Love's Edge: Why Relationships Fail and How to Fix Them

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
     -Dylan Thomas

This is an idea I am passionate about and have been thinking about for years now, so I am happy to finally begin to share it. The question is what is at the heart, the center, the core truth, of why love relationships fail. And I am only thinking of relationships where two people truly have love for one another. If there is love, then where does it go wrong?

The answer is simple, though resolving it is not. The answer is what I call Love's Edge. Love's Edge is the line inside us between where we love ourselves, and where we don't. I experience it and witness it more like an over and under, or outside and inside. On top or outside, we love ourselves, and down deeper and deeper inside we still love ourselves, and then, somewhere in there the love stops, and we reach a place at our core where we don't love ourselves. We all have it. Some of us have touched that core, and worked to heal it, and may have experienced great love and bliss for ourselves in a moment of truth. But for all of us it is still in our bodies, and is a life's worth of work to heal.

So here is what happens in love relationships: We fall in love, and get closer and closer. The love deepens. The love penetrates further into us. The other person sees more of us, loves more of us. At some point, their love for us reaches the edge of our love for ourselves. This is the moment when relationships get into trouble. All relationships reach a crisis at the point when our lover loves us more than we love ourselves. 

When the relationship reaches Love's Edge, there are three basic reactions. We can either fight, flee, or hunker down. These are the possible strategies of a person who is cornered. Fighting might show up as defensiveness, or direct and unexpected attacks. Fleeing is usually disconnecting from the relationship by cutting it off. Hunkering down is emotionally growing cold or becoming stoic.

Many strange dynamics arise at Love's Edge. One curious one is when the person whose edge has been reached begins to distrust their lover. The lover then tries even harder to make them feel loved, and the distrust worsens, which is usually mysterious to the lover. "If I could just love you enough, you would trust me," they think. And the more they try, the worse it gets, in a downward spiral. Why? Well, what is the person at their edge thinking? It can go something like, "You say you love me, but I know the truth. The truth is that I am not lovable, so you are lying." What they believe to be the truth about themselves, and what their lover are saying, are incongruous. So they conclude that their lover is lying, not that they are living with an untruth inside.

What is the way out? The fourth option when cornered is surrender. The only way out is to acknowledge our edge, and work with it. After all, we are in relationship to get to Love's Edge, so we can see it, and heal it. 

When a relationship is in crisis, it is a great starting point to ask, "How am I not loving myself right now?". I always find it wonderfully freeing and a great relief when I ask the question, and find it in myself. Because then I can clear out the old pain a little more, and feel more fully the love that I am and the warm glow of the love my lover is giving me. We live thinking down deep inside we know the truth of who we are, and we develop strategies to hide that truth, but it is an untruth, or even a lie. The truth---that we are pure love---always sets us free because the real truth is always beautiful. The real truth is always beautiful.

So again, the way out of the crisis is to first acknowledge Love's Edge inside us. This is the key from which all else follows. It may be the hardest part. It gets easier the more experiences we have of acknowledging it and going through the process where we get relief at the end. Then the next time is not so scary, since we know the way to happiness is by crossing this scary edge.  The second step is to notice when we hit it, and be able to say "This is me not loving myself". The third step is to take the knowledge that Love's Edge is at best an illusion that has been created inside us through something painful we lived through as we grew up, and at worst a huge lie, and carry it with us as a light into the darkness of the places where we don't love ourselves, the places we got hurt, and use it to power the courage we may need to face those old painful places.

And what better time and place to do our healing work than with someone who truly sees us, truly loves us? That is relationship at its best. That is what we are all here to do. So do not go gentle into that good night. Go with the grace of knowing who you truly are. And take your lover with you.

How to let go of your anger and find forgiveness and peace

Lately I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness. I had a good moment recently where my heart really opened, and I found a path to letting go of my anger, and finding peace. Here is what I found:

If you are angry at someone, and find you cannot forgive them, it is because you cannot see the pain they are in. You cannot see the pain inside them that led them to act in a way that hurt you. When you see the pain inside them, you will see the truth of them. You will witness the truth of their pain, you will be filled with a tremendous sadness. Your heart will open, and you will experience compassion. In this moment you will find forgiveness and your anger will dissipate. You will no longer want to make them understand what they did to you, and you will know longer want to retaliate. You will love them and set them free. The truth shall set you free. You will experience relief from your own anxiety created by your resentment, as well as the pain they inflicted upon you.

