The Garden Analogy

PART ONE: HOW RELATIONSHIPS GET DESTROYED

There are two ways to tread this path, one is overt and one is covert.

The Overt Path

The Overt Path is all those behaviours which are outward and obvious to nearly everyone. This includes physical abuse, lying, cheating, stealing, screaming or shouting, swearing, name-calling, imposing judgements, unfair expectations or demands, other verbal abuse, addiction, obvious neglect and so on. None of this behaviour is hidden although it may be kept as a dirty secret between the couple. It may be denied – human nature is capable of denying anything even in the face of overwhelming evidence – but for the most part it is active and fairly easily identified.

The Covert Path

The covert path, on the other hand, is insidious and often very difficult to prove. The Covert Path often looks quite innocent and the partner who is on this path also looks innocent and may even be actively playing a victim role. This is the partner who silently criticises and then feels justified in withdrawing or getting even. It is the partner who agrees to do something then sabotages it through “forgetting” or getting sick or having an emergency arise – and it always happens this way. It is the partner who lies by omission. It is the partner who is too busy or too preoccupied to put energy into the relationship – and then acts surprised when the spouse isn’t available exactly when she or he is finally wanted..

It is the partner whose individual emotional concerns dominate the relationship so that no-one else’s issues have room to be heard. It is the partner who measures everything and is dissatisfied by everything or nearly everything, and who retreats into resentment. It is the partner who takes only his or her side of any conflict to friends and family and garners support against the other.

It is the partner who agitates for change, yet when invited to participate in a healthy process to negotiate change, will either refuse or declare that it is a waste of time because the other person can’t be trusted. It is the partner who is obsessive about blaming the other, rather than looking sincerely and deeply into themselves. This is the partner who is determined to look like the victim and to make their partner look like the abuser. To the extent that they succeed, they destroy their relationship and make themselves and their partner miserable.

Relationship as Warfare

People who are on either path of misery are usually not aware of it, but they have turned their relationship into a war zone where the object is to win. This spirit of “one-up-man-ship” runs completely counter to the spirit of loving co-operation and humility that characterises a fulfilling relationship, yet it seems that most people have little ability to identify the difference. The object of a happy, loving relationship is to foster more and deeper love and mutual acceptance and support. Nearly everyone begins a relationship with this idea at least vaguely in mind; we believe we will be happy together. What happens?

Both Paths Destructive

Most behaviours on the Overt Path are only capable of creating a profoundly unhappy relationship at best, and a profoundly destructive one at worst. A thoroughly miserable marriage negatively affects physical health as well as emotional health. Self-esteem is impossible to maintain when one is engaged in destructive behaviour that is based on anger and animosity. Yet when the two people got married, they didn’t expect to degenerate into defensive warriors always on guard with each other! They expected to have a happy life together.

Unquestioned Beliefs

One of the major things that goes wrong is how each partner believes that happy life is going to occur. Many people go into marriage thinking all they have to do is bring their obviously decent and reasonable selves along and everything will be fine. Without the slightest idea of how to communicate clearly, how to take responsibility for their own feelings, whether their expectations are fair, or how to initiate repair when mistakes have been made, people expect their marriage to thrive.

Other people expect their partner to create the marriage – these are the folks most likely to walk the Covert Path, the path of underhandedly punishing one’s spouse for not doing what was expected, without ever exposing the expectations that are usually unreasonable and even outrageous.

The Overt Path is like planting a garden without any understanding of soil, nutritional needs, need for moisture in appropriate amounts or the need to eliminate weeds – and ignoring the seeds for months due to ignorance. When one returns to such a garden, if the seeds sprouted at all, they will have been choked out by the weeds.

The Covert Path is like planting a garden, watching it silently without doing anything for it, and then destroying it in a rage when the garden is irredeemably barren.

Garden As Analogy

Planting a garden makes an excellent analogy for a marriage. If we want a good harvest from a garden, most people understand that they have to prepare the soil appropriately, they have to plant high quality seeds of the type of plant they wish to harvest, they have to provide sufficient nutrients and water and they have to keep down the undesirable weeds.

PART TWO: GROWING YOUR RELATIONSHIP GARDEN

Preparing The Soil

Just as we have to break ground for a new garden, roto-till and cultivate until the soil is ready to accept seeds and provide a seed-supporting environment, we have to break ground to have a fulfilling marriage. Breaking ground means we make room in our lives for the needs of the relationship – and a relationship HAS needs. It is not enough to say, “Oh my wife needs a lot of attention,” or “Oh, he’s always hanging around the house wanting hugs.” There needs to be a serious recognition that marriages, like gardens, do not thrive by being ignored.

There is a dynamic of energy that flows back and forth between marriage partners and the quality of that energy has to be consciously cultivated into an energy that is compassionate, supportive, sensitive to each other’s needs and ready to react appropriately when needs arise. Failure to attend to the quality of the energy that flows between partners is the equivalent of throwing seeds on rocks. The odds of success are almost non-existent.

