When Team Awesome Splits – BLOG


My Column was hijacked by the news…

For my column this week, I was planning to write about my 30 Days of Movement project, which started at the beginning of September. My partner Bill and I thought it was time to stop acting like frat boys on a restaurant patio as the summer came to an end. I noticed that as I squeezed every last drop of joy from the end of the summer, I was also squeezing and wrestling myself into my jeans and Bill was in the same boat. We decided it was time to move our bodies and start to treat them like beer-tasting amusement parks.
And that’s been going quite well. We’ve moved, and eaten better, and we’re sleeping better and I even took a photo of my “art” to include.

YAY FOR US.

And then I heard the news about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie divorcing and it’s all I can think about today, and the thoughts are plentiful and also jumbled.

I will preface all this by telling you that, no, I am not a personal friend of the Pitt-Jolies. (Although, I will say it out loud right now that I have a dream where I coach celebrity relationships. There.) I only know of them what I read and see on social media, and of course took a side when the relationship began in the first place, initially siding with Jennifer Aniston and wondering what went so wrong with the couple who exchanged quirky wedding vows in which they agreed to “split the difference on the thermostat” in their home.

What has shaken me: 

  • That relationships start and take off and also fall apart around us all the time, and I think these endings make me feel a little vulnerable. I tend to hold closer to what I have and make sure that I talk about it with Bill. We celebrate and frequently acknowledge that we are Team Awesome, and he tells me he adores me about 456 times a day, so I never doubt that, and guess I just make a point of connecting with him on a deeper level. I know that relationships are built on long foundations, but that they also can crumble in the same way that we fall in love and fall asleep; a bit at first and then all-at-once. The endings of relationships remind me how fragile life and connection really are and that they must be nurtured.
  • I know that we don’t ever, ever really know what’s going on in someone’s relationship; they may have made agreements (with which they are both satisfied) about monogamy and what may or may not go on during a trip to Vegas, and they may be struggling behind-the-scenes, but able to put on the bravest face to the outside world. We don’t know because it’s not ours, and all we can do is witness what we do see. I don’t demand to know the truth from anyone, but this reminds me that we don’t have the whole story, and as sure as we are to vote and take a side in it, it is like an iceberg about which we know a teeny, tiny part.
  •  It’s easy to be in relationship when there’s harmony around us, isn’t it? But take away a couple who has been in our circle for years, drinking wine with us at dinner parties and throwing their kids into the mix with ours, and it’s suddenly really close and a little harder to be with. We start to feel less sure as we hurt for them and with them. We may feel like we need to take a side, and perhaps we mentally take some revenge. It shakes us all and challenges all the rings around a relationship, much like the ripples left when a stone is tossed in a lake. The edges move when the centre is rocked.
  • As I research for an upcoming intensive I am running in November, I am learning that divorce rates are actually falling and now sit at around 40%, and while I know that relationships can seem fragile, they also have the capability to be strong and resilient and durable. And also supportable. A lot of the crap that does us in can be mitigated and prevented with regular care and maintenance. I’m certainly not saying that “Brangelina” could have been saved, necessarily, but that we can do things to keep ourselves on the winning side of the statistics.
  • I think we all want to believe in the happy endings we see, don’t we? Brad and Angelina were up to good things as a team (or so it seemed) with the kid-adopting-and-rearing, conscious living and deep philanthropy. I wanted to believe that they would make it and that they didn’t shatters some cool illusions I had been carefully building.

I quite expect to be knocked sideways by shootings and unfairness and hatred in the world, but my quaking I feel from this is surprising to me.

Tell me, please, what does hearing about this sort of thing do to you in your relationship? What has you know that you’re on solid ground? What are you going to tell your partner when you see them next to connect in with your own Team Awesome?


Get Real, Sexy Real.

Tara

Tara Caffelle is a Relationship and Communication coach. She is passionate about creating connected, almost-uncomfortable-to-watch relationships that are based in Sexy Communication and Big Lives worth rolling around in.

Tara is based in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver and offers custom-designed coaching programs. To claim your free 90+ minutes and see what might be possible for your own super coupledom (or persondom), find a time here.
Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

Still Waters Run Deep

Still Waters Run Deep

This is a pic of my husband.  He’s not as public as I am, thank God.  Can you imagine if we were both wired to want to share everything?  What a mess that would be?  Oh boy… I mean really, where would this firecracker of a mouth and mind go to just rest for awhile?  And where would his ‘still waters’ go to get all wavy and stuff?  We’d be a walking party – the perfect silly string storm.  It might be fun for a few weeks but a lifetime?  Ummm no.  How exhausting.