Not that seeing the origin of their motivation excuses it, for it is still an unacceptable way to live, but you will find forgiveness. Most importantly,  you will be at peace.

What is so freeing about seeing the negative beliefs someone is acting from is that you know it’s not true. You know they are lovable, or whatever the positive version of their negative belief is. And that is the sadness: seeing that someone is walking through their life carrying such a painful thought inside themselves that is a lie. To you, their painful belief is clearly untrue. They got it stuck in their heads way back somewhere when they were just a little boy or girl, when someone did something out of their own pain and the child thought it was about them, and formed this belief about who they are. Or aren’t. So when you are at peace again, it is your job to hold them only in the light of what you know is true about them: release them from their painful belief by forgiving them, otherwise you hold them there with your resentment, and reflect to them the love that they truly are and you have for them.

What will the truth look like? It will take the form of an underlying belief that they carry. This belief will be a variation of one of the many self-negating things we say to ourselves. In relationships, it often looks like “I do not believe you truly love me.” Underneath that is a belief that has nothing to do with you, but just about them, like “I am not loveable, worth loving, or deserving of love.” Out of this belief, things that happen that bring up the pain of this belief will be turned into a victim vignette, about how “you did something to me”.

The truth will look something like this: “When you got mad at me and called me names, what is true is that when I did not meet you at the time I said I would, you took this as evidence that I do not love you, which is a fear that you carry all the time, because you do not really believe that I could love you, because you do not believe that you are worth loving. That makes me very sad, so I love you and forgive you.”

When someone hurts you, it is impossible in the moment to not be hurt by them. That is, if you are in any kind of love connection with them, where your heart is open to them, especially for nurturance, then you will be vulnerable to their attack. This is the nature of relationship. You cannot be open to receiving love (in the form of tender words and physical contact, validation, encouragement) and be immune from their devaluations of you (physical and verbal attacks, dismissiveness, bullying). This is how it is. Do no seek to be immune from anyone in your life who loves you.

Here is what you can do: breathe, slow down, feel the pain, don’t respond. You have just been hurt. As soon as you can, find the peace of mind to see the pain they are in. That means that you say to yourself “here is the truth”, and then speak to yourself the truth of what is going on inside them at the level of the painful beliefs they carry. Forget about for the moment what their aggression brought up in you. First you must release them from your anger and resentment and bring you to a calm place. Then you can look inwards and see how their aggression hooked to some painful belief in yourself. When you see what it is, speak to yourself the truth of your painful beliefs. Then speak the truth of not the lie of your painful belief, but the truth of who you are, the love that you truly are. And speak it of the person that hurt you too. Then you will be free.

Note the difference between acting the victim and being victimized. The first is a lie created to blame others for your pain, while the second is the truth about how you have been subject to another’s violence. When someone acts with violence towards you you are victim. You really have been hurt. Your heart or body was open and therefore vulnerable, and you got hurt. It may be true also that they dug into an old wound of yours, but that does not deny the violence you experienced, only intensifies it. The lie arises when acts that are not violent bring up old feelings of pain in you, with associated painful beliefs, and you say that someone has just hurt you---when you are playing the victim, you cannot distinguish between someone else acting out their pain resulting in violence towards you, or your own pain that arises because you are already in pain. That is key: when you are playing the victim, it is because you are already in pain, and you interpret non-violent acts through the vision of your pain. When you are victimized, it is someone elses pain raining down upon you. 

When someone is hurting you, they are acting from the part of them that was hurt by someone else, likely a long, long time ago. Set them free by speaking the truth---at first to yourself, so that you can find forgiveness and peace. And then you will find you can act from the truth and love them in the way they deserve, and may have been waiting for their whole life.

