Susan Piver - We’re So Close, It’s lonely

Susan Piver had this nice article on relationships as a Buddhist in the Fall issue of Buddhadharma. She was kind enough to post it online. Even Buddhists can act like children in relationships, and learn powerful lessons from the experience.

We’re so Close, it’s lonely
By Susan Piver

Relationships are lonely. Even good ones. My relationship with my husband is lonely. My relationship with my guru is lonely. They’re the same kind of lonely. And these are the good relationships.

The other day, we had a fight (my husband and me, not Rinpoche and me). It was a bad one. Super bad. Bad like leaving-the-house-at-1 a.m.-to-go-sleep-on-the-couch-in-my-office bad. It’s so cliché to say I can’t even remember what it was about, but I sort of can’t. Well maybe I can, but I just don’t want to believe that something so unbelievably stupid (someone not telling someone else that they bought a new camera, for example; I mean it only cost $200 and I needed it for work) could cause two normally sane people to absolutely lose their minds and jump all up and down yelling at each other. I mean for goodness sake.

I dragged myself home at 6 a.m., dreading seeing him, but also hoping I would so he could see that I was still ignoring him. As I let myself in and walked up the stairs to our bedroom, he was exiting the shower, towel around his waist. Although I was still angry, I could see that he no longer was. He came toward me and held his palms up to me like two “hold it right there” signs or, possibly, two “OK, OK, I give up” signs. My palms spontaneously rose to mirror his, whether to stop him from coming closer or to hold him to me, I also couldn’t tell. In that moment, I realized I was trapped. I couldn’t push him away, nor could I hold him close enough. I couldn’t keep him at bay because our lives are no longer two separate-but-parallel tracks as they were when we began living together. No. We’re living one life together now. I don’t know how or when this happened.

Go read the whole article - it's only a page.

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