for better or for worse....

"to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part"

may be the vows you say in a church wedding ceremony, but they are also a pretty good guide for any committed long term relationship.

But what happens if only part if it is being followed ? what if it is not being followed by both partners ?

I was fully signed on for the whole deal. To have and to hold kind of goes without saying, but what if your partner decides not to ? Does the remaining partner's "holding" turn into "clinging" as the partner tries to stop ? You certainly start to feel like you are being unreasonable just to hope for a hug :( I felt like *I* was in the wrong and yet perhaps it was my partner's missing "to have and to hold" that was more to blame.

My aim was to manage the finances to avoid the "poorer" but then poorer is a relative thing, not absolute. It doesn't say "when both above and below the official poverty line".... and we did become poorer with my redundancy, as I was unemployed and supporting us on savings (hence have less savings now) and subsequent jobs were at a lower salary. Certainly I was poorer with him than without him.

In sickness and in health: well LTC certainly managed more than the average amount of sickness - or at least as far as I was aware. I now hear tales of him striding about the local area when I was out at work, and he was always quite vague about exactly which doctor he saw and so on. Who knows ? He was always appropriately solicitous when I had the odd moment of ill health...

to love and to cherish.... well it seems I did, and he didn't. At least all the evidence points that way. How can you love someone for that amount of time, leave them, know they have found out something horrendous that might topple them over the edge..and NOT make a single attempt to find out how that person is, how they are coping ? Even if you knew you could never explain, never make it up, wouldn't you at least miss that person ? I would, but then I guess I would never manage such a huge and lengthy deception, so would never be in the situation in the first place....

And now I come to "for better for worse"... at what point does "for worse" become unsustainable ? At what point is "worse" something you can and should walk away from ? So often we seem to see examples where everything has been smooth sailing when it was all "for better, for richer, in health" but the moment one of those has changed to worse/poorer/sickness, the relationship has fallen apart. I didn't get that - if you loved someone, them being less rich, less healthy, less "better" didn't change who they were ? And if it was the person you loved not their situation, then that love would surely continue under duress ? By being together you could find a bit of better/richer/healthier inside the worse/poorer/sickness...

So where do you draw that line ? I think it is when one of you is not there in the full sense of "for better or for worse". But more than that, if you look at the full phrase, if one of the partners is not fulfulling any one of those, it all starts to fall apart. It may fall apart quicker, or slower, but it WILL fall apart.

I accepted the general outcome being that I was poorer, and less healthy (more stressed that's for sure) as long I thought we were a partnership. But with time it become horribly clear that we weren't. And then it seems a high price to pay.... for what ? Whilst it seems a harsh and selfish thing to say, the price would have been worth paying if there had been the "to have and to hold, to love and to cherish"... but there wasn't.

Trouble is the partner who is still committed often doesn't realise or see that the other one is not. That somewhere in that vow they have a problem. Commitment is about "the trait of sincere and steadfast fixity of purpose" - as soon as one of you is no longer commited to the shared purpose of a partnership, there is a problem.

The optimist in me wonders whether that purpose can be refound, rediscovered, so that the partnership renews and continues. And perhaps that is the recipe for a truely successful long-lasting relationship, that the shared purpose is continually refreshed and renewed as we travel a path together ?

its not the destination, its the journey

I saw a great quote, given the title and original post of this blog, in an advert in the latest copy (Nov 06) of the US magazine Horse & Rider. It seems to be attributed to Maggie Moore and it says

At the end of the day, what is important is not the destination but that on the journey we are walking with friends.

and in validating that quote, I found a few more...

it's not the destination by Earl Nightingale

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
~Jimmy Dean

and to lead on from there, a proverb

When the wind blows, some build walls, others build windmills

tolerance

"the power or capacity of an organism to tolerate unfavorable environmental conditions"

and risk tolerance is "a person's comfort level to different levels of risk "

Risk tolerance varies with a number of factors, but your ability to cope with a particular stressor depends on how much of your capacity for risk has been used up on other things, as risk is a cumulative thing, rather than dealing with each risk in isolation.

So where is this taking me ?

Well sitting on the train home I realised that even if my risk tolerance has not changed much, my cumulative risk has, as a large stressor (6ft4, male, with mental health issues) has gone from that equation.

Living with someone with mental health issues takes up a large amount of a person's capacity/tolerance for stress and/or risk..