Why do I tell you this?

Because I want to add a perspective to your ‘I wonder if only I had…’ mindset, and let’s be honest, deep breath, we all do this, as in wonder sometimes.

I wonder if I married the right person?

I wonder if we have anything in common anymore?

I wonder if we’re soul-mates or if I’ll ever have one?   Do I even believe in that? I don’t know…

I wonder…?

These are the best and the worst questions. These are the topics that can drive a room full of pajama party women (do men talk about this kinda stuff?  As far as I know, most don’t but I suppose it’s possible) into a frenzy of self-doubt, or mild to major panic and even start up some boyfriend/husband envy. We’ve all seen it or experienced it at some point. The first time I got married (whole other story – see I can speak to this topic honestly), during my month of pre-wedding prep, my best friend at the time (this should’ve been my first and last hint to quietly close this friendship) said to me “So, who’s your ONE THAT GOT AWAY?”.  Wait a minute, I was getting married – there should be no ‘one that got away’.

Yet there it was and with every question comes an answer whether we consciously do it or not.

Who was my ONE THAT GOT AWAY?

Should I have one?

Shouldn’t I have one?

Am I doing this right?

What if there is one and I don’t know?

What does that mean about my marriage?  About my life?  About my my my… Oh my now what?

So I answered this ‘best friend’ of mine with the names of two old boyfriends that I still had lingering flickers for.  Even saying that ‘flicker thing’ out loud seems weird. Not wrong, just bizarre.   They were flickers of unrealized dreams, of stolen moments, of non-replicable touches, gazes, thoughts because they were unique to us, they were pangs of rejection that still had fire in them, zingers of physical attraction, of wonder… that’s all, of just wonder.

Wonder is rapturous.

but Wonder can also be distracting.

You know how I talk about the double edge sword of every single truth? Well, this is what my sword of wonder looks like:  rapture and distraction.  Two sides. Both are true.

In the world that I live in and the rules that I play by, every layer of the story is welcome to be heard because no layer is more ‘honest’ than the other.  Our Living Story is how they all weave together.

Did my first marriage end?  Yup.  Because of the flickers from the ‘ones that got away’? – Nope.  Did I date one of those flickering dudes again? Yup – both of them actually.   Did either of them end up being my second husband?  Nope.

Why?

Because they were flickers.  Fun, fabulous hot flickers but not the right fuel for my life.

Mr. Todd and I (the still water guy in the pic and yes, that’s what I call him) were blissfully married for two years before the veil of marriage lifted and we realized we ‘chose’ each other and that meant for ‘life’.  Crap really?  Now what do we do?   Yes indeed, over the last fifteen years or so we have had our share of marital nastiness, brokenness, detachment, resignation, deep regret for choosing each other and lots and lots of ‘I wonder if…’ questions.

The truth for us didn’t come from simply answering the questions, but rather from hearing the stories that we found in our answers.

Many times I thought my marriage (yes, not our marriage in these moments) should be over. Many times I wondered if I chose the right man.  

I used to say to myself “He’s a good man, but maybe not the right man for me.  He’s quiet, he’s private, he’s so black and white and he doesn’t really like people all that much.  We have nothing in common anymore.  What are we doing here together?”.

And he would say to himself:  “She’s crazy, I can’t build a life with her.  She spends money like there’s always more coming.  She’s a dreamer, everything is grey with her, she’s a moving target, she’s public, loud and likes people a lot, sometimes more than me.  We have nothing in common.  What are we even building?”.

And then, over time, a lot of time we would take on the massive task of answering the real questions with each other.  Patiently painful at times, yet always stunningly beautiful at the end of each story.  We decided to answer our real questions instead of hold on to our observations.

My question:  What are we doing here together?

His question:  What are we even building?

And it was in the answers, and yes, note the plural:  in our many answers where we found our commonality and our lifetime marital, soul-mate/life-mate connection.  The answers surprised us because they often had nothing to do with being married and everything to do with being together.  Silly right?  We just happen to be married too.

He’s my Mr. Todd and still waters run deep.

I’m probably his – Mrs. T – and crazy hair makes me smile.  (okay, so I made that up, but if I had to guess… that’s what I think he would say). 

What questions might you be holding on to instead of listening to the stories of truth that live in the answers?

TinaOLife Twitter

 

xxT