Muchness and Light

I stand up, and I'm searching for the better part of me.

During the process of divorce, especially at the beginning, life becomes almost exclusively about your children.  Obviously for people who don't have kids or who have adult children, it's a different story, but I don't know what that's like.  Living through both my parents' divorce when I was 11, as well as the last couple of years, I only have intimate knowledge of what it's like from my perspective.

Like so many couples, DH and I had brutal, nasty arguments before the separation.  We tried our best to keep them away from the boys, though I know we weren't always successful.  While we did our best to keep the energy off of them, there's no way they didn't feel the tension.  Sometimes it boiled over and disrupted their lives, occasionally waking them or turning into a heated exchange in the middle of dinner. 

The night we told them that we were separating was the worst of my life.  In that moment, I remembered very clearly being the child huddled on the couch between my parents.  They were both sadly stoic, trying to explain clearly and concisely that they were divorcing, that our lives would change, but that we were still a family who would get through this together.  Watching the boys cry the night we told them, I knew exactly how their hearts were breaking and all of the questions they'd both ask me and keep quietly and painfully to themselves. 

At first, all of my energy went into keeping them calm and safe.  With very good reason, I was even more attentive and patient with them.  I tried to make every waking moment as quality as I could muster, while also giving them space to be able to breathe and think on their own or together, away from Mom. 

Eventually I had to start living my own, private life.  I had to begin to see what being a single mom and woman was like.  A big part of that, of course, has been dating. 

My parents were very good at this.  I was about the same age as Max, so four years older than Tricky, when my parents separated.  When they each started dating, they were careful to keep those new people away from me.  I can only remember meeting two men my mom went out with, one of whom is my stepdad of more than twenty-five years.  I met a few more women with my dad, though he has always said some were nothing more than friends.  He dated one woman for several years, and she actually lived with us for a good portion of their relationship.  Both he and I are still friends with her, even though they've been broken up far, far longer than they were together. 

When I started dating Bounder and saw the potential of something more important, having him meet the boys eventually became necessary.  It wasn't that I needed them to welcome their new daddy into their life; no one will ever replace their father, whom they love very, very much.  But if he and I were going to have a relationship, we would need to spend quality, physical time together.  And, no, I don't just mean sex.  (He never, ever spent the night at my house while the boys were home.) 

Dating and being in love would have to consist of more than constant texts and emails.  Regular phone calls couldn't replace regular hugs and kisses.  While quality time and conversation are of tantamount importance to me, I am bi-lingual (in The 5 Love Languages sense) for physical touch.  The small intimacies of handholding and kisses on the cheek are just as important to me as the loving whispers and soft laughs in my ear.  I need boisterous laughter, both in and out of the bedroom. 

Of all the men I've met and gone out with since I separated from DH, the boys have only met Bounder.  Initially, it was a ten-minute, "nice to meet you" moment one afternoon.  Eventually they were okay with his coming to visit me after they went to bed, then they were comfortable with dinners together and a movie after.  We would occasionally take them out and do something with them, together.  When he and I broke up, they were sad for me but also a little sad that they wouldn't get to see him.  I handled it well (at least in front of them).  They know that I still have occasional contact with him and ask me about him from time to time. 

It's hard enough to bring someone new into my life, but my life includes two boys.  They have to be a part of anything substantial.  Not only are they the most important people in my life, I am their primary caregiver.  They spend the majority of their time in my care.  With some potential changes on the horizon, I am likely to be responsible for them even more of the time.  If I try to wait to see someone I'm dating until a night when I don't have them, it could be weeks that we have to wait. 

Relationships can't function healthily like that. 

While it was best to make the boys the main focus initially, it does no one any good for them to be the only priority.  We live in such a child-centric time, but they have to learn that they really aren't the epicenter of anyone's world but their own.  They are of an age to begin to realize there's more to life than just them. 

Stephanie is more than Mommy.

Going back to school, working small jobs while I'm doing it, makes our life very busy.  I can no longer devote all of my time and energy to their schedules.  Our family calendar is sometimes a color-coded nightmare of homework and school events and appointments.

But taking the time to be me, content and comfortable in who I am and my abilities, makes me a better woman.  Being a complete woman, who is able to both express and receive love from more than just my children, makes me a better mother. 

And it's good for them to see that Mom can go on and have a happy, healthy, productive life.  They won't always been in the house with me, no matter how often they declare that they'll always live with me.  They will eventually move on to college and relationships and the lives that they build for themselves.  I will be here (figuratively or literally, I don't know yet), living and building my own future. 

When I am happy and healthy, living my life while incorporating them into it, I show them by example.  My goal is to raise healthy young men who can handle their own shit.  My hope is that they find partners who can do the same, in part because that is what their mother modeled for them. 

