Can You Marry the Wrong Person & Still Be Happy?
Countdown to Love & Marriage Salon: 8 Days
Dear Beauty-Hunting Friends,
The subject of this post is positively bonkers! How can you marry the “wrong person” and be “happy”? (Please watch the video, below, that inspired this post.)
But what is the “wrong person”? What if we are the wrong person? OK, not you, but what if I am the wrong person in my relationship? In other words:
Let’s say a woman (me) meets a potential romantic partner. She has some ideas about what her marriage will be like (fun! adventuresome! easy! loving! sexy! agreeable!). Bring it in love gods, bring it, I’m ready!
Then she gets married. Ruh-roh. While there is fun and adventure and love and sexiness and agreements happening, there are also some non-fun moments, a lot of homebody-ing, a husband with 33 years of marriage under his belt who has DONE IT ALL and me with zero years of marriage wanting to DO IT ALL.
Well, fuck.
What if I am the “wrong person”, as in: I am not the desired person I wanted to be in this marriage?
And yet: don’t we all at one time or another look at our mate/date/object of affection/committed partner of decades and think: What the hell was I thinking?
Here’s my favorite WTF ❤️🔥 story
Years ago I was talking to my therapist/wise woman. This was during the first year of courtship with my eventual husband. I was adjusting to living with another human being after many, many years solo.
“What do I do with this strange creature?” I lamented. “How do I live with someone who keeps the overhead lights on, doesn’t mute the TV ads, and doesn’t want to walk and talk for hours on end? It’s all I know! And why do I toggle between this big love-hunger and then, just-like-that it’s all too much?”
My wise woman rested into her chair, cradling a cup of tea, green eyes alit. “I’m going to tell you a story.” The story: An octogenarian therapist was giving a talk on Love. One morning, the octogenarian, married for some 50 years, stood in the kitchen making tea, enjoying her solitude. So when her husband entered the room in a bathrobe, messy hair, shuffling toward her, she wasn’t excited to see him. And there was all this sleep in his eyes, a bit of drool at his mouth. Mildly revolted, she thought: WHAT WAS I THINKING?
She kept watching. Her husband lifted the kettle and poured the still-hot water into a cup. “Oh,” she thought, experiencing a sudden shift. “What beautiful hands my husband has. Such beauty in those hands. My husband. My husband is the most beautiful man in the world!”
“Really?” I said, stunned. “It’s like that?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s just like that. Love’s a real trickster.”
We were both a bit speechless and sat in the froth of the story’s wake, staring out her living room window at the lawn and willow trees, listening to the birds and the hums coming from her apartment building.
💜💋💫❤️🔥
Do you want to talk more about the trickster nature of Love & Marriage?
In eight days, the “Love & Marriage Salon” begins, and there are a few spots open for curious, open existential travelers. For the first salon, we’re going to talk about this great short (20 min) talk by philosopher Alain de Botton, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.” It’s insightful, brilliant and FUNNY. de Botton is so human, so realistic. He GETS us. One of my favorites from him:
“We think compatibility is the sign of love; compatibility is the work of love.”
Also, a funny bit about why we are all so terrible to live with; in part because we think we are terrific to live with!
Isn’t it cool that we can learn important life Things and laugh along the way?
We’ll do that in the salon as well. Laugh! Please, watch this enlightening talk, and if it seems like a convo you want to be part of; a topic you want to explore—maybe you have some beliefs and ways-of-being that you’d like to challenge, question and expand. Join us! Email me if you have questions.
Conversations change lives. No one leaves the salon the same, in the best of ways.
XOO
The Salons for Beauty Hunters are facilitated conversations among existential travelers who seek fresh ideas, more optimism, greater freedom, pleasure & presence in daily life, more fun & flourishing, and want to explore the juicier issues of being alive within a community.
Together, we enter an exploration into new frontiers and possibilities. Conversations change lives.
💥Starting May 31 💥
❤️🔥The Love & Marriage Salon
May 31 - July 5
Wednesdays, 12 - 1 pm PDT
Register here
What is a marriage? What can it be, beyond our limited (or wildest) imaginations?
How do two people share their lives, create a life together, and evolve as humans separately and together?
How can we push the edges of the relationship container and crack open to something new?
This salon is for everyone—married, unmarried, formerly married, solo-ists, thinking about it, unsure about it. The whole notion of Marriage permeates our society and culture, our beliefs, and behaviors. We’re going to get up close to all of it and break ourselves free.
Bring your questions, curiosities, an inquiring, non-judgmental mind, your sense of humor, playfulness, your eyes & ears, an open heart, and let’s see where we travel together. At the end of six weeks, you will have new ideas and insights about what is possible in the “marriage” experience, however you define it. No one leaves the salon experience unchanged. Little shifts and a-has happen, conversation by conversation. That’s the power of the group exploration.
Here’s a sample of questions and topics. Bring yours!
What if a committed relationship is the ultimate spiritual learning tool, and we know this, so that’s why we seek “marriage”? — and it’s not about security, comfort, companionship and all that jazz.
What are some of the marriage myths (must travel well together, must communicate) that we can dismantle?
What if we expected less — do we dare?
The extraordinary marriage vs the ordinary one
What if living with someone and not killing them is extraordinary
What if your spouse is perfect for you?
What happens when one day you want to do everything differently? Gulp. Now what?
Can I interest you in a little do-nothing intimacy?
What cracks you up about living with someone?
Join a group of curious, creative, warm, funny, mischievous, inquiring, open, welcoming explorers in a conversation that will change lives and our experiences of living.
Let's also consider this, from Heather Havrilesky's bold, brilliant and artful memoir, "Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage":
"Marriage is designed to break you . . . We talk about marriage like it’s just something people do, no big deal. We pretend that once you’re married, you’re either happy or unhappy, a binary system, on or off. But the truth is so much murkier and also much more frightening and exciting and joyful than that. Marriage grinds your face into the dirt until you can see new colors and taste new flavors. But you have to show up and invite it all in. You can’t hide."
Bring your questions, your curiosities, your frustrations, hopes, wildest visions of coupledom.
WHEN: Wednesdays, May 31 - July 5
TIME: 12 - 1 pm Pacific USA Time
WHERE: Zoom.
INCLUDES: Weekly email prompts
A warm, open, honest, curious, mischievous, welcoming, inquiring group.
COST: $300
$450 includes one hour-long coaching convo.Register here, and I’ll send you a payment link.
What’s a salon? A collaborative conversation that brings curious humans together to explore, learn, delight ourselves, meet new people, and expose ourselves to different ideas. Check out this history of the salon.
Email me at tatyana@everydaycreative.net to sign up and get your questions answered.