Forgiveness

Last week I was feeling terrible that I had failed, or worse, that I was a failure. I was having a hard time forgiving myself. I was saying, “You did the best you could, it was a hard situation, don’t beat yourself up.” I was feeling foolish for having gone ahead with a plan that seemed like a good idea at the time (a great idea, in fact), and it fell far short of the mark, costing me money, instead of making it. The plan was that I would spend money to make bases for my sculptures in an exhibit I was having and then I would sell the bases. The bases would be cool pieces of furniture, and the art would make them even more attractive and saleable⎯I would make money not from my art, but using the art to sell furniture. I felt so clever. When the plan didn’t work, my thoughts went something like this:

“What was I thinking? I had way too much on my plate, there was no time for this plan to work. What kind of fantasy was I having? Especially since I wasn’t allowed to sell anything in the gallery anyway (it was a museum). I am such a fool for going ahead with a plan when I knew there was a big barrier in the way. More fantasy! What is wrong with me? You just buried your head in the sand, and made a bad decision.”

And then my voice says this:

“You did the best you could.”

Well, that certainly didn’t feel any better. It is so patronizing! What I am really saying to myself? It is not like saying it to a fireman that struggled and put his life at risk to save a child in a burning building and he wasn’t able to, or an athlete that runs flat out and finishes last. In these cases, it is really honoring what they did do. When the mayor or the coach says, “You did the best you could”, it feels great, because they are saying something like, “You were in your full power. We honor you for the power that you are. We share your sadness and frustration that there are forces and people stronger than you.”

When I say it to myself, I am not honoring myself. Imagine the fireman who walks up to a fire and says, “Whoa, it’s too hot in there! I could get hurt”, and walks away. Now what does he think when the parent of the child says, “You did the best you could”? What does the parent really want to say? Probably something like “You’re selfish”. No honor.

So what I am saying to myself is, “You are a fool.” Not so nice. I am not just saying that my wisdom fell short (which might be true, just like the athlete that finished last), but that somehow I am less-than, or unworthy. This is the place of judgment. I am diminishing myself.

Why do I start to judge myself? Why don’t I just think that I really needed a bit more wisdom, that I was operating at my capacity, and that was all I had? Because the swirly mucky feeling in my belly tells me something else is going on. When I don’t know what the muck is, I think I am muck. And when I look at someone else, and I see something mucky going on, and I don’t understand it, I think they are the muck I see.

So how do I forgive myself? How do I forgive others?

Forgiveness comes about from understanding. Understanding what? That a person did the best they could? No, not really. What I need to understand is my judgment, and how to see beyond it.

When we judge, here’s what we don’t get: that everything the person we are judging did originated from a positive intent. Everything they did was taking care of someone. Yes, they may have been taking care of themselves, but not in a way that we might call selfish (that’s judgmental). They were truly trying to love and be loved in the midst of all of their fear and pain. So what we really don’t get is that they were in pain.

Compassion arises for anyone we see in pain. If we don’t get that they are in pain, we don’t have any compassion. How can I be compassionate to someone I think is being a jerk? I think that they just are a jerk. And no one is a jerk. Just ask them. I am sure they will tell you that they are not.

Here’s the thing:
Everyone at all times is acting from a positive intent.

The shift is to stop thinking that people do bad things. Try thinking of how they are doing something positive for themselves. Try asking “How are they taking care of themselves?”. It may not work out so well for you or for them, but underneath it all somewhere every action arises from taking care of themselves. And because of this, everyone wants to be honored for everything they do. Not just some things, but everything, because way down inside they see how they are doing a good job. Somewhere deep inside, everyone really believes “I did the best I could”, in the way the fireman that tried to save a child did. Some readers might want to argue that I don’t know what people believe way down inside, positive intent and good jobs and all. That may be true, so let me drop any philosophy and talk about what we experience, something that is hard to argue with. To put it simply, the heart of the matter, the place where judgment falls away and forgiveness begins, is this:

Everyone wants to be loved for everything they do.

So what is the truth about what I was doing when I didn’t sell the statue bases? The truth is that I was afraid to fail. Nothing wrong with that, right? Failing can be rather uncomfortable. But what got in my way was the fear that when I failed, I would confirm what I already felt inside: that I am nothing. As long as I avoid failure, I never have to touch the place of nothingness deep inside. A good way to avoid failure is not to try. So I was trying to take care of my inner pain by not following through. Rather than being weak and foolish, I was coming from a place of wisdom and strength: Find ways to not do anything that would poke at my old pain. I figured out a really good way to do that! Sure, it doesn’t end up so good in the end, but I was coming from a place of positive intent. Then I can just say “Oh, Cosmo, I see what you are doing. I see how you were taking care of your pain. I see your wisdom and your strength in protecting that injury.” And it almost worked. I almost escaped feeling like a failure by blaming things like “there was to much to do” and “there were rules that limited me”. But the blame inside still felt yucky, so I didn’t escape. But I can really honor how I was operating at the limits of my wisdom. It may be the wisdom of a 5-year-old, but I was still powerful in it.