So while right now I still feel very much in recovery mode, I could actually consider opportunities that before were not tenable. Not just because those opportunities were not consistent with our shared path, but because of the sudden freeing up of a whole chunk of my capacity for risk !

I'm not about to start doing crazy thing, but I could if I wanted to ;)

looking back, or forward ?

I have to decide how I am going to use this blog. Even if I use it to track the path, and maybe some route planning as well, it is kind of hard to walk if you are looking back the whole time. I guess you do need the occasional review, to check you are on the right heading. But to try to walk forwards while looking backwards is frankly crazy.

I remember one of those profiles I did before was about how much you were "away from" and how much "towards". Everyone has a preference but is a mix of those. I seem to recall I was slightly more "away from" than "towards". You could say I tend to know better what I do NOT want to do (away from) rather than what I do want to do. But in this context, I could be walking my path relative to what I am leaving behind, rather than where I want to go.

But I can't turn this into a "towards" thing without a clear idea of where I want to be. And part of me feels that being that clear about the destination reduces the options and my flexibility to integrate new opportunities into my plan. Now there's a challenge - to find a balance between flexibility and focus/commitment !

Maybe if I can't forge a path by doing, I can create it by "being", by adopting the habits I want to have (such as being healthy and fit). Will that be enough ?

Anyway, the least I can do is a form of journal, of what I have been up to and am about to do ?

Last week I was away for five days to see an American trainer work with riders and their horses. Eight hours of observing a day, sat in an indoor school in rainy November. Not most people's idea of fun but intense, thought-provoking, and a little inspiring. It does pose some questions though. I would really like to go and spend a week on one of this guy's courses. But how do I prioritise that with improving my living space ? Getting out the the US and then paying the course fee and accomodation etc vs spending it on the house. Not an easy call.

All the things that the LCT was supposed to do in the last ten months and didn't, plus more, are sitting there waiting to be done. As I have limited time after working and commuting (and horsing), that means paying to have them done professionally.

An improvement to the house is a long term thing and would repay itself if/when I sell this place.

Ok... I'm talking myself out of it aren't I ;)

I know what I should really do for the immediate future is get along to any appropriate local training clinics, and spend any remaining money on improving the house. But sometimes it sucks to be responsible !

I cancelled my "Employee Counselling Service" session planned for tomorrow. These guys use something called "Solution based counselling" and I just don't feel they have much to offer beyond what I am already working through on my own. I don't feel I need to discuss it with someone else just to make me feel good and validate it.

And I looked into a local "social aerobics" class on Monday evenings. I did wonder if that meant people talk a lot ;) but it seems it means it is low impact. I didn't actually make the class this week as I had got it into my head it was 19:30 start, whereas it was 19:30 finish. I normally only get home about 18:30 so would have had to be more with-it and go straight there. The only information on this class is on the local notice board in the middle of the village, so I could only check when it was after I got home. But next week.... The idea is not only to keep the fitness thing going, but also to link into a new social group to the ones I already know locally.

So a good start I think ?

the stretch zone

and no I am not talking about lunchtime Pilates !

I guess there is a problem that if you examine the ground right in front of your feet too closely, or spend too much time looking to where you have been rather than where you are going, the path becomes centered there, rather than forward, and the journey grinds to a halt :s

I wanted to write something about peeling away layers. Michelangelo said that in creating his statue of David, the block of stone already contained the statue and his role was merely to chip away the unnecessary stone.

In a similar way I feel I have built up a layer around me that I need to chip away to rediscover my true self. But in examining that thought I definately started looking too closely at the ground by my feet :rolleyes:

For a long while my path has been a shared one. So in the same way as you might when out on a bicycle or horse ride, you check direction, speed, etc Then at regular intervals I would "check in". But now there is no one to check in with. That is both liberating and scary ! I don't have to confine my path to some place that suits another person. But at the same time, I don't have another pair of eyes watching out for losing my/our way.

I've done one hundred and one profiles in my working career. One of which said, among others things, that I plan in order to be spontaneous. (!) There is/was a Unilever concept of "liberating disciple" (The full set, non-UK style, was "single-minded passion for winning, liberating rigor and connected creativity"). I guess "plan to be spontaneous" is another way of describing liberating discipline. i.e. by having 80-90% planned and controlled, you are free to be creative with the rest.

The problem with my current "unknown path" is that it is way less than 80-90 % under control or planned, and that makes me feel uncomfortable. Definately in my stretch zone !

