Behind the Veil of Marriage: A True Love Story
Last weekend a momentous event took place. I married my best friend and the love of my life after knowing each other and being together for the greater part of 17 years.
We were blessed with a gorgeous, seasonally warm, picture-perfect Autumn day even though it was cold and pouring monsoon like rain the night before. Our intimate ceremony was next to an idyllic lake surrounded by a wooded area and meadow. Usually a well-populated area, but on our special day, no one was there!
We walked out of the woods from opposite directions and met in the middle of the meadow with tears in our eyes and gratitude in our hearts. It was magical, everything perfectly flowed and felt divinely aligned. Like being in a dream. All the woodland animals gathered around as we held hands walking into our new chapter together. Okay, that last part wasn't real, but it felt possible. It was truly a blessed and sacred day.
Are you swooning yet? Longing for a similar romantic, fairy tale ending like ours? We all appreciate a good romance story and are wired to get excited about weddings and public declarations of love.
Many people have a deeply embedded joyful and hopeful association with weddings. Just the sight of a bride in her wedding dress can stir up emotions connected to thoughts of happily ever after that we’ve been spoon-fed through countless books and movies.
Not to diminish the joy of it all as I truly am basking in the glow of our recent marriage and the depth of love and connection I feel and felt with my chosen one on that day.
But while we are soaking in the joy and the honoring our community has shared with us, it feels important to pull back the veil on marriage to expand perspectives and increase acceptance for the unique and beautiful journey of love and commitment and the possibilities that exist within.
My hope in sharing the reality of our relationship and our choice to deepen our commitment is to shed some authentic light on intimate connections.
I believe a sacred purpose of a relationship is to surface all that is in need of healing for the purpose of reclaiming our potential, our possibilities, and our authentic selves expedited through a sacred walk together through all that arises.
Another hope is to dissolve some of the unrealistic, outdated, unhealthy views of relationships and marriage.
Our love story started over 17 years ago. And like most good stories it had many twists and turns and painful challenges. We had two breakups. One breakup was so beautiful and profoundly devastating that it became the charred holy ground offered to reconstruct a healthy relationship through. First with self and then with my partner.
You may be confused by my use of the words, " beautiful and profoundly devastating" to describe a breakup. But when you choose to lean into the pain of a breakup (and any painful situation for that matter) and use it to heal past wounds, beliefs, patterns, and stories surfaced from the current event, the painful situation becomes a great opportunity for transformation and healing!
As most relationships begin, we were drawn to each other with strong attraction, curiosity, and head over heels longing. We built our relationship from that strong connection and attraction on top of our combined fears, unhealed wounds, varied ideas of relationship and glued it together with a mixture of hope and doubt.
Clearly, some of those materials weren't suitable to build a healthy relationship with. And as such our rickety home for our love burned to the ground in heartbreak. New blueprints with a stronger foundation as the focal point needed to be envisioned so we could reconstruct a healthier relationship from the ground up.
The reconstruction plans needed to include awareness of the land mines surrounding our wounds, agreement to take personal responsibility for our own healing and to offer compassion and support for each other when doing so. We committed to rebuild and repair when needed, the foundation of our relationship with the cornerstones of faith, willingness, acceptance, and trust.
Rising from the ashes took questioning all our beliefs and associations about love & commitment while holding on to the tenous line of connection that remained: the deep love we felt shrouded in the great mystery.
We not only were faced with our own beliefs but also the opinions and doubts of those who viewed our relationship from the outside and saw mostly the classic scenario of opposites attracting. People have a very low tolerance for any form of "different" and have their own idealized images of what "true love" looks like.
As both of us are recovering people pleasers coupled with the survival desire that most of us have; to be liked and accepted by others, especially our community, we found the opinions of others weighing heavily on our tender yet mighty soul connection.
This often showed up when we talked about marriage. The opinions of others were like a splash of red paint in our bucket of white paint. It altered the hue of how we saw our relationship and invited doubt to color over what we felt and what we knew to be true.
So many still have a fantasy that marriage automatically means happily ever after no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. There is also the misperception that marriage means you have everything figured out and all is perfect.
