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These blogs are a way to share my thoughts and insights with you. Feel free to comment and share.

The un-balancing act

2/5/2014

2 Comments

 
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In the book, "The Three Marriages", David Whyte, poet-author explains how we exhaust ourselves trying to separate and balance three core relationships in our life. The three marriages are to:
  • Our partner and family (people we have close relationships with)
  • Our work
  • Our self

These are not in his opinion separate commitments, but different expressions of how we each belong in the world. And in trying to maintain these three marriages as distinct, we create unnecessary competition and rivalry between our various needs and desires with the potential in the end, for neglecting one or the other.

Instead of thinking about our life in terms of work-life balance, he asks us to knit these relationships together and to see how the core commitments to each are connected and integrated.

He is a poet first and his book isn't written as a self-help "how-to" one. It takes a few reads I think. His underlying thesis is helpful in framing many of the challenges we face in our three marriages.

It is safe to say we enter into the first marriage with a lot of preconceived ideas of how it will work and how good it will be.  As our mutual imperfections bubble and rise to the surface we discover how difficult it is.

As I begin to coach couples, I feel a few of David Whyte's ideas might be helpful.

We need to:

  • Not be afraid of conversations that highlight the different wants and desires between partners in the three marriages
  • Respect and honor the desires each partner holds in the three marriages
  • Recognize how our core relationships are a living and breathing entity that if neglected, stifle all three marriages
  • Not expect any of the three marriages to deliver all our happiness

Marriage-on,
Coach Minda

2 Comments
Janet Bickel
4/5/2014 12:58:23 pm

I think Minda has beautifully summarized this amazingly rich book. Her posting leads me to share a number of my favorite bits from the book (I've adapted and paraphrased a bit):

*Marriage is where we realize how much effort we put into preserving our sense of space and self, how much we want to be right and be seen to be right. Each person is looking for the moral high ground. Finally both partner’s cherished notions of themselves are creatively destroyed. It helps to deconstruct one's speeches to take apart conceits of superiority-- and to try to laugh at one's attempts at dignity and control in the midst of the uncontrolled indignities of this relationship. Ignoring critical parts of the marriage causes buildups that may avalanche across one's relationship to work and to oneself, smothering them.
*The antidote to exhaustion is not rest. It’s wholeheartedness.
*Our highly evolved ability to worry may confer a survival advantage, but it also means we may sit beneath a magnificient sky and not see one star.
*If we can just witness the coming and going of our worries and notice their constant attempt to keep us “safe,” this opens up a rich exploratory space—that is, what are we trying to protect ourselves from?
*Big tasks are completed through cycles of visitation and absence—if we accept and integrate this cycle fully into the way our work is achieved, we're less likely to hold ourselves to impossible standards.
*Learning how to have compassion for ourselves requires a cessation, a stopping from our normal routine of busy-ness and self-judgment—we need silences to soften toward ourselves and to develop equanimity.
*Success can be a barrier because we always seeking to preserve it.

Reply
Coach Minda link
5/5/2014 01:47:59 pm

Thanks Janet for sharing so many of your favorite ideas. His poetic perspective makes his work quite unique.

For all the mothers and fathers of young families, many who are my clients, the logistics and challenges of family life can give romantic love (marriage) and big shove over!

The notion of wanting to be right ranks pretty up there with what gets us all into trouble!

Much thanks, CoachMinda

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