The question is whether I have the nerve to stay out in my stretch zone for any length of time... I guess you'll just have to watch this space !

the loneliness of the (short distance) runner

As I went for my weekend run today, I got to thinking about all the layers of meaning in my running.

I started running earlier this year, it being one of those "life begins at..." years. I decided I needed to get fitter, and hence signed up for a local Race For Life in May, and started training in late March.

As soon as I started to train, I realised I was even unfitter than I had thought. It is like a twisting path in that everytime you reach a point on the path, you see around the corner and realise how much further there is to go. You also realise that you started a lot further away from your target than you first realised !

So after completing the "Race" in May, I kept running. In the run-up (no pun intended) to the May event, I sometimes felt like I would go faster if I walked rather than running. I was achieving milestones, but it was hard. The May Race was 5k. By the time of the event I could run for over 20 minutes without walking - this from someone who started on minute intervals ! On Race day I ran for 38 minutes without stopping (that's the time it took to run the 5k).

After the Race, I kept up with the running, but found it hard going. In a moment of madness, one of my sisters and I agreed we would do a local 10k race in October. I looked out some training plans (Cancer Research, BUPA, Runners World). And I started running with my other half - he had not been able to run with me before as he had a nasty respiratory thing. But despite having done Darth Vader impressions for the previous 7 months, he was wiping the floor with me. I was a heaving gasping mess. We would go to run up a slope and he would make some comment supposedly to encourage me. But I was already trying the hardest I could and it would just demotivate me completely.

I started to realise that I had been expecting that because I had run 5k *once*, run 38 minutes *once*, that I would be able to repeat and improve on that on every subsequent run. Which was clearly crazy.

And the other half - well he was taller than me, ex-forces and had run the equivalent of marathons (albeit some time ago) - I just had to face up to the fact that even with 7 months off, he was NOT a realistic pacemaker or benchmark for me.

This was brought home to me when my sister came up on holiday and we went on a training run together - and were well paced and equally pink-in-the-face and out-of-breath as each other.

Now I am running solo. The other half has left. And I subsequently discovered that he was a lying cheating toerag (hence he will forthwith be referred to as LCT) and had been for most of our eleven years together :( Not only was he not a good running partner for me, it turned out he was not a good partner fullstop.

I feel adrift. My running is not about running away from something, it is about running *to* something, I just don't know quite what yet. A healthier fitter slimmer me perhaps... but it is not just about the physical.

One of the things I realised when I went through my demotivated phase was that I am very good at pacing myself. The trouble is that the flip side of the same coin is that I don't tend to push myself as far as I might. Since I ran the 10k in October (in 1 hour 13 minutes, so at a slightly faster rate than the May 5k), I have found I am running my usual routes but a minute or two faster.

Today I run one of my usual circular routes, but the hard way around where there is a decent slope on the way out. And I made the top of the slope without resembling someone who needs a cardiac team on hand. AND I got round the whole route faster than I have before. It is not a major change, but it is a change.

And in my life, I feel a bit as if the LCT had been holding me back. Or perhaps I was holding myself back to try and travel the path *with* him. He was hanging back because (as I later found out) it was not actually the path he wanted to be on. Now he has left, it is almost like I've been driving with the hand brake on, and now its off again. Its not that life is suddenly changing faster - but it's not held back the whole time. No longer that feeling of being in limbo, of waiting for something that never happens. I guess it DID happen - he left. But that is certainly not what I was waiting for !

Running may only be a small part of what I now need to do for myself, to move myself into a new reality without the LCT. But it's a start.

And you know, it's not really lonely. It is SOLITARY, and it would be nice to have someone to share the path with. But if that is not to be, I'll run it solo.

A couple of people I know who run have told me that "the first mile is the hardest". Well that is mostly what I run ;) But I hope that thought applies to life without the LCT as well - as I'm running that first mile now...

I don't know where the path will take me. As the poem I started this blog with says, I will make the path by walking. But the first mile of it is clearer - I am clear where I am starting from, I know the local area, I am not going to be out of familiar territory. But I will be getting myself fitter for the miles that come after that. Not just physically fitter, but emotionally and pyschologically fitter as well.

"there is no road, the road is made by walking"

I found the below poem (by Antonio Machado) when I heard the middle lines ("the path is made by walking") on the radio one morning. Right now, for various reasons, my way seems unclear, and so this poem seems appropriate.

Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.
**************************
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.