Last New Year's instead of making a resolution
about my Facebook usage, I decided instead to set an intention regarding my
relationship to it. My intention was to hold the following questions in my
heart: How can I utilize Facebook in life affirming ways? How can I use this
social platform to connect in more honest and humanizing ways?
I would say that holding that intention most
certainly changed my relationship to it. I use it less and when I do so, I use
it more consciously and with purpose. When I scroll my newsfeed, it is now for
a limited time. It is far less judgmental and I am actually finding myself
inspired by the posts of my friends. When I post something to my wall, it is
with the intention to connect with and uplift others. Nothing really on Facebook
has changed, but something in me more sure has shifted.
Yet there is one area of my life this past year
that has been off limits to Facebook. My marriage.
With some decent inferencing skills, one could
probably draw an accurate conclusion about the state of my marriage by noting
the decrease of couple related posts and the increase of posts featuring me out
dancing and inspirational quotes on self love.
The last picture of us as a couple was posted on
December 31st last year. It was a picture our friend took at the Beavertail
Lighthouse in Jamestown, Rhode Island. People commented, "You two look
amazing like an LL Bean ad!" Another said, "Looking good guys!"
70 friends liked it.
There hasn't been a picture of the two of us posted
since. Our six-year anniversary last February didn't make a Facebook debut with
pictures of our wedding day and proclamations of our love. That night, he
cooked duck over polenta, we sat across from each other at our dining room
table with a deep dark winter chill of discomfort hovering between us, as we
tried our best to celebrate a marriage that had been taking a steady decline
for the previous nine months.
On December 31st 2015, it will be one year and
seven months to the day that we decided to lift the carpet up on our marriage
and begin the work of cleaning out the dust mites built of half-truths that had
accumulated over our ten-year relationship.
Had our marriage not been off limits to Facebook
during this time period, it would have gone through a series of self created
status changes including: Questioning Marriage, Working on Marriage, Separated
but Still Talking and Occasionally Seeing Each Other, Separated and Not
Talking, to our current status: Spiritually Divorcing.
I have thought deeply about how to approach the
Facebook relationship status change. Some friends suggested just deleting it,
that way it wouldn't be broadcast on my newsfeed. But the notion of just
deleting it creates a pit in my stomach. To disappear my marriage as if it
didn't exist makes me cringe. It feels like an inauthentic and cowardly move
given my intention to use Facebook in a more honest and humanizing way.
My husband, or soon to be ex husband, whom I have
grown to love, see, and appreciate more this year than I did our entire
marriage, is nauseated by the idea of me publicly sharing the intimate details
of our private lives to my 1,030 Facebook friends.
These 1,030 people include many real friends who
picked me up this year when I was brought to my knees in grief and fear as all
that I had built my life upon was crumbling around me. These Facebook friends
also include former students of mine, a few current and several former
co-workers, friends I've made on retreats, some salsa dancing acquaintances,
and many people I've only met once and have never really spoken to or seen
again.
In speaking with him regarding my desire to change
our relationship status on Facebook with some agreed upon commentary, he
questioned why all these people, many of whom are just acquaintances, should
know something so personal. He argued
that he did not see the need to be authentic to inauthentic friends and that the
people he cares about and wants to involve in the deeper and more meaningful
aspects of his life, he does so in a personal way and not on display. He
equated me sharing this on Facebook as essentially going up to the guy in our
local wine shop and saying, "Hey, the Malbec you sold me last week was
delicious. By the way, I am in the process of spiritually divorcing.
He also knows that I will want what want. As much
as I want to take his need for privacy into consideration and be respectful of
him, something that I wish I had prioritized years ago, I find myself in that
sticky place where I must be willing to disappoint another to live what is true
to me.
I want to live a courageous life, measured in my
ability to be vulnerable. I want to live a life where I blur the lines between
my private and my public life and express to the world what is in my heart. I have
a yearning to push boundaries to show that we are boundless.
So, Why not let my Facebook friends know that my
marriage is ending? So, Why not tell the wine guy?
When we show only one side of the coin we feel a
deep divide. When we share only our joys, we end up thinking that our happiness
is built on external circumstances. We scroll our Facebook newsfeed and catch
ourselves measuring our happiness against our friends and pondering if the
grass is truly greener on the other side.
This past year, the most difficult one I have seen
in my life, has brought me the greatest gifts. I have met people, shared my
suffering, opened up my heart, and found healing. It is the sharing of our
suffering that we find our deepest human connection. That divide is no longer
there because we can relish in our shared humanity. Sharing these soft and raw
places of our souls with one another helps us to find that lighthouse within.
Marriages end. People get divorced; it is a part of
life. Many divorce without having the slightest clue as to what happened, and
often leave their marriages harboring a life depleting anger for years to come.
When it comes to marriage, why in this society are we so afraid to show the
whole continuum of the messy and beautiful human experience that gets exposed
in our most intimate of relationships?
Behind the privacy of closed doors, couples are being
blinded by the glare of the television that they have put between them instead
of awakening to the light that they have each been exposing to each other through
all the friction created by the bumping and grinding against each other that
comes with experiencing daily life with another human being. This is disheartening
to see because the power of sacred and conscious relationship is where the
awakening of this world begins.
Yet conscious and sacred marriage and partnership
needs a community of support for it to thrive. For when we hide our marriages
behind closed doors, there is a strong probability that our nuclear families will
become nuclear weapons. Because we get so busy in our relationships reacting to
all friction created between each other, we create explosions within the walls
of our own homes. According to the definition of nuclear weapons, these
reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of
matter. So yes, that seemingly meaningless quiet judgment and dirty look you
just gave your husband or wife, just sent a vast ripple of hate into the world.
I want to get the most out of the pain I’ve
experienced, and I want it to benefit all people. When our marriages and
nuclear families can be held by a supportive community, that can help us
discern illusion from truth, it becomes possible to diffuse that nuclear
reaction, thus emitting energy of connection and love rather than one of
destruction and hate. To truly defend and protect the sanctity of marriage, we
must be willing to take our marriages and relationships out from behind closed
doors and be willing to expose the rawness of our yearning to be loved
authentically as the whole and holy creatures that we are.
So yes, sharing the fact that my marriage is ending
with my Facebook friends feels appropriate, vital, and necessary. Sharing the
fact that one can find peace within themselves and there relationship, in the
midst of divorce feels like a calling. And perhaps my words may reach someone
who can find that peace within themselves and their marriage while they still
have it. I now have a deep knowing of what it means to be the change you seek
in the world.
If there is one relationship status that Facebook offers
in its dropdown menu that I find the most applicable to every stage along the journey
from romantic to conscious love, it is the one that reads, "It's
complicated.” Love and marriage are complicated and unfortunately our
society does little to prepare people with the necessary tools to have emotionally
fulfilling, healthy, communicative and compassionate relationships. There is no
wonder why we find the world in the current state that it is in.
So, dear friends it is with a sad yet awakened
heart that I let your know that Joe and I are in the midst of spiritually
divorcing. It has been a heart wrenching process, but throughout this time, we
have learned the true meaning of love. We are tenderly and supportively helping
each other cross the threshold into the unknown and teaching one another the
power of letting go and encouraging one another to trust in life’s ever-unfolding
path of love and light.
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