Listen to a story of gratitude
June interviews Sunny on the benefit of her X!
For those of you who would like to read along and listen to Sunny's story...
I have a theory that we are sexually attracted to people who have qualities that we need to develop in ourselves, and so I have a history of being attracted to, to men, at particular phases of my life that mirror to me who I need to become next. So If I’m undisciplined, I find someone that’s unbelievably disciplined. If I’m board I find someone exciting. If I’m in the sexual phase I find someone who’s incredibly affectionate. So when I found my husband, I, I was totally self-sufficient in that I was living in an alternative community, on 40 acres of land, I was growing my own food, I was baking my own bread, I was making my own money, I built my own home. I was happy and I was self-contained.
He was charismatic, independent, fun-loving, kind and absolutely dangerous. Now I wasn’t longing for danger when I met him because I was in a pretty routine life. Living in the, you know living close to nature out in country, with close friends.
He was dangerous in the way my father was dangerous. He, he lived in the moment. He never saved money. He spent, if we went to the store to buy food and we were going to select jam he would get the 8 dollar jam even if we only had 25 dollars to our name. And when I would point that out to him he’d say “But that’s the best one”.
So there was something that he was mirroring to me about living bigger, about living more dangerously and less safe. About being enticed to, to flirt with living on the edge.
When I say he reminded me of my father, I say that because my father was a compulsive gambler, he lost our house when we were a, when I was a child, in a gambling debt and he used to, you know come home with new cars that he’d won.
So this guy was a gamble but he was a gambler with everything in every way. I dated him for three years before I married him and I adored him, I respected him, I admired him, I thought he was charming.
When I married him, I changed, he didn’t. When I married him I believed that he should fit my ideal about what a husband should dress like and act like.
I decided that his baseball caps weren’t a great image, only boys where baseball caps, not men so I put them in the wood stove and burnt them. Only to discover, only to have him educate me in a very patient way that baseball caps are worn out on the water when you are a fisherman to keep the sun out of your eyes. It’s not about the image.
Every time I attempted to crimp him down to size, I hated myself more. And I would even say out loud to him, “Don’t allow me to shrink your spirit. You are beautiful just as you are. I am just being insecure or I’m just being neurotic”. But I couldn’t stop my neurosis of attempting and wanting to control him.
He had worn torn-up raggedy jeans for three years when I dated him and I never even noticed. Once I got married, I was busy fixing them, and hemming them and then throwing them away. Because he’s an extension of me, and that’s not what my husband would dress like.
So my journey with my ex husband was a mirror for me to see how, how truly neurotic I was capable of becoming. Because I had never been married, and I had never been that way before and I’ve never been that way since because I have not remarried again, although I have been in the same relationship for 19 years now, one day at a time.
What I learned from being married for 4 years was that marriage is not for sissies. It requires vigilant communication, impeccable amount of patience and a willingness to negotiate on absolutely every little detail about life.
I concluded from my experience with him when I sent him off with my blessing to please go find someone that would not torture him. I concluded that I had no business being married. It’s not good for me. And it wasn’t that it was for him. It was the way I became as a wife. I didn’t like me. I liked me much better when I was free. I liked me much better when I was independent. And although he was willing to give me my freedom and my independence, in fact he never took it away, I gave it away the moment I put that ring on my finger, and I believe that I did that because of deep conditionings and fairytales about the prince coming to save me. And I was trying to be the perfect wife, the good wife and the wife, and I had a lot of negative associations apparently with the word, a because I lost myself when I was married and I found myself when I let him go.
We parted amicably; we parted because we both could see that my being married to him was not good for me. He liked me better before I was married to him. I liked me better than when I was married to him, I liked me better before I was married to him and after.
We have remained very dear friends. Our divorce was perfectly amicable. I am now the godmother of his child. We talk to each other at least once a month on the phone and we respect and admire and adore one another in the ways we always did before we were married to each other.
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