 

Only we will understand that the silence is broken by our language of love.

I have this friend who recommended a book to me the other day, Gary Chapman's The 5 Love Languages.  (Believe me, if I told you who it was, you'd be like, "WTF?  Really?")  So I went to Barnes & Noble, looking scurriedly around to make sure no one saw me purchasing a book from the Christian Inspiration section, got my copy, and went home to start a little light reading.  It's not a long book, and I'm a voracious reader, so I was done pretty quickly.

I must admit, I was really surprised by what the book had to offer.  In a totally non-judgmental, non-religious way, Gary Chapman talks about the five languages of love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.  His premise is that people give and receive love, filling "love tanks", in usually one of these basic languages.  (Some people are bi-lingual, but I'll talk more about that later.)  The idea is that partners need to receive love in the way that's wired into them, and that they don't get it when it's spoken in the wrong languages. 

For example, if you innately receive love through Acts of Service, you get it when your partner does things for you, like mowing the grass or cleaning the house or washing your car (an example Chapman uses quite frequently).  If your beloved is always bringing you gifts but never hangs that beautiful family portrait, it may not mean very much to you and doesn't fill your love tank. 

I read through his descriptions and examples of each love language, plus ways to go about expressing love in the respective manner.  There's a profile at the end of the book, kind of like a Cosmo Quiz.  Turns out I'm bilingual in Words of Affirmation and Quality Time, though even the latter seems to be specific to Quality Conversation and feeling like I'm being understood.  The two languages are of virtually equal importance to me, though Phsyical Touch is also, to a lesser degree.  Gifts and Acts of Service don't mean a whole hell of a lot in my world. 

I passed the book to DH, who read it in an afternoon and completed his own profile.  I was a little surprised by his results, which I won't disclose because that's not my confidence to share.  What I can say is that it gave us both a lot to think about, as far as how to approach each other.  It was interesting, to say the least.

So I started thinking about how I receive love from other people, how what they do or don't do applies to these ideas of Words of Affirmation and Quality Conversation.  I examined friendships and past loves and familial interactions.  I also started to look at how I approach myself, of how and what I do fills or empties my love tank.  (Yes, it's a somewhat silly expression, and it's easy to go with innuendo, but we're all adults here.  Kind of.)

Absolem yelled at me recently, asking if I was really as insecure as I was acting.  The answer is a resounding YES!  I am horribly insecure in who I am and have a very difficult time seeing my own worth, seeing the value of my central role in my broader life.  I need to hear from other people— and somewhat regularly depending on the relationship—that I matter, that I am important to them, and sometimes that has to include the why of that importance.  I need private conversations with the people closest to me, the intimacy of giving and receiving deep truths and shared confidences that connect us infinitely.  Those dark and quiet moments, when there's nothing else in the world but those words passing between us and the emotion they contain, that's what drives me and makes me feel complete.  That's what shows me I am loved and helps me explore the depths of my own heart and head and to so tentatively share those expanses with someone else. 

I think, in part, it's why I write, especially why I blog the way I do.  Muchness and Light was born from my own need to discover myself again, but there's certainly something telling about the public way in which I do it.  My love tank is filled when I get a response, when people tell me how I've touched a nerve in them.  It's not that I'm opposed to criticism, though it's honestly only happened a couple of times.  But it does my psyche good to explain myself as thoroughly as possible and to receive in turn the affirmation that I'm understood and that it was good or beneficial to someone else. 

I think this also goes a long way toward explaining my desire for experience and understanding of it.  Yes, I am reactionary at times, then overthink a situation sometimes the point of exhaustion, but that process gives me time to really grasp what's happening.  It often provides me with profound insights into my own actions, as well as the actions of others. 

My love ("Addiction," said Absolem) of words and understanding may well be one of the things that explains my deep love of music.  Lots of studies have shown that thrilling music causes a release of dopamine into the brain, the same neurotransmitter released as a response to pleasure from food or sex or any number of other things.  For me, music isn't about the instrumentation, though that's certainly a requirement of being, you know, music.  That coupled with poignant lyrics that make me think someone else gets it, tacked onto a pleasing voice that I can sing along with, is undeniably, overwhelmingly pleasurable for me—it fills my love tank in a way nothing else can.

No one was more surprised than I that The 5 Love Languages struck a chord.  It's given me a whole new way to look at my relationships, most especially with my Self.  I'm pretty adept at finding my own quality time (again, ignore the innuendo), but I'm not so good at affirming Stephanie.  In some ways, I still need that from the other people in my life, especially those I hold so close to my heart.  But now, maybe, I won't be so reticent to tell myself that I'm okay, or even that I'm good.  Whereas before it just seemed egocentric, it now seems psychecentric; it's something that I need to be able to do, for your sake and for mine.