
Where is the love?
You don’t catch love. You can’t capture it as a result of pursuit. It ensues, follows, arrives as a result of a certain set of conditions.
These conditions appear to be attention, availability, presence, spaciousness, openness to
what
is
here.
This is not acceptance, or assuming positive intent, or seeing the best in someone. That is still not seeing someone as they are, but instead how you’d like them to be – it is it’s own form of objectification.
The foundation for love is attending to what is happening while suspending any ideas of what is righteous or morally good.
It’s being in a state of sincere, almost foolish curiosity – like children. Children’s questions crack us open into laughter, embarrassment, maybe even rage because they are not tempered by a trained politeness. They are honest and true.
This curiosity does not mean that bad behavior gets let off the hook. It also does not mean that we don’t have our own spine and set of values.
It means that behavior can be explored outside of our kneejerk judgements and seen for its truer motivations – motivations that often have roots in desire for connection, life force, and the fear of their loss.
For example, the motivation for bickering and picking fights may come from a deeper desire for connection through the fight. The motivation for sacrificing oneself for the family may be to be seen as someone important and to receive praise. The motivation for an aggressive act may be because that person wants to feel alive and powerful.
Who knows?
And it’s in this unknown, and orientation of sincere curiosity and spaciousness that we can actually get somewhere.
Being in this unknown can feel uncomfortable and scary. We have relied on our frameworks, judgements, and morals for building our lives and for our very survival. Giving them up, even for fifty minutes can be terrifying.
What if I’m attacked while open and vulnerable?
What if they eviscerate my character while my guard is down?
Good fucking questions.
This is where the order of events is vital. Before any thoughts, analysis, ideas of what is happening in you or in the relationship, before any of that, comes uncompromising companionship.
No matter who you are, what you have done or failed to do…you are first and foremost an intrinsically divine being worthy of love. Everything else is secondary.