We want so damn badly to get it right in our relationships, as evidenced by all the books and television shows on how to have better relationships, all the songs of heartache and break and mend, all the hunting and hoping for that special somebody who’ll do right by us, all the efforting, manipulation, self-marketing, and strategizing to get it right, to get it to last, to get it to satisfy -- all sentenced to the labor of making us feel better or at least more secure, consuming more of our attention and energy than we’d bargained for, leaving us burdened and bewildered and close to not much more than depression and burnout, yet still hot-wired to enough paint-by-numbers advice to be marooned from the fact that real relationship, relationship rooted in love and a mutual commitment to waking up, is not only less nice and more challenging than we thought, but also more messy (like this sentence).

F. Rassouli ( www.rassouli.com )

Sometimes intimate relationship can be such a drag, such a high maintenance hassle, such a drain, knocking us around until we swear we’ll not reenter such a hazardous arena, regardless of its goodies. But it usually doesn’t take much time for us to jump back in again, high on hope (as when we get a tidbit of unexpected openness from an emotionally stingy partner). Maybe we will do better this time; maybe we’ll meet someone who won’t screw us around; maybe we’ll handle it better. Such melodrama, such endlessly rich material this is for stand-up comedy, soap operas, and everyday gossip. And for something deeper, too, as we shall see.

Sloppy dialogue, emotional illiteracy, go-nowhere arguments, little cruelties, everyday stupidities, mismatched desires, mechanical rituals, halfheartedness, putting off what needs to be done -- these are some of the things that clutter relationships. They resist the vacuuming of good intentions. They resist both rational persuasion and emotional pleas. They go wherever we go, following us into and out of our dreams. At essence, they are just longtime habits tracking mud and worse into our shared space, while masquerading as us. It’s so messy, no matter how well-scrubbed our place and face is.

But in the messiness of a conscious relationship, such habits become nakedly obvious, clashing and colluding with each other before a mutually knowing eye, clearly needing more than a laundry spin, more than a communications course, more than better table manners. Such habits have gotten away with referring to themselves as us, but now cannot do so for long, as we, more and more, relate to, rather than from, them.

Intimate relationship not only includes the mingling and encounter of differences, but also inevitably catalyzes a blatant exaggeration or flaring-up of differences, a vividly dramatized exposure -- however unwittingly animated! -- of all sorts of oppositions, difficult mixes, impasses, and overdefended positionings that would have otherwise very likely remained more camouflaged or untouched.

As unpleasant as this might feel -- and the worse it feels, the more valuable it probably is -- it signals a great opportunity to know ourselves more fully, because so much of what needs to be worked through for our own maturation is right before us, literally outfront.

Relationship thus provides an environment, both outer and inner, wherein what we don’t like or don’t want to know -- or don’t know -- about ourselves is given center stage, just like in a dream. And there we may stand or stumble, seemingly transfixed by the spotlight, held in place both by our attachment to the other and to our own ideologies, feeling the heat of our preferences starting to flame into reactivity. This point, where we typically would trot out our usual roles -- the misunderstood one, the victim, the reasonable one, etcetera -- is precisely where even a trace of wakefulness is of immense use, to inwardly acknowledge not only our state, but also our identification with that state. When a mutually compassionate eye can be cast upon the highlighted reactivity of one or both partners, the relationship is on course.

But as good as it gets, intimate relationship still can be a two-headed hell-raiser. There are times when the shared heart is split into two densely-walled camps; there are times when the shared body is a vacant lump; there are times when the shared limitations are just a royal pain in the shared ass; there are times when the shared boundlessness is just an idea; there are times when the shared being is crowded with loneliness; there are times when the shared yes is riddled with doubt. Such times are fierce teachers, testers and deepeners of our faith, inviting us to get back on track.

When we are intimate with an other, we can be very, very hurt. We can become crazily jealous, possessive, obsessed, angry in ways we never thought possible, our spiritual practices shredding into near non-existence in the storms of our pain and reactivity. It might seem under such conditions that our capacity for awakening has been severely diminished, but that is from the viewpoint that sees only the turbulence, the chaos, the unpleasantness of what is happening. However, in such rough and wild waters swirls another possibility, one equipped with nothing but a lifeline to our heartland. If we take hold of it, we start to recognize what’s right about what’s wrong; we treat the shit as compost; we let the pain tear open our heart; we learn to love when we are not being loved or don’t feel loved.