And there is so much forgiveness in seeing the truth. I can just say to myself, with a little laugh, “You are still doing that? That old one bit me in the ass again! You don’t need to do that anymore. You know that you are not nothing, you know and can feel the love and light that you are!”. I know the love and light that I am. Yet it’s still old patterns in my body. Ha ha!

So imagine that when someone hurts you, the pain they are experiencing inside must be even greater. See that they just are in pain. There is not judgment in this. There is no beating them up for what they did. It is just the clearest possible description. It is just what is. It is just the closest thing we can get to the truth.

You cannot escape your perfection

In every moment you make a decision that is the best one you can come up with, given all of the information you have, all of your wisdom, all of your love and joy, and all of your pain. It may not work out the way you intended, or expected, or hoped for, and you may wish you had made a “better” decision, or you may think you “should” have made a different choice. When you do that, you diminish yourself for your decision. In looking back in time, you see yourself as less than perfect. And you may think “I could have made a better choice”. Leaving aside the question of “better” or worse choices, let us say what you meant was “I could have made a different choice that would have gotten me the result I wanted”. What I want to tell you is that you couldn’t have, or else you would have. Yes, the possibility of other choices existed, and you were either unaware of them, or chose alternates. Yet in the moment of your making that choice, it seemed like a good idea. Even if you had uncertainty about the outcome, it was still your best shot: you evaluated the limited information in front of you, mixed in your fear, added a dash of your passion, and chose. You are a scale that weighs all that is in you and in front of you, and you cannot be other than you are in that moment. In that is your perfection, and the perfection of your decisions.

Many people reading this will protest, “But it was a terrible decision. People died.” It is essential to separate how you feel about yourself from the results of your actions. You are no more or less lovable when something doesn’t work out than at the moment you made the decision. Your actions may have dire consequences. You may need to be accountable for the results, meaning you take action to repair the damage. Yet you are no less perfect. You do not deserve to be punished. You still deserve to be loved just as much. And that starts with you not punishing yourself, and loving yourself. You can still hold yourself in love and take care of the mess you may have made. It is still possible to love someone and see them in their perfection while you demand they clean up the mess they may have made.

Everyone’s intention in making a decision is to make a good one. Try to make a bad decision right now. A bad decision might be to pull my hair until it hurts. So here I go, pulling my hair as I write, and it hurts. That was a bad idea! But there is a part of me that went on the scale of my decision that thought this is a good idea. Or I wouldn’t have done it. And that is the trap of my perfection. I cannot make a bad decision without thinking it’s a good idea to make that bad decision. I am stuck always making decisions, that on balance, I believe are good decisions. I cannot escape making what I believe are good decisions. I cannot escape my perfection.

By perfection, I do not mean that I am evaluating the merit of your decisions. Our generally accepted meaning of perfection is that ones actions lead to results we want. That is, I set a goal, I make decisions and take actions to reach that goal, and if I reach that goal, then I am (closer to) perfect. The judgment of my perfection is not handed down until the results of everything I have done are in. This leaves me at best in limbo, at worst believing that I am not perfect, that I am undeserving and unworthy, that I am not good enough.

The confusion arises from associating myself with the evaluation of my skill. Skill is the ability to reach a goal. A skilled carpenter can build a house exactly as planned. If the house falls down, then they are not a good carpenter, and would be well-advised to do something else other than build houses. The carpenter stands a good chance of feeling badly⎯not just about how the house didn’t work out and its consequences, but about themselves. It may be hard at the end of the day to accept and receive love. Yet they may have felt great while they were building the house, and been able to receive love. Then this shifts when the house comes down. We may not want to love them either. Thus, our love is conditional.