Planting High Quality Seeds Of The Right Variety

Having prepared ourselves to attend to the quality of the energy between ourselves and our partner, we then have to choose good quality seeds. There would be little point in planting mouldy seeds or seeds that have lost their fertility. There is also no point in planting lettuce if you want to harvest tomatoes. It is equally self-evident, if we think about it, that a good marriage cannot be grown by individuals who are substance addicted, self-absorbed, chronically angry, chronic victims or have a compulsive need for personal freedom.

Other people who are not ready to grow a loving garden are those who enter marriage with a big personal “issue” around sexuality, men, women, money or work. Such issues end up dominating what should be a mutually supportive relationship. If you are honest enough to recognise any of these traits in yourself, begin a program of self-healing. If you are contemplating marriage with someone who exhibits these traits, be aware that you will be starting on a challenging journey with a partner who is ill-prepared and you may be the one who ends up “carrying” them.

It takes courage, honesty and integrity to craft a fulfilling marriage: it takes people who demonstrate courage, honesty and integrity. This means people who are willing to admit mistakes quickly, people who keep promises, people who have appropriate expectations around most issues and people who are willing to forgive. Respect, compassion and reasonableness are the best seeds to plant if you want to enjoy your marriage. Willingness to let go and forgive mistakes, willingness to make amends when you are the one who made the mistake, are all demonstrations of humility and acceptance one’s partner as a fallible but still loveable human.

Our Culture Fosters Unrealistic Expectations

Decades ago there was a movie called “Love Story.” A famous line from that movie went like this: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” This line encouraged an unrealistic expectation that when one found one’s “true” love partner, that partner would never disappoint, never fail to meet our expectations, would always know by magic what we wanted or needed regardless of how much our wants or needs changed, and would always be responsive, present, available, nurturing, sexually ready, and never, ever, lose their own temper or make a mistake, a misjudgement or a have a failure.

It is profoundly telling that the only way the script writers could make such a relationship credible to the movie audience, was to kill off the woman as quickly as possible. The movie then turns into a tragedy – this blissful relationship cut short by an untimely death! The truth is, no-one can sustain this unrealistic picture for long – the writers had to kill one of the lovers off quickly because once a couple returns to normal life, their imperfections begin to show up. They have to learn that love means saying you are sorry, often and as soon as possible. Not only that, but love means making amends – mending or repairing whatever damage has been done to the levels of trust, self-esteem, respect or any other aspect of the relationship.

Love actually means having the compassion to accept the other person as a human - a work in progress. Good will, passionate love and the best of intentions still bring with them some mistakes, some flubs, some relationship faux pas. It is our ability to understand that these are normal, not a complete failure on the part of our partner, that determines whether each spouse has the opportunity to grow and learn, or is tossed out for not being perfect in the first place.

The First Nutrient Is Intimacy

Plants cannot grow to healthy maturity without the correct nutrients. The notion of “fertilising” one’s marriage is not so far-fetched: what you put in is what you will ( normally ) get out!

Taking time to share time and thoughts and feelings with your partner is one of the most important nutrients. When partners are too busy to make contact, they become too busy to create intimacy. Without intimacy, trust dies and when trust dies, efforts to rekindle the emotional foundation are severely hampered, if not impossible. Marriage partners need to let each other know, on a frequent and regular basis, where they are emotionally, what they are experiencing in life and with each other, whether they are tired and need a vacation, or feeling antsy to get on with a planned project, whatever is going on within, needs to be shared with one’s partner as soon as it is appropriate.

It is not going too far to make a weekly informal but fiercely protected “date” to talk, a time to relinquish tv or books or hobbies and to spend time getting back in touch with your partner and his or her world.

The Second Nutrient Is The Balance Of Negative And Positive

Just as making sure to stay connected emotionally is a vital nutrient, so is monitoring the quality of most of the interactions within a relationship. Barking at each other in passing is NOT good quality interaction. Overall, a relationship nurtures the partners when there are 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction. If you or your partner starts the day with complaints, anger, criticisms or depression, and continues that pattern, the relationship gets seriously out of balance very quickly. If the first hour has gone badly, it takes five hours of softer, more loving interaction to rebalance!

If the first two hours go badly, it takes the rest of the day doing nothing but being caring and nurturing with each other to recreate the balance within which a marriage can thrive. Most people won’t spend ten minutes repairing and /or rebalancing - and the result is a wound in their relationship that they expect their partner to “get over.” The result of that attitude is a marriage that just died in some area – like a row of plants that die in a garden when they are trampled on.

The Third Nutrient Is Respect

So many behaviours that are destructive to one's partner and to any relationship are manifestations of lack of respect. Allowing oneself to deteriorate into name-calling during an argument, for example, indicates a loss of self-respect as well and a loss of respect for one's spouse. Bullying, demanding, withdrawing, almost any negative action can been seen to be, in one way or another, a failure of respect.