However, if we only try to think our way through our relationship hassle, we merely confine its turbulent forces in our minds, thereby intensifying our confusion, instead of letting such forces fuel our leap into a more fitting level of being. Here, we recognize and treat relational intimacy not as an end, but rather as a means, an extremely potent crucible for Awakening’s alchemy.

There’s nothing like an intimate relationship to let us know that we’re not as developed as we thought. We may, in meditative retreat or metaphysical flight, assume without much challenge that we are sitting with our less-than-admirable qualities, being mindful of them, etcetera, but real relationship does not waste much time in letting us know the difference between sitting with such qualities and sitting on them.

Being in such relationship is generally a rude awakening. It steps on the toes of our egoity, unimpressed by our credentials, drawing us into a dharma drama in which our neuroses initially get to star as us, and then are divested of such pretension, becoming but grist for the mill of Awakening. To the degree that we are attached to our egoity and neurotic rituals, a real relationship will, more often than not, seem like just one insult after another.

The sooner we ask what’s right about what’s wrong in our relationships, the sooner we’ll discover the real value and purpose of them.

This may mean approaching our relationships in ways to which we are not accustomed. Sometimes being off our path is our path. Sometimes what works best is to spend some time in what doesn’t work. Watching the worst of television, as an alternative to meditation and prayer, can be wonderful medicine for spiritual constipation. We can get so busy trying to be good, trying to stay on the path, trying to be a successful somebody in a conscious relationship, that we stagnate, barely able to move beneath the sheer weight of all our documented failures. Making more room for our intimate relationship to sometimes be messy -- which does not mean making a virtue out of laziness and inconsiderateness -- helps keep it clean, undirtied by purity.

This does not, however, mean clear sailing. Any relationship, thank God, can trigger us. Good relationships trigger the hell out of us without trashing the relationship; great relationships trigger the hell out of us while deepening the relationship. And the best relationships use whatever happens, however hellish or disheartening, not only to deepen the relationship, but to also awaken us beyond it.

What doesn’t work in a relationship is what can make it truly work -- especially in the sense of giving us sufficient jolts to alert us to our trances, consensual and otherwise -- but only if such difficulties are dealt with not as problems, but as opportunities. Not easy, not easy at all. After all, this asks that we venture from the shoreline into some really big waves.

We may like thinking about how great it is to be at our edge -- which is where growth occurs -- but actually being there is not necessarily much of a picnic. In fact, it may be so damned unpleasant, so scary, so hard to stomach, that we find some convincing alibis to do otherwise -- such as literally leaving the relationship, withdrawing from it while still in it, or keeping it relatively superficial.

(About leaving a relationship: First of all, there’s no inherent virtue in staying. What matters is that we don’t leave prematurely. Hanging in there when it’s rough or unnourishing or pointless is just as important as leaving when it’s been rough or unnourishing or pointless for too long. We have to ask ourselves -- and not when we are busy being reactive or close-hearted! -- if we are truly being served or furthered by the relationship: Are the difficulties therein challenging us in a way that we need to be challenged, or are they simply eroding us? If the answer to this varies according to our mood, it’s not the answer.)

We cannot connect unless we are already separate; and we cannot separate unless we are already connected. Such is the apparent paradox of relationship. Real intimacy is the art of balancing togetherness and apartness, so that they are not so much polar opposites as they are dance partners. The relationship is the dancefloor; what we don’t like about each other and ourselves the wallflowers; and the music and movement Life Itself, at once outlasting us and appearing as us.

In the liberating bondage of real intimacy, our separateness is not a problem, but rather a ticket Home, providing more than enough grist for the mill of Awakening.

Part of what makes a relationship truly rewarding is an ongoing mutual intimacy with what doesn’t work in the relationship.

The obstacles we encounter in relationship are not really obstacles, but catalysts in drag. Catalysts for what? For waking up. Be grateful to have someone so close to you who can so easily push your buttons -- and maybe even install a few. It’s not so easy to stay buttoned-up when we’re in close to another. Healthy relationships don’t let us remain intact, cool, immune. They kick our mutual butt so hard that we can’t sit for long on our stuff. How infuriating, how inconvenient, what a pain in the ass! And what a gift.

And what a joy -- to enter so deeply into shared living that everything is permitted to awaken us. And to be so close, so attached, that we cannot get away for very long from the inevitable challenges of such relationship. This is freedom, freedom through limitation, freedom through travelling together no matter what the weather.

Freedom through intimacy.