Yet if we recognize that each person is making the only decision possible for them in that moment, that they are truly trapped in making good decisions, then we can let go of deciding whether or not to love them based on the outcome, and room for unconditional love grows. We cannot escape always being worthy and deserving of unconditional love.

If we truly understand how all the people around us, especially our parents, are trying to love us while managing not loving themselves, and we can see the perfection in their decisions, not judging them based on how poorly things worked out for us, then our compassion can flow, and then our acceptance, and then our forgiveness. And then we can know and feel that we are loved, that we are loveable, and that simply, we are love.

Have you ever?

Have you ever stopped and sat with yourself when the dark side of the moon comes up?

Have you ever laughed into the abyss?

Have you ever died, shattering into a thousand pieces, only to find yourself alive, more than you had ever thought possible?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and cried out "Fuck you!"?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and said "Yes!"?

Have you ever stood at the top of the mountain and said "Look out world, here i come!"?

Have you ever lost yourself in a blade of grass, or snowflake, or the color orange?

Have you ever found yourself as a little boy or girl, and told him or her that he or she matters? And then found out that you don't matter, that nothing matters, that there is no mattering, that nothing matters any more or any less than anything else, that everything just is, and because of that you are perfect?

Have you ever run naked in the surf?

Have you ever run naked at dawn, screaming and spinning because you are dying and coming alive, all at the same time?

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a dying man and still felt your joy in the midst of your powerlessness and your grief?

Have you ever danced like no one is watching?

Have you ever danced like everyone is watching, and reveled in it?

Have you ever eaten a strawberry as slowly as you can?

Have you ever failed and said "Woohoo!"?

Have you ever had the feeling you are in love, and there is no one there but you?

Have you ever shouted at the full moon "I don't know what i am doing!" and felt her kisses on your face?

Have you ever walked, upright and striding, going nowhere, and let a smile cross your lips?

Have you ever played hooky when it rained?

Have you ever called in sick from work on a sunny day and gone to the beach by yourself?

Have you ever listened to your ancestors say “You must cry for us,” and said “No, I am not your sorrow,” and then cried for them anyway, because you are, in fact, the one they have all been waiting for?

Have you ever drank champagne from someone’s lips?

Have you ever worn two different colored socks, hoping someone would notice, and laugh?

Have you ever said “Thank you”, and meant it?

Have you ever said “No,” and been filled with the light of the sun?

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a child, and thought, “Looking into your eyes, and seeing your light, is my favorite thing to look at in the whole world,” and then told them?

Have you ever let someone love you more than you love yourself, without heading for the hills, beating them back, or crawling under a rock?

What would you do if a butterfly came to die on your doorstep?

I walked out of my house today. At the bottom of the stairs on the grey cement sidewalk lay a butterfly. The butter yellow of its Monarch wings was hard to miss. It wasn’t moving, just sitting there, its wings splayed. I approached the butterfly slowly. At this distance I could see all the details of its wings: yellow panes of stained glass, outlined in black, with a row of vibrant blue dots at the back edge, and two burnt orange O’s at the end of his tail. I lay down with him on the sidewalk. We are shielded from view of the street by my MG. We are huddled behind the old chrome spoke wheel.

“Have you brought me a message?” I ask the butterfly. No answer. I reach out my hand, putting my finger in front of him. He crawls right onto my hand. He sits awhile, then flits of my fingers, hovers in front of me, then flops on the ground, upside down. I help him right himself, and he crawls back onto my hand. I sit on the lowest step, a butterfly on my finger.

He is so magnificent! The colors are so striking, his black body with yellow racing stripes of hair, his wings with swaths of deep color and smatterings like a comet’s tail. And he is dying.
My first impulse is to save him. “What do you need?” I ask him. He is weak. Water? Sugar water? Perhaps I can take him inside and make him some honey water.

Can I take him inside? Will he fly away? Will he get lost in my house? How can I mix his drink and hold him too? Can I save him? It is all so hard.

Then a message comes to me. Let go. Just be. Just love. If this butterfly has come to die, then be with him while he dies. Stop trying to save everything. A warmth spreads through my chest. My stomach relaxes.

Yet am I willing to just sit and let a butterfly die? Oh, how my heart aches just sitting here, my legs ache to move to do something. “You do not have to save me,” the butterfly says. “You have to save you.”

