I’m reading from A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She is talking about the different forms our relationships take over time. Lindbergh describes the early stage of a relationship as “pure, simple and unencumbered. It is like the artist’s vision before he has to discipline in into a form. The relationship is free of ties, claims, and responsibilities,” it is unburdened by worries about the future. “There are no others in this perfect unity.”  The relationship is “pure and excludes the rest of life.”

As we move on together further into a relationship, life encroaches more and more into our bed of bliss. That all absorbing together-alone time is now fleeting as we’ve let the rest of life in. Lindbergh claims that overtime our personal connection with each other is replaced by functioning. Perhaps this is why some people choose an affair – they are looking for their identity that disappeared in the abyss of functioning together.  They believe a fresh start -  re-experiencing that pure relationship with someone else is necessary in order to find or feel themselves again.  Of course it is easy to find one’s identity inside such a pure relationship because it is untouched by career, kids, responsibilities, and watching him take out the trash. But the purity doesn’t last.

We may have moments of living the purity of our relationship - of what brought us together in the first place – but it is not continuous. Finding ways to be with each other and re-experience and recapture the essence that is the two of you, is essential as life disciplines your relationship into form. Protect the purity – have breakfast alone without the kids or your iPhone. Leave the laundry and go sit under the moon. Look for opportunities to steal personal moments with each other everyday. Avoid overly functioning like you would thirsting in the desert.

On living up to yourself,

Carrie