Once this is understood, it becomes obvious that respect is vital for two important reasons. The first reason is that respectful behaviour fosters a healthy and loving relationship. The second is that disrespectful behaviour choices are now clearly identified as having a serious negative impact on the relationship and on the marriage partner. What has been hidden, swept under the carpet or rationalized as "normal" behaviour is now exposed as totally unacceptable within the context of a relationship - any relationship, but especially within a marriage. The true cost of disrespectful behaviour has been exposed - the outcome of such actions is no longer in doubt. This ought to make it easier to choose constructive behaviours.

Connect The Approach To The Outcome!

Overall, it is simply ludicrous to expect to create a loving, mutually supportive and rewarding relationship when the main “input” is negativity, anger, criticism, complaints, innuendo, withdrawal, passive-aggressive, demands, deceit, feeble efforts or outight dysfunction. However people behave as if they expect such a program to work. In fact they enthusiastically defend their right to act in these ways, oblivious of the end result of such behaviour.

It is far more effective when partners truly concentrate on being respectful, gentle, playful, humourous, inviting, open, even-tempered and appropriate in their expectations. The nutrients of a fulfilling marriage are what we offer that is healthy, wholesome, loving and life-enhancing. If what you are offering or dumping in your marriage does not meet that standard, you are using your garden as a garbage dump. You won’t reap a harvest you will enjoy.

The Necessary Moisture

Moisture “activates” all the possibilities of soil and seed. Without appropriate moisture, seeds sit passively waiting and slowly losing their fertility. Soil is necessary but it cannot nurture the seeds nor release its life-giving nutrients without moisture.

In a marriage, many qualities could be likened to moisture but the one that is absolutely essential is obvious: love. Love is an open-hearted positive regard of the partner and a willingness to hold that position regardless of one’s current feelings.

Feelings Transitory

Love is a feeling, but feelings come and go and often depend on how well we perceive our life to be meeting our goals. But Love it is also a choice to behave in loving or respectfulways even when one feels harrassed, tired, dissatisfied, unsuccessful and so on. Only spiritual advanced humans can sustain feelings of love all the time. The rest of us mortals have to understand that we cannot feel love and anger at the same time; we cannot feel loved and indignant at the same time. We cannot feel love and grief at the same time. But we can always choose to act in a considerate, respectful and loving manner, to the best we are able.

Choosing Love When Stressed

Life inevitably hands us some disappointments, set-backs or outright “failures,” at least by our own definition. Sometimes we work too hard or have too many demands to face all at once. Sometimes severe loss has to be grieved and worked through. At any time when life is more than usually stressful, we need to take special care not to take it out on our spouse. If we use our life partner as an emotional punching bag, eventually saying “I’m sorry,” becomes hypocritical and meaningless. We have to simply be more careful with each other when life pushes us hard. Partners who support each other create a safe refuge for each other – possibly the only place where each feels safe and protected, at least for the moment.

Partners who fail to support each other, or who demand more of each other during times of stress, add to each others’ stress and feeling of being overwhelmed. They create a gaping wound in a marriage that neither partner now has the emotional resources to heal. The marriage usually bleeds to death – such a betrayal of trust and safety issues is difficult to repair and usually requires professional assistance to do so. Repeated episodes of increased pressure between partners when one or both are already feeling assaulted by something else in life, will destroy trust irreparably. Sooner or later one partner will realise that their marriage is an unsafe place in which they have little hope of healing or thriving again.

Love is the conscious choice to avoid this destructive path. There are times when we need extra support, reassurance and love from our partner, and we can do this if we have built a strong foundation of trust and intimacy. We lean a little for a short while and then we pick up our own burdens again, not demanding that our partner carry us for more than just a little while at a time. Sometimes life is so demanding that the best we can do is not be too overwhelming a burden to our partner, to make sure we appreciate them for whatever they have to offer without being a constant drain on them. Love allows us to remember that they, too, have limits, that they too, have disappointments and feel failure and need a safe haven where they feel cared about and respected.

Love means we are always conscious that a home needs to be safe for both partners. Even when we cannot get in touch with the feelings of love, we keep that home safe by being decent, responsible and fair. We ask for extra patience, time or support but we keep our requests reasonable given our partner’s life responsibilities. We also do everything we can to resolve the painful or demanding situation in our own lives as quickly as possible so that the strain on the marriage can be lightened. Some people are astonished when they have failed to water their marriage for years and suddenly their exhausted and dried up partner leaves. Others feel abandoned when a partner, worn completely out by years of one-way supporting, either dies or leaves. Love is never a one-way street in a relationship. It also takes backbone!

The Harvest

Ultimately, treating our marriage – and our marriage partner - as we would treat a long-hoped for and carefully planned garden will produce a relationship that is mutually warm, supportive, loving and health and life enhancing. It stops people from ending up the Paths of Misery but much more, it produces a highly rewarding harvest that lasts a lifetime.