Intimacy by Rabbi Irwin

Jan 23 late afternoon

I was waiting for my pedicure and was browsing thru my BB and found this excerpt from Rabbi Irwin on Intimacy.

Intimacy by Rabbi Irwin
Intimacy is a never ending dance between loneliness and connection, expectation and disappointment; hot sex and boring sex. There is the greatest risk of loss and the greatest hope for gain.

Marriage, or any close relationship, is a place where you learn about your self - your shadows and your light. Its a place of commandment and trangression. Its a place whereby we are meant to wrestle with ourselves, as well as our loved ones, in order to give birth to a new world.

Its a place that can withstand your brokenness.
We choose a lover in order to fill up something inside us, to find the flesh of our flesh, and we project onto that person, our greatest hope. This is also true with children and friendship, but with romantic love, the bubble is much bigger and likely to pop.
Unless we genuinely helped each other by challenging and being challenged, we cannot continue to feel that oneness.

The real work of intimacy comes when romantic (automatic) love ends and intentional love begins when we leave the garden of eden.

Continuing and maintaining that newness and passion, we must reveal more and more of ourselves and unveil more and more of the other person. We must feel vulnerable and exposed in order to keep love alive.

Blame is a big part of every relationship; its a primal protective device, a shield against vulnerability.

When we hide parts of who we are from our lover, we just ensure that it is not the full me that is being loved. And so love ends up feeding our doubt about the relationship.

We yearn for a person with whom we can be vulnerable and yet be embraced. We long for a place that can tolerate the inevitable turbulence, disruption, anxiety and anguish. We want to feel cherished and celebrated as well

There is no such thing as great love, only great loving, a never-ending process of learning about oneself and each other.

We also need to sweat the small stuff, especially when pettiness threatens to pulls us apart.

We learn to support our lovers, whether silently, or in words or actions, to help them discover themselves in the emotional storm. We are in a dance of perpetual discovery.

Soul
What a great summation! The scary part was the the inevitable turbulence, disruption, anxiety and anguish.
I no longer want to participate in the drama that resulted from resistance.

I will be on my terms, the whole of me. No longer hiding any parts of myself.