The Secret to True Love

Friends often ask me what makes our relationship last. They know that Jay and I have been in love with each other for the past 13 years, that we have a strong bond as activity partners, business partners, parents and collaborative artists.

Jay always says, “Mischief!” We share that spark of naughty excitement that keeps us young and sexy to each other. We’ve defined marriage based on who we truly are instead of being stuck in the trappings of what a marriage is supposed to look like. Our marriage is 100% handmade, homemade, us.

In college philosophy class we defined that love is not a feeling. Feelings are fleeting, they come and go like the wind. Love, I have found, is a commitment. It is staying through good and bad weather. It is being willing to get ugly in front of the other. It is accepting what is ugly about the other and saying, “Ok, I can deal with that. I still love you.” That is love.

I’m reading this book right now. It’s almost 20 years old. It’s called “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. It feels like I’ve been reading it forever, because I keep stopping to take a look within myself and my life. The subtitle of the book is “Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.” It contains ancient folklore with a timeless message: nurture your soul.

One of the stories is about the Skeleton Woman. Let me paraphrase. A fisherman hooks a bunch of bones from the ocean, it is the Skeleton Woman. He is terrified, he rows as fast as his fear could take him back home. The faster he rows, the faster she follows helplessly tangled up in his hook. At first he hides, then eventually he comes out, perseveres in untangling the fishing line and mess of bones until there she sits, the Skeleton Woman, and he finds she is not as scary as before. He sleeps and weeps in slumber. She drinks his tear and it fills her, remakes her into a fully fleshed woman. He wakes, they love each other forever.

I love that story, and there are many more poetic elements I decided to leave out for the sake of brevity. But I love it because it’s about seeing what is ugly and fearsome about one’s beloved, and still persevering, trusting, and working on the relationship. That is the kind of relationship that bears deep and fruitful rewards.

Jay and I have a friend who has had many many good relationships that lasted years. Her latest one just broke up, and I remember her saying that she wanted to break it up before it got to the point when they couldn’t be friends anymore. I understand to some extent. Memories are indelible. Harsh words echo in the mind long after they’ve been said. I wonder, though, if their relationship could have survived the ugliness if she only gave it a chance. I have a feeling she has done this all her life. Every time she found a mess of bones in her fishing hole, she threw it back overboard. The sad truth is that without investing in bringing the bones home, looking the ugly heap over, and patiently untangling it, there is no chance of discovering a treasure that will last her lifetime. Her only hope is that someday she will hook someone who will follow wherever she may run and take the effort of untangling the messy bones she has become.

When Jay and I first started dating it was clear we had sexual chemistry, but we were really quite scared of each other. Deep inside us, we knew we could change each other. There was something about us together that felt catalytic. I remember early on we were walking to the Staten Island ferry one winter afternoon. He bent down to pick up a plastic batman ring on the ground, and impulsively put it on my left ring finger. The finger. The gesture struck us both with fear. We walked in silence, terrified of what just happened and what it meant. The wind howled and whipped all around us. It felt cosmic. It felt like the old me was dying right there, and a new me was being born.

Jay and I don’t have a perfect relationship. Sharing our deepest and darkest selves with one another is not always a pleasant experience. We are individuals with our own sexual, creative, idiosyncratic needs that sometimes meet in harmony but also sometimes clash. Every layer of self-revelation takes with it a risk: will he still love me after this? When he and I fight, it is fierce and ugly. Few of our friends have witnessed it, and those who have cower from the crossfire. (Sorry, you know who you are!) But no matter how hard we fight, how primitive our ways of communication descend to, we keep communicating, we keep listening, we keep forgiving, and we keep taking that risk of becoming truly ourselves with each other. Neither of us would settle for less.