Solitude In Relationship

I’m in frontier land. And, I’m way off balance. Nothing new about those conditions, I guess, except I’m not alone this time. That fact makes me feel more responsible and gives me a little more incentive. I like having the opportunity that a new friendship affords me. There is a particular challenge however, that I know is bound to crop up, and I want to see what kind of gumption I’m going to need to face this relationship inevitability.

I’m talking about losing myself, and my tendency to lose contact when that happens. I’m savvy enough as a relationship/systems therapist to know that if I let this friendship become significant enough to me, I’m going to have a hard time holding onto me. What is so special about me? Why does this even matter? Well, the short answer is that I’m all I’ve got. If I get lost, for too long, then I will surrender my ability to relate. I will hurt me, and I might hurt someone else. And strangely, it might be because the relationship is too good.

You can see why I might be apprehensive. This is probably a case of knowing too much. I have worked with a lot of couples, and a few communities, where someone went absent because they couldn’t hold onto themselves. I’m a believer, that relationships are “people growing machines,” (Schnarch) that there is an inevitability to the way a relationship eventually eclipses personal development.

I am not really interested in losing myself. I’ve worked hard to get to know me and it seems I’m a better person for knowing myself, certainly I’m happier. But, all of that occurs out of relationship. If I want a relationship, and I do, then, unless I’m going to condemn this budding opportunity to a predetermined distance, then I’ve got to find a way to regain my hold on myself when this relationship exceeds my expectations.

The working theory I have now, the desperate hope I’m clinging to, is that my relationship with myself can be strong enough that it will never go away for long. I don’t know if I can trust myself that much. I know I’ll find out, if I let myself proceed into this relationship. I’m willing to find out, and I’m knowing that there will come a time, when I won’t have the capacity I need. My relationship with myself is going to reach its limits. This is what a good relationship is guaranteed to expose in me, the reality of my self-love. I know this is the good and the bad news of caring about another.

I don’t like knowing my own limits. It hurts too much, and is filled with such self-doubt. Still, I also know that this is the real gold, the true reason for relationship. I get to know the truth of who I am. I also get the chance to become someone else, someone more, someone who has gone beyond who I used to be. The problem is that I don’t know if I’m going to grow myself until I get there, and find out how I need to grow myself. The risk of relationship is not just that I might be rejected by someone else, but that I might reject my self. I might not confront myself, and become what I need to become, to love another, to love myself, as I need to.

I’m banking on solitude. I came to really know myself by hanging out, and cultivating a relationship, with me. I know, as a marital therapist, that people don’t generally enter relationship to be alone.  This form of aloneness, I’ve learned, is also inevitable. I can’t tell you the number of times someone felt that being alone in their relationship meant something is wrong, with their partner, with themselves, or with the relationship. I’m counting on being alone. I won’t have anything to bring to another if I’m not.

Aloneness paradoxically looks like the relationship path I need. I know that if I am going to be myself, and remain true to me, then I have to stay in constant relationship with me, at present that looks like more solitude. Maybe there will be a day when my grip on myself is so solid that I will not be in jeopardy of losing my balance, but that day doesn’t seem to be here. Till then, I will have to practice the paradox of solitude in relationship.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.