View of the Berkshires from Kripalu Yoga Center
If you’ve been following the “The Marriage Journey“ then you know that my husband and I are mercilessly challenging ourselves to deeper levels of “intimacy“ during this, our jagged, 20th anniversary year.
Right away, we realize that we need outside help. So we register for our first ever “Couples Retreat.” (Good thing we haven’t seen the movie yet.)
After 15 years of parenting, we’ve shamefully only stolen a single weekend away so there are visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads–not a cubicle with twin beds and a hall bathroom.
The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health had bestowed upon us a generous scholarship–including a private “room” instead of the standard dormitory accommodation– so who was I to complain? I did anyway.
By request, my husband helps re-focus my attention from the white brick walls and tight corners of our room with almost a view to gratitude for the tiniest sink we’ve ever seen. At least we can brush our teeth in privacy.
I unpack my yoga pants and tank tops while Casey lies down on his bed to rest his broken leg. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve rolled my eyes since that tree he felled hit his shin, I could have easily upgraded us to a room with a queen and our very own toilet.
I have been filled with childish feelings like this ever since my husband came hobbling into the house just days before we left for Kripalu. (Did you catch that it’s a Yoga Center?) I wanted to kick his air cast in the shin or at least drop to the floor and kick the air around me for such cruel injustice.
“Did you have the injury when you made the reservation?” they ask us at the reception desk, wondering who would come to a Yoga Center with a broken leg. (A desperate couple, that’s who!) Another eye roll dollar please.
In a moment of humor, my husband jabs that he is going to tell the “Love, Sex & Intimacy” presenters how unkindly I’ve felt about his injury. I counter with the threat to reveal his attraction to “suffering.” But there are too many of us at the workshop for tattle time. 13 pairs in all.
The rest of us lean comfortably in seat jacks with yoga cushions on the floor while my disabled partner sits above me in a banquet chair, maneuvering his cast for comfort. (Eye roll.)
Publically we share why we came. There are at least two newly married couples, another newly parenting, a dating pair, and a seasoned bunch like us with 20 or more years under their yoga straps.
Interestingly enough, a single man– attractive, newly divorced and wanting to get a better handle on the stuff of successful relationships– sits smack in the middle of the room. At the end of the weekend, he leaves with a bag of books to bring back to Wall Street.
There is a woman attending solo too. Her partner of 30 years was unwilling to accompany her (other spouses admit to being dragged here.) During our face to face activities, this solo woman is partnered up with the single Trader. As an added variable, she is a Lesbian. At the end of their assigned and awkward partnership, she jokes that she’s taking him home. We all relieve ourselves with laughter.
Another same sex couple is among us too, and they blend right in with the generic heterosexual partners, leaving me feeling hopeful about the future of love.
We are a hopeful bunch. But jaded just the same. All of us have been together long enough to know that relationships are complex, and over the course of the weekend, each shares a bit about the “grind” of the his or her particular challenges.
There are surprisingly only 3 times when we are asked to speak directly to our partner. The first requires us to face each other, close our eyes, and hold up fingers to assess our satisfaction with the intimacy in the relationship. One guy is relieved to get a “one”– just for coming.
I hold a full hand up with another two fingers, blinking the latter up and down, just in case I need to better calibrate with my husband. (I don’t want him to have the “upper hand” of greater dissatisfaction.)
After lunch, the topic turns toward Sex. I joke that I hope we aren’t using fingers this time, only to find out that–Yes, in fact, we are. With a flushed face, I whisper to Casey, “Let’s hide our fingers between us.” I don’t want the presenters (or any peek-ers) to see into our bedroom. (We calibrate this time without any blinking.)
On our last morning together, there are no fingers at all. Only hearts. And tears. And grown men crying.
Once again, we are asked to turn toward our partner, but this time– with open eyes.
We are each given 10 minutes to tell the other what it was that we love and appreciate.
Linda Bloom, our co-presenter, goes first. She and her husband humbly “model” the process for the rest of us. There isn’t a dry eye in the room when she finishes telling Charlie just how and why she’s loved him through the past 40 years. It wasn’t always pretty. (I make a mental note to buy both their books.)
When it’s time for the rest of us to turn toward our partners with ten minutes of love, I quickly scamper out for a bathroom break. I’m joined by a handful of tissue clutching women doing the same.
With a deep breath, I return to the room, running back to the entrance to kick off my flip flops, and take my seat beside Casey. He’s arranged us by the post in two seat jacks. He patiently waits while I re-arrange mine–again and again– to create the best angle for eye contact–And privacy–And delay. Public vulnerability is not my strength.
Casey goes first, and I find my eyes shamefully stinging–not with gratitude, but with bitterness. He offers genuine love and appreciation for who I am, but I have felt him diminished in the face of my strength for too long, and it hurts.
A watershed of emotion at the bridge of his forehead threatens to break the dam of his resistance; and I realize that it has been he who has been withholding love, not just me.
When my own 10 minutes of professed love come, I can’t help but scan the room to find faces awash with grief and tenderness. As I begin to acknowledge what it is that I love about this man beside me–his tender lips, his willingness, the combined strength and vulnerability of his throat– I am shaken by an unusual sound.
I pause. And listen. It stops me again. Is it laughter?
No. Someone is sobbing. I try to regain my focus, but this sound of anguish takes hold of me.
The session ends shortly after and I exit quickly to avoid the additional intimacy of goodbyes. Saturated, I return to our room to pack, only to find that it has surprisingly grown in size.
At lunch, I collect whomever I see from the class to join us in the corner of the dining hall– The guy from Wall Street. The couple married just a year. The other married a lifetime.
“Did you hear the crying?” one man asks.
“Yes!” I say, “I didn’t know what it was.“
“It was the young couple,” he says. “The ones that left the baby behind.“
“She must have been so touched by his words,” I say.
“No,” he replies. “It wasn’t the wife. It was the husband.”
We all gulp, knowing what it is to have love brushed aside in the face of early parenting, each carrying the scars of the ways in which we’ve felt unloved and unappreciated.
After everyone has gone, I linger at our table, soaking up the bouyant energy of the room. I’m not ready to leave our time here. I began this day in such darkness, dreaming that I had prepared my best turkey soup only to store it in a garbage disposal where it went bad before I could share it with my family.
I ponder this dream as I look out over the Berkshires while a pair of crows circles above.
Casey limps out beside me.
The way before us is still jagged and I don’t know what will come. I only know that we’re reaching for the BIG LOVE.
The kind that makes grown men cry.
Kelly Salasin
(To read more posts on the subject of Intimacy, begin here: with 82 Pages Till Sex.)
No comments:
Post a Comment