Marriage: Fire and Ice

Ann K Gryczan

Well, the last post, Marriage Tips, seemed to bring up a lot of angst, questions and ideas: What if I can’t act perfectly? What if my husband/wife has turned into a screaming Mimi? What if I did it all wrong and now it’s too late?

The Alchemy of Marriage

Remember the alchemy of marriage and the process of turning lead to gold? It may be that the whole point of marriage and life is to find the gold we are, and everyone is. But sometimes things get intense and seem hard or even impossible to get beyond.

So in this and the next few posts let’s look at some of those hard times and what you can do when you’re in one. For each example I will suggest a question you can ask yourself and an action you can take to create movement in your life and relationship. Let’s start with Fire and Ice….

First, Create the Conditions

Our success in solving any problem depends on how we approach it. It is useful to consider that whatever problems we have in our marriage are by our complete agreement and participation – even if we are not conscious of it. That is when our participation is called “projection.”

And nowhere do our projections show up more clearly than in marriage. It is easy to get stuck in them too, because by definition, projections always look like the other guy! So to solve the puzzle they represent, we need to make three assumptions:

• The ego is getting something out of whatever is going on. The ego likes to have things going on – even bad things. What is it getting right now (we ask ourselves)? It might be getting to be aggrieved, angry, special, a victim or martyr. It might be winning or controlling the environment – and no matter what else is going on, the ego at least knows it’s right. All of this, for the ego, is to continually affirm its existence and dominance.

 

• You are not the ego. You are the truth, beauty and essence of life itself but have only forgotten this for a moment. The benefit of realizing – or at least telling ourselves – that we are not the ego allows us to better see what it is doing and choose not to do it.

 

• The situation is showing you something of yourself you cannot see. Life shows us what we cannot see in ourselves – and this is always a benefit. Accept the clues! They lead to finding the gold you are.

If you assume these three things you will create the conditions to get through anything.

Hard Times and What to Do When You’re in One

ICE

Are things bleak and cold at your house? Do you and the beloved live separate lives, barely speaking? Are you equally opposing forces finally hardened into stasis?

Question: What are you afraid of? You might not feel afraid – you might feel angry or nothing at all. But look deeper, ask anyway and see what you get. Notice the very first thing the mind says or does. Write it down.

Action: Imagine this is the last hour of your last day on earth. You realize you have been holding yourself away from life, and decide, in this last hour to return.

Returning looks like this: do one thing that is love. For example, clear a communal space that is normally cluttered, reset the stones at the entrance of the house, sweep the porch. Infuse the action with love.

The action itself is only a vehicle – on its own it is empty. Use the action to cultivate the experience of love within you. Cultivate kind thoughts of your husband or wife. Remember the one you married.

The beloved will not notice (most likely); he or she will go on being silent and distant and the obstacles will still stand frozen, filling up the space between you.

The Love is for You

The love you are seeking is right here under the ice. How dry and cold you have felt without it! For what have you been holding yourself away from love? Let yourself be warmed by surrendering into love. One of you needs to let the love in, it might as well be you.

Surrender just a little and keep it private. This will start a thaw. The thaw might bring up what you are really afraid of; the hurt and anger might float to the surface. What is undone about it? Why is it still here? Ask yourself these questions.

Keep following the thaw and let it show you something you have forgotten. You have forgotten the exact same thing in your beloved.

FIRE

Is the house ready to burst into flames at any moment? Is there a lot of shouting and banging going on?

Action: Stop shouting for a moment, stop slamming and throwing things. Listen. What is the beloved saying? The beloved is still shouting. Listen closely – what is the key message? When you get the message, write it down and take some time to be with it.

Question: What is true here? Woven into all the bad behavior, the hurts, wrongs and general horribleness, find the strand that is true in what the beloved is saying.

Action: Accept responsibility and say so. Say, I’m sorry. The beloved might use this against you; he or she might get even or try to hurt you. But see what happens if you don’t even the score. Is anything true and essential within you actually harmed? Be in the imbalance and see what happens.

Practice not feeding the fire. Listen more and more deeply. You will discover something you have been afraid to know; by listening you can stand on the ground of your own being and this will help you to face it. It is just something – some ego thing – that seems scary and dangerous until you really look at it. You have been using the fire as a distraction. It is okay to go look; remember, whatever it is, the gold you are is under there too.

Changing the Dynamic

Don’t worry if you don’t see immediate results. By taking our contribution out of a difficult situation, the dynamic cannot continue in the same way. This creates shifts in which something else can happen. Something opens and we get a glimpse of the beloved, for example. This is what we’re looking for – this shows us the next step. Often the opening is in our own heart and this changes everything.

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So, how did it go? Feel free to ask a question or let me know in the comments. But if you want to email that is okay too!​