For me, it is more like preparing yourself for the journey ahead. You've packed healing tools. You're committed to putting your oxygen mask on first. You have the willingness to continue to choose your committment and to view your traveling partner as supportive especially when you hit turbulence. While keeping your focus on the possible and ultimate destination where two reclaimed, whole, intact, individuals more empowered in purpose and enraptured in the potent medicine of love find a deeper and more profound connection.
Behind our wedding veil, the days leading up to our joyful day (and it was incredibly joyful and blessed!), were very difficult. We came close to breakup #3. We sat in angst a week before our ceremony at the fork in the road we arrived at: continue to deepen our commitment or take the chicken exit!
Fear will arise anytime we come to the edge of our comfort zones and especially when we are inviting in big change. When it comes to a commitment that is all about love, and when you have a background of abandonment and loss as I do, and not many solid references for healthy relationships, fear becomes a ferocious beast out to destroy anything that resembles authentic love.
A few days after we set a date, a quote from Kahlil Gibran popped into my head, "when love beckons to you follow him."
Such a beautiful invitation to embrace love, right? Oh, we are such suckers for love and all the romanticized associations we have to it. We put on blinders to see only what we want to see, not what we need to look at.
Then I remembered the rest of the writing that followed those endearing words: "Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you."
There it was, the slap in the face needed like the scene in "Moonstruck" (I know it's an old reference, but a good one!) where Cher's character slaps Nicolas Cage when he professes his love for her and says, "snap out of it."
It is important to snap out of the fantasies and distorted concepts connected to love & commitment and instead celebrate the bravery it takes to follow, and the willingness needed to not lose sight of the holy grail offered through the journey.
And by the holy grail, I don't just mean the modern definition of pursuing something significant, but also the medieval reference of the chalice used by Jesus at the last supper. There will most likely be some sacrifice involved.
Yes, follow love. But be prepared to bump into walls and old wounds that disconnect you from love. The first commitment to deepening a love relationship is a commitment to stay connected to love while doing your own inner work. Your partner is not usually the cause of your pain but will most certainly be the revealer of it.
Our love stories begin with attraction and desire. A glimpse into possibilities that await us underneath our wounded places and distorted ideas of love and partnership. It then becomes the couple’s mission to stay connected to that love and navigate through the mystery and sometimes darkness to reemerge with a more authentic expression of self, love, and purpose.
As we moved closer to the edge of the stagnant, yet comfortable place our relationship sat for years and years where we were committed, but not willing to risk moving one more step. fear alarms went off for both of us. Deciding to get married felt like a big risk. But then the thought occurred to me, “not taking a risk, IS taking a risk.” If we didn’t take the risk of deepening our commitment, we would be taking the risk of staying stuck right where we were and not growing individually and as a couple.
Risk creates powerful energy that propels you through old walls that are keeping you limited.
You can never be certain what you will find behind the comfort of those walls, but you can decide to take love with you. Holding on to love and letting go of our comfort zone, we took the plunge into new waters as a married couple.
Having cleared a lot of the old, heavy beliefs and fear that weighed us down, we didn’t sink when we jumped in. Rather we feel buoyed up by our joy and held by the waters of love surrounding us as we swim to new shores together. We may get lost on the way to what's on the horizon for us and we may even argue about the "right" way to get there. But, hey that's real, everyday love on a spiritual journey of unfolding with your chosen one beside you.
On our wedding day, we literally jumped into the same lake that years ago we first noticed a spark of attraction. We committed to jumping in and taking the plunge, rain or shine that day. To us, that symbolized so much. We can’t predict the weather swirling around our relationship at any given moment. But being aligned in faith, purpose, and commitment we will continue to follow love, and surrender to what is needed for the highest healing and possibilities for both of us and our sacred union! So may it be!
And while I do believe in happily ever after, reframing the fairy tale ending to "and they lived happily HEALED ever after" rings more true to me! 💗
Soul Musings are just that, “musings”. Not advice, just an exploration of my own journey with some transformational concepts sprinkled in to support others along the way!