REALIZATION OF LOVE

A good friend of mine, I’ll call her kuheli, stopped by one day for a cup of coffee, and sure enough, before we knew it, we were deeply involved in a conversation, discussing the “ right and wrong” ways of being in a relationship. After all, I was writing a book about it, wasn’t I?

“So often, when we are absolutely convinced we are right, we are not that right at all,” I said.

“Really?” Kuheli raised her eyebrows.

My friend is an open-minded woman. She is always eager to learn, always ready to hear a different perspective. Her relationship of two years had recently ended, and thought she was okay with it by then, the wounds had not yet fully healed. The memories of fights with her ex-fiancee were still fresh. She would relive them again and again in her mind wondering if there was something she could have done differently. “Was there another way?” she’d ask herself, arriving each time at the same answer. No. she had been right. She had handled it correctly. She was making sure her needs were met, and no, she wasn’t selfish and unreasonable. It was her boyfriend who had been stubborn and childish, while she was simply respecting.

“So what you are saying is when we are sure we are right, we are actually wrong?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Not wrong as an absolute, but certainly not ‘right.’” I knew I need to explain myself.  “Give me an example,” I said, “of a situation in your relationship in which there is no question in your mind that you were right. It can be something seemingly minor, it really doesn’t matter. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?”

Kuheli chukled, “Oh, that’s easy”, she said. “How about this one? He moves in with me, and you know, my place is small. I have to go through the kitchen to get to my office.

Now both of us are working from home, he and I. and he would not wash the dishes after himself! Everytime I went through the kitchen or into the kitchen, I would see his dirty dishes in the sink. And it was driving me crazy, I can’t stand dirty dishes. It upsets me. I never leave dishes unwashed out there in the sink. I asked him again and again not to do it. To wash them after he’s eaten, so I don’t have to look at his mess and be irritated. I asked him nicely. I joked about it. I asked him seriously. I explained to him why I need it. I got very angry. And still-he  would not do it!! Now-it was my place. He moved in with me. Who did he think I was?!! His mother?!! She caught herself and stopped. “It’s water under the bridge now, but don’t you think I was right about it?”

“What did he say to you?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t he do it?”

“He said it interrupted his flow. He liked to get back to work immediately after eating and that he would wash everything in the evening. In the mean time, I was not supposed to pay attention to such small things.”

She was getting anxious just remembering that time, I put my hand on her knee.

“Look,” I said. “I just guide you a process which is I think brilliant. Would you like to try it?”

“Sure,” Kuheli said.

“Tell me again how it made you feel, when he wouldn’t do hid dishes,” I said.

“Oh, I felt angry, I felt like…. As if he didn’t care about me. Like it didn’t matter what I needed, it didn’t matter at all. And that he did not respect me. If he respected me, he would never threat me this way. Never. I felt he treated me as if I were his mother, for his equal partner.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “Yes. That’s how I felt every time I passed through the kitchen.”

I waited. But she seemed suddenly exhausted. “Anything else?” I asked.

“That pretty much sums it up.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now tell me something. Think about it and tell me: Was what you felt really true?”

She paused. I could see her face changing. With her eves closed she was reliving her experience one more time looking at it from a different angle.

“No,” she said finally. “It’s not true.  I don’t think he thought that at all.”

I could see she was amazed. Startled, perhaps, by what she had just said. She was looking at her hands, waiting for what I had to say next.

“All right,” I said. Let’s go back again. When you thought he didn’t respect you or care about you, how did that make you feel?”

Kuheli looked up. “How did it make me feel?” I was angry. I was so angry I couldn’t breathe. I was unhappy. I was irritated, I would look at him at his desk working, and the kitchen was full of dirty dishes, and I would just be fuming inside.”

“Good,” I said. “Now we know what you felt, and we know what you thought were his reason for not washing the dishes. And we also know-it wasn’t true. So now-let’sturn it around. You thought he did not respect you, didn’t  care about you, and treated you as if you were his mother, not his equal partner. Take this-and turn it around. Turn it into an opposite.”

Kuheli concentrated. I could see her mind working, turning things around. Suddenly her voice dropped and she almost whispered, “You mean-turn it all around?”

“Yes,” I ssid. “Say it out loud.”

What she said then-stunned us both.

“I didn’t respected him,” she said. “ I thought he was immature. I didn’t care about what was important for him… Oh, my God…” she covered her eyes with her hands. “I treated him as if he were a child, not a man. I did not respect him. I didn’t. I was mean. I would diminish him. I would make him so small…” she couldn’t talk

I pulled her towards me and hold her as she cried.

“I never saw it before,” she whispered. I could see it was hard for her to speak. “I am sorry Rahul, I am sorry….”

She moved away from me, reaching for the tissue paper and put it to her face. “He was so tender, so loving…. So young in many ways, and yes, I believed he was too immature, and it bothered me. I was even getting bored. I needed to leave the house and just be by myself to feel good again sometimes. I have always been very independent and responsible. Sand I didn’t think he was. I didn’t know how to tell him, so I do angrier and angrier. I knew it couldn’t work between us. We were too different. And I didn’t went to admit it to myself. So I punished him.” She put her hand to her chest. “It’s so painful to see it. But I feel like something is releasing right here,” she pointed to her heart, where her hand was resting. “I can’t believe I never saw it. I was so sure it was him.”

I took her hand in mine and held it.

“It hurts so much to see it. But –it’s as if we’ve just lanced a boil.”

“And now it can heal.” I said. “Now you can let go, forgive yourself and let go.”

Though her tears Kuheli nodded and sighed. “Yes,” she said smiling now, “Thank you.”

“By the way, Kuheli never washes her dishes either,’ I said and smiled. “But my first husband did. He washed everything after each meal. I never needed to ask. And he brought me breakfast in bed all the time. And he always brought mr roses. In fact, the worse our marriage got, the more flowers I received. I was drowning in roses at one time. He even came to mediation meeting with my attorney and the financial adviser she had invited (both of them-women) with bouquets of roses. One for each of us. You should have seen the faces of these women. It didn’t save our marriage though. I was miserable and so was he.”

“He doesn’t wash the dishes?” Kuheli was incredulous. “And you are okay with it?”

“Absolutely. He will help me with them if I ask,  but a general it is not something he does. Don’t think I didn’t try,” I laughed. ”I went through he entire process with it. I would get angry, he would promise to wash them, and he would wash them, but then he would forget to wash them then next time, or he would start washing them, but not finish and go do something else. I was fulling out my hair. I was like you were with Rahul in way. And then I stopped myself. I realized-it was not malicious. I realized he really didn’t like to wash them. I realized it didn’t matter to him whether they were washed or not. If I were to leave them in the sink for days, he would barely notice. His mind is somewhere lese, on th things he is passionate about, and order in the kitchen isn’t one of them. I realized that it mattered to me, but not to him. And-most impotant –I realized that he was doing a tremendous amount of other things for me and for us and for our life together all the time. He was my full partner in everything, and that’s what mattered, not who did or did not the dishes. Well, I saw all that and decided to was the dishesmyself!”