Gifts of uncoupling
When I reread the post on uncoupling with my beloved of the last 8 months, and the practice of Kintsugi as metaphor for loving the scars that loss can inflict, I realize that I was missing the point. Oh how I would like to believe that brokenness and failure in life and love automatically resurrect me into a scarred beauty. Like the growing smile lines on the edges of my eyes. If only.
But a smashed jar is just strewn pieces, a container no more. It is in the process of gathering the pieces and puzzling them back together that value is created. In other words, now that the container of this romance has been shattered, my job is to gather and hold pieces up to the light, and in doing so, I am really looking for the ones I have left covered in the dirt many times before.
Of course the problem with metaphor is that it is a clever way of staying safe and not actually feeling into the experience. The sadness, the jealousy, the alarm, the fear, the love. Words are an even more insidious form of evasion. When I use ‘sadness’ to describe my feeling, I can cleverly bypass the dull sensation in the pit of my stomach itself. But my friends, as far as I know, words and emojis are all we have right now to reach one another, so onward.
I am picking at the shards right now. It’s personal, but not really. Not much different from those you may have raised to the light yourself.
One I have pulled up lately is how I come alive as self-appointed dream manifester for my partner, as co-conspirator of her emboldened self. That can go on for months and in some cases years. And while it becomes a central project, even a way of life, I am too proud to admit wanting, needing, craving my partners appreciation. I want to ask for what I need, but I don’t know how, and the martyr in me mushrooms out of hiding followed by resentment, the ultimate toxicity.
OK so now I can pull this apart too. Lots of edges on this familiar shard. Some of this really doesn’t serve me or a relationship. Like the way I assume my partner is incomplete, or less capable without me, or that my support is enmeshed with her gratitude, or the shame that can surface when asking for what is simply an elemental human need... appreciation, a thank you.
But there are other edges to this salvaged fragment that I love. The part that is dreamy, generous and supportive. The belief that we can constantly re-create ourselves choosing kindness, that as a partner I have got your back!
The gifts of uncoupling are strewn in the dust of heartache, and only come alive when brushed off and held up to the light. You would think that after many decades of loving and uncoupling I would have figured it out. Of course there is no such thing. But I am ready to place this shard with a beautiful thin stripe of loving adhesive back into this wholeness.
