My road-RELATIONSHIP-MOTIVATION

Every one of my generation raised in the United States is haunted by the video of the baby monkey clinging to the fur covered wire framework, leaving only to eat.   Perhaps the psychologists who filmed this little bit of horror can be excused from hell for showing what mad and uncaring creatures we are, we wild apes whose teeth are not as ferocious because our brains are our teeth and are all the more horrible for being hidden from view.  

The listening and the freely given touch of softness perhaps is the most important thing in any real relationship, more important than providing food and shelter.  For a brief time I not only knew this but realized it.
Proper motivation is another thing that is important in a proper relationship.  In any relationship, whether business or personal, the relationship is something more than just the fur covered framework if each has the ability to inspire the other.  This is not essential to a relationship, but is essential to a good relationship.  What good is being with someone if they motivate you towards despair if they leave you without the desire to accomplish things?  

Could I but bottle the power that she had to inspire me.  It is difficult to explain, but whether she was there or whether she had left me on one of her totally explainable tiffs, the memory of her or the conversations that we had together left me more full of creativity and hope for the future than was logical under my circumstance.  I was not, of course, able to do the same for her.  It must have been like a cave man talking to a rocket scientist.  What can the former offer to the later, while for the later inspires the former to literally reach for the stars.

For a time, this translated into a positive life direction, mentally and physically, but it made the fall all the greater when I realized that the fur covered framework was merely a framework for me. 

So for a time, I was conflicted and pendulumed back and forth between a desire to end it all and one to accomplish great things, to stay in shape, and to find joy in life, to find joy in each other.   And, as if risk had not caused enough of my problems, the new found power of virtue and of love inspired me to take ever greater risks.

And this brings us back to consistency, because how can we ask someone to risk everything on a relationship if it is not consistent, to risk anything of consequence on it?
So perhaps I should talk about our night where we fought and agreed that we could not go on, but then threw up our hands and decided we could not go on, at least on that night, without each other.  How can such a thing be reconciled?

One moment we are fighting, I am afraid to even get close to her.  I want to hug her, but it is as if she is wearing barb wire.  Then she softens.  There is a bit of surrender in her.  It is a moment of life, after all, and not all of life in this moment.

She comes over to me and lifts her head up to mine.  Those intoxicating eyes that seem to hold entire galaxies of information in them, such hurt, wisdom, understanding, passion, knowledge, responsibility, two blue galaxies looking into my dull, nearly dead eyes.  And her mouth parts a little and she is in my arms.  Our lips touch gently, and our tongues find each other.  In an effort to find her soul, mine moves further into her throat, but there is only the soft taste of chamomile, I cannot find her soul.  Her clothes are too tight for my hands to get into them, so I satisfy myself with the feel of her body through them.  And then she does something and they peel away.  We are in the kitchen where we were fighting but now she is in her underwear.

“The relationship you have with yourself is a big part of the relationship you have with others.  If you are not honest with yourself, what can you offer to anyone else?”  She asked me as she stood, mostly naked and wrapped in my arms.

“I am doing what I can to make myself a better person.”  My heart it is pounding.  I want to think like a good person, but I am overcome with passion.  I feel as if I have an uncontrollable fever, I am shaking.

“Learning how to be honest with yourself is what self-help is about.  All those other things that you have been talking about, those stupid ideas that you have for your self help diary are worthless if you don’t do something to become open and honest with yourself.  You can leave me, you can walk out the door right this minute, leave me in my underwear and I won’t complain as long as you are honest.  And if you want to hold this,” she said pulling back and showing her body with her hands, “you have to be honest with yourself and tell me what you are thinking.  You can have me tonight either way, but I have to know what to expect tomorrow.”

It was an entirely reasonable request, but one that I was incapable of fielding.  A better person could have perhaps.  I let her go and walked to the other side of the table, panting as if I’d run a one minute quarter mile.  I looked at her.  “I cannot tell you anything now.  I look at you and my blood is boiling.  You ask to much of me to be logical.  I can turn away, I can leave, but I cannot want anything but to have you right now.

She reached behind her back.  I thought for a moment which was going to get something from the table to throw at me, but the top of her underwear came loose and she slowly caught the lace in her arms as it slid loose.  Then she lowered her arms so I could see her.  “Then take me.  Take me now, but be honest with yourself.”

And I did take her, but I was not honest.  I was not honest with myself, so I stole what she offered.

She did inspire me, you see, but it was up to me to become virtuous and so being to remain there.  If you don't inspire each other to grow, to exercise, to take chances your relationship is stagnant.  That was true of our relationship and it is true of the relationship that a person should have with themselves.  I do not know whether I inspired her, or merely gave her respite from the mundane.

I grew in her presence to a hundred times my stature without her.  Growing is as complicated as anything in definition.  It includes being daring, being inquisitive, being generous, being self-deprecating, modest and proud at the same time.  It includes working towards intellectual achievement, not just education.

I argued to myself that it involved not being limited by artificial criteria like your current ability or your age or infirmities or...you other relationships.  But it must be taken in the context of all things.  It involves being the person you would want to partner with whether it is with yourself or someone else.