Leaving each other alone
November 2, 2010
A couple of days ago, Andrew Cohen gave another teaching on relationships in the context of Evolutionary Enlightenment. Everything he said would be worth writing about, but I want to pull out one particular point, that I have been thinking about, struggling with and appreciating a lot lately. He said, and I am paraphrasing in my own words, that because in Evolutionary Enlightenment a lot of emphasis is placed on strong and deep relationships between women with other women and men with other men, and because the foundation of trust is the most important aspect of any relationship, you can, as a couple, leave each other alone.
When I got together with R, in the context of Andrew’s teaching, I decided that I would resist the temptation to get into any psychological discussions, analysis or interpretation. This has been a very powerful stand – not that I do it perfectly, or that it might even be interesting at times, but there is no comparison to how obsessed I was in previous relationships about figuring out where my partner or I were coming from, what our motives were and why etc. etc. Thankfully, the teaching provides a very different foundation and even more luckily, we are both committed to them.
Still, holding myself to this decision can be hard – the past few days I felt like the habit of compulsively wanting to improve on R, or spin intricate theories about how he is and why he does what he does, was literally burning itself out in me. All I could do was hold still while this desire was raging on and on. Maybe this is how a guy feels when he doesn’t pursue that attractive women at the party, I thought to myself. Then it dropped. And everything looked different, especially R and myself.
