Change is messy and scary so we resist with all our might. But it is what we have to do. We can stay blocked for years and years, but organicity is always striving towards health and eventually something has to give. Let me give an example.
I was in Guatemala with my (now) ex-wife and daughter for a month, and while we there my testosterone prescription ran out. I couldn’t get a refill but it turns out that Guatemalan pharmacies will sell you pretty much anything they have without the need for a prescription. And they had this high quality testosterone made in Switzerland. Apparently you did just one injection and then you were good for a couple of months. That sounded pretty good – the daily cream application was a hassle. So I had my ex inject me one night and we went to bed. I woke up in the early hours of the morning and I knew everything had to change. Everything. My ex suffered from extreme anxiety and she constantly was hit with crippling migraines that would keep her in bed for days. She felt a desperate need to control the world because it felt like her very survival was at stake. We had fallen into a bad pattern where she pretty much controlled everything about our lives. I went along with all this because I loved her and wanted to help, but it didn’t work for either of us.
I got up and took a long walk. I passed through the early morning markets the Guatemalans have way before they set up for the tourists and all the while I had this strong knowing that everything had to change. What that meant was I stopped letting my ex control everything. That led to a lot of heated arguments. If I had to do it again I would find a gentler, more compassionate way. From her perspective I became a different person over night. It is true I was on way too high a dose of testosterone and that was not good. But what it did was help push me past where I was so blocked. What we had been doing was so not working for me. Miraculously all that heat sparked something in us and suddenly we were having frequent, hot sex. It turns out that a certain polarity of dominance and submission can really give a sexual charge. At least in the bedroom I learned to embrace my strong masculinity. Unfortunately I fairly quickly collapsed into old, unhealthy patterns and that charge went away, but even still our sex was much better. It wasn’t the sex that was the problem with our marriage, though, we were deeply enmeshed in old patterns and we both were very, very stuck. Her inner child was looking for someone to take care of her, and mine was so hungry for reassurance that I was attractive that I was looking to have an affair.
Later on my ex worked with a powerful shaman woman in Guatemala and then with a healer in Mexico. These were non medicine trips but they were intense, life changing trips nevertheless. Midway through the second ritual she tearfully called me to say we needed to separate. That she still loved me with all her heart but that she needed to find a way to get out of this pattern of always needing a man. She needed to find her own way. I was stunned, but within a day I went to joy. I was longing for this too. When I picked her up at the airport she was just glowing. Instead of going home we stayed at a hotel for a couple of nights and took lots of walks to talks about this new path we were on. We committed to stay connected as loving friends and that we would still be a family for our daughter. We kept that promise – we do much better as friends. And our daughter no longer has to put up with constant anger and fights.
Separating was the best possible thing for both of us. She started a very serious spiritual practice. She faced all of her inner traumas one by one no matter hard and found her way through. It was brutal and she suffered but she found peace and grace on the other side. She is now a very different person. She still has migraines occasionally but it is now far less frequent and her overall health is so much better. She is so much happier now that at times she is almost luminous. It could not have happened if we had just continued as we were. As for me, I was released from my caretaker role and I soared upwards in joy. For the first couple of years I almost could not believe how much joy I was in. I found an amazing partner and I tell her everyday how grateful I am to have her with me. I have a lot to be grateful for.
The key thing is we stopped waiting for the other to change. We were going to a marriage counselor secretly hoping that the counselor would get the other to change and then everything would be OK. That does not work. It was always our own work to do. We were “stuck” because we were waiting for the other person change to make us happy. And it was messy. She needed to see who she was outside of relationship but that meant ending our marriage and she didn’t want to hurt me. I held her need as greater than mine and had lost my power. That didn’t work for either of us. I had been holding back so long that when the dam finally broke it was way too abrupt.
Oddly enough what helped us discover that we needed to separate was to first fall more deeply in love with each other. We tried doing a guided MDMA journey together. It was incredible. We got more done in 3 hours than we had been able to do in counseling in 3 years. In the same way MDMA helps people revisit trauma without the fear, we were able to get to those conversations that we had been too scared to have. And then we found out it was OK. She was able to let me know that she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be married and that was a kind of hard but ultimately ok with me.
My ex calling me from Mexico was a real act of courage. A step into that scary unknown where we don’t know exactly what is going to happen next. And in fact we had a real reason to be scared – divorces can be horribly messy and painful. But as scary as it was, it had to be done. We had to stop waiting for the other to change in order for us to be happy. We had to step out of our victim stories into a place of accountability. Let’s go there next.