Marriage Tips

Ann K Gryczan

​Recently I heard a talk on geopolitical dynamics, and at one point, the speaker used his marriage as an analogy. He said his wife was good at making concessions and he was good at pushing for them – and so the marriage worked.

How bleak, I thought. That would be like never getting to go home. But judging from what I hear in the changing-room at yoga, playing out one or the other side of that dynamic in a marriage is not all that uncommon!

​True Love

Here is how it is at my house: I do everything I can to make my husband happy, to help him fulfill his goals and make his life easier – even if he doesn’t know I have done it. And he does the same for me.

Shouldn’t marriage be like that? Like getting to move in with your very best friend? Your true love? Shouldn’t it be a place you know you can relax and be safe? Where you know your friend has your back?

It is like that once the marriage has turned to gold – but almost every marriage starts out with at least some lead.

Marriage is a container and upon entering it you and your beloved begin the alchemical process of turning that lead to gold.

The Real Agreements

This is where most of us get tripped up in marriage, especially in the beginning. The alchemy starts with the unconscious agreement we make with our beloved that comes due when we say “I do.”

Do you know about that agreement? It can be easy to miss since it is unconscious, so here is how it works:

• First we agree to enter the container called “marriage.”
• Next, we each project upon the other everything hidden, unresolved or wounded within us.

Essentially what we’re doing is putting on the table everything that is not love or is in the way of love. That is the lead.

• Now in the final part of the agreement, our beloved takes on and acts out everything we have put on the table, that is, all the wounded, hidden and incomplete aspects of ourselves. We do the same for him or her.
  
  

Now begins the alchemy. One of the symbols of alchemy is a wolf in the oven and some of the stages the wolf goes through are dissolution, combustion, coagulation and separation. Being married can definitely feel all those ways! But ultimately is conjunction – that is the gold. That is the return to ourselves, the healing and resolution through which we become love (our true nature) and therefore, able to love another and to be loved.

Marriage Tips

Right now, if you are married, you might feel there is at least some lead in the relationship – that all is not gold. So here are some ground rules as you go through this powerful process. Following these rules will help you not get stuck in the lead for too long (or forever).

• Always speak to and treat your beloved with respect.
• Never get even (even when it’s your turn).
• Never speak badly of your husband or wife to others – with disdain, scorn or ridicule, for example. (This also seems not uncommon as borne out by the yoga changing-room!)
• Never divulge to others (even your sister or intimate friends) anything private about your beloved or your relationship.
• Realize that you are responsible for everything that shows up in the relationship, including your husband or wife behaving horribly.
  
  You are not responsible for his or her behavior, of course, but for the fact of it showing up in your life. Here, we ask ourselves, What is this doing in my life? Essentially, we are taking responsibility for our projections and that allows us to find the corresponding piece within us that fits with the outer experience. Resolving that piece – or even just being aware of it – leads to knowing how to eliminate its expression from our lives.

Not Married?

Marriage is special in the way that it intensifies the alchemy of life. Because just being in life is also alchemy: we project onto life everything we are – the gold and the lead – and life dutifully becomes that face.

In marriage the alchemy really starts when we say “I do” in front of God, our family and the world – that is why just living together doesn’t work the same way. When we marry we know (at least at some level) that we are the wolf in the oven; we are trapped and that is by our own design.
 
Marriage makes us aware that we can’t walk away (so easily anyway). In life, we can’t walk away either – not really. When we try it, our projections show up in spades right around the next corner. So, married or not, our relationships and lives can profit from the same basic ground rules we use for marriage:

• Always speak to and treat others with respect.
• Never get even.
• Never speak badly of others.
• Honor the privacy of your relationships.
• Realize that you are responsible for everything that shows up in your life, including your perception of the world.

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All this may seem to be about how to treat the world and others, but it is really about ourselves because when we follow the way of love we are actually healing within us whatever is in the way of love.

So in marriage, we start with love, we cultivate it, attend to it and continuously nourish its growth, because that is the essential power and inspiration we need to work out all the rest.