When it comes to truth telling be it to ourselves or others it is often a challenging activity. During our Relationship Alchemy circle conversations last week one subject that kept arising is: why go to all this trouble? It is not like we are talking about honesty here. The kind of truth telling we are exploring is something much more subtle and hard to pin down. Relationship Guru's Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks call this " the microscopic truth".
This is why I created the conversation structure. To make what is challenging, subtle and hard to integrate into our every day lives a little easier to do. Paradoxically using the conversation structure is in and of itself a challenge! It can seem stilted and fake when you are first giving it a whirl. What then would make all this effort worthwhile you, like the women in the circle might be asking?
As I stated a few weeks ago, I have always been a truth seeker. It is something I have prided myself on and I was especially proud of the level of honesty I had in my first marriage. There were many things I was honest about with my husband at the time that seemed to be above and beyond the normal bounds of truth telling. It wasn't until the end of our marriage though, the day I consider our last day as husband and wife that I experienced a kind of truth that changed my life forever.
On that day my husband and I took a whole day away from everyday life to look at our marriage. We went to a remote spot by a stream and stayed there from morning to night. We packed food and drinks and left behind any distractions.
We started the conversation looking at the fact that our marriage was most likely over. Once we had established that we decided to look at what had brought us to this place after 25 years together. There was something sad but also so freeing about admitting we had come to an end. We started asking each other questions we had never dared ask. We found answers we didn't even know were there.
Now that we had nothing to lose it seemed there was a deeper truth under the surface for us to see. He admitted his thinking at the time of our wedding was to possess me even though he knew I wasn't ready for a life- time commitment. I admitted I was desperate for security after a series of traumatic events in my life. He admitted that he had known that and wanted to rescue me. We both saw clearly the unspoken trade offs we had made and how they had kept us together yet off balance all those years.
I will never forget the feeling of unearthing those truths. I had a range of emotions at the time. I was Angry and sad, I was humble and full of deep appreciation. We laughed, we cried, we talked a lot! At the end of our conversation, though he was very sad that our marriage was ending, he thanked me for giving him " one whole day spent living in the truth". I too was sad , yet I knew it was one of the best days of my life as well. I made a commitment to myself that day. Knowing and speaking the truth at that level became my new normal. I was never again going to allow myself to be in a romantic relationship based on anything but that kind of deep truth. I realized that if I made that level of truth telling at the beginning of a relationship I would never have to live with less again.
What I have discovered in the years that have followed is two fold. It takes an ongoing effort not only to know and speak the truth, but to stay engaged in the conversation without being attached. The other discovery is the truth is not something set in stone. It is an ongoing discovery process.
Luckily there is one thing that remains a constant for me. The truth telling experience is always worthwhile. It is a feeling beyond description. Bliss is as close as I can come. I have an anchor that will never let me down. The truth is a rock foundation I can count on always.
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