So I sit and love the butterfly and let him die. For a moment, he flops off my finger, tumbling on the sidewalk, heading under the car. “No! Not that way!” I say, and reach out my hand for him. He rests again. “I’ll take you to the garden now.”

I stand and carry him up the stairs. As I open the front door, he starts to crawl up my arm. By the time I go out the back door, he is on my shoulder. I can just see him out of the corner of my eye. I walk down the stairs to the garden and I sit in a chair. He flaps his wings, and he is so close I can hear it.

I take him in my hand again, and we sit and sit. He is very still. Sometimes I see the lower end of his body pulsate, and I know he is still alive. Or his proboscis, curled under his head, will move, as if he is breathing. He lowers his head, resting it on my finger. His legs are splayed. “Now he is dying,” I think, and I wonder how long it will take. Perhaps when I am truly able to let go, he will pass. His wings flap once and he is still. I think “That was it. He is gone.”

And then my butterfly moves again. He is not dead. And I feel a tinge of disappointment. I wanted that moment. I wanted to be here when he dies. I wanted to be the one to hold him in his passage. I wanted to tell the story of the butterfly that came to die in my hands, and how I did it. I want to tell the story of how he knew this was a good place to die, how he could see how loving I am, and how magical I am that butterflies come to me to die. And if he had lived and I had fed him how I could tell the story how powerful I am that I healed a butterfly. Either way I am not here, but writing the story of my being here, and how amazing I am.

So just be. Just love this butterfly. Let him live or die. And let me be able to walk away at any time without a great ending. I do not matter that much.

My heart is so filled with love for this creature. How wonderful to be sitting here with this beautiful creature in my hand! It is drizzling now, and I see drops of mist bounce off his wings. It is so much easier. Being and loving. To love so fully is to stop doing anything, and trying to matter so much.

I lift him to a small flower potted on the table. It is rich purple, and open like a small orchid. He walks right onto the flower. I think he is going to eat. But he keeps walking, and leaps off the top of the flower. He flies gracefully up and up. He alights on top of the redwood fence at the garden’s end. I imagine he is exhausted again. I miss him. I want to hold him. I reach up to the top of the fence and before I can come near, he flies off, and lands on a tall bush, out of reach. He folds his wings in the rain.

I think of my mother and father. They are coming close to the end of their lives. I watch them struggle, my mother silently, my father louder and louder. Big things have not worked out as planned. I want to struggle with them, to save them. I want them to be the way I want them to be, so I can be loved the way I want to be loved. Now, I just hold them gently on the tips of my fingers. I walk back up the stairs, and close the door.

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Holding On, Letting Go

Have you ever had a relationship end, and the pain of it persists and is pervasive? It can be both excruciating and exhausting. Or have you managed to move on, and then you get an email from them, and it sends you into a tail spin?

What is in the way of moving on? What keeps that wound from closing?

The answer can be quite simple: The pain is how you continue a relationship with them. In every moment when you feel the pain of the relationship, you are in a relationship with them. You are thinking of them, feeling them, experiencing them. You may even have conversations or arguments with them in your head. There is a part of you that hasn’t let go. There is a part of you that is holding them desperately. There may be a part of you that needs something, and is still trying to get it. And that part would rather feel the pain than lose them.

The way to let go is to not let go. Let yourself hold them tightly, for this is what you want to do. Hold onto that pain. Hold it just long enough until you can see that part of yourself that needs them. It will most likely be you as a child. They are hungry for love, and without that relationship, are cut off from their lifeline. They are probably feeling unlovable, and depended on that relationship to avoid feeling this. In unlovable, they have attached themselves to someone else to feel lovable. And the pain of living in a dead relationship is less than the pain of feeling unlovable, for it is an intense, rich feeling. It may be preferable to feeling one’s own emptiness and worthlessness.

When you can see your inner child, find your heart, because you are a loving person, and have given many people in your life love, and love them. Let them have your heart. Bathe them in your love. Talk to them. Try telling them, “I have what you need right here,” and let them feel your heart, swim in the warmth of your love. Tell them what they have been waiting a long time to hear.

Then you will remember the love that you are. Then you can let go.