I recently heard about the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new civic center to be built on a site in the middle of small southern town. All the city council members were there, the head of the Chamber of Commerce was there, lots of town’s people showed up, and the mayor gave a rousing speech before turning the first shovel of dirt. Everyone at the event was excited: shaking hands, giving hugs, sharing toasts --- a wonderful event.
I found myself thinking about the wedding day --- isn’t it a lot like a ribbon-cutting ceremony? Lots of excitement, lots of hugging, lots of hoopla.
Don’t get me wrong --- I love weddings. But in the end, all we’ve done on the wedding day is cut the ribbon. All we’ve done is confirm that we are committed to build the building. And then the work begins.
Well, as it turns out, in this small southern town there were way too many financial commitments to actually be able to move ahead with the building of the civic center. And unfortunately, the site stands to this day with an empty shell where a beautiful building was to have stood.
And I found myself wondering about our marriages --- how many of them are largely an empty shell where a beautiful edifice was to be built?
This small southern town had too many financial attachments to be able to fully invest in building the planned civic center. In last week’s Love Bytes blog, I mentioned my attachment (addiction?) to sports during the early years of my marriage. In a very real sense, my attachment to sports was so strong that I was unable to fully invest in building the planned marriage between Kathy and me. And like the small southern town, we ended up with what largely amounted to an empty shell.
I realize that when most of us think about addictive-type attachments, we immediately begin to think in terms of alcohol and drugs. But in fact, many more of these types of attachments are behavioral than chemical.
Do you find yourself preoccupied by ____? Is your attention stolen away by ____? Do you find that unpleasant symptoms emerge when deprived of ____? Have those you love been neglected because of your attachment to ____? Has ____ created problems between you and your partner? Have you tried cutting down / stopping ____, but with limited success? Have you gotten defensive when confronted about ____?
All of these were true of me and my affinity to sports. I told Kathy she was #1, but my behavioral attachments suggested otherwise.
Attention and love are closely entwined. You can tell a lot about what a person loves by watching what gets their attention.
Well, what about a desire to have everyone’s approval / to not have anyone disappointed in you? Do you find yourself preoccupied by what others think of you? Are you distracted by thoughts that someone may not like you? Do you have a hard time letting go of it when someone doesn’t approve of something you’ve done? Have you been so distracted by what others are thinking of you that you have a difficult time being attentive to your partner? Have you tried to stop worrying about what others think of you, but with little success? Have you reacted negatively when others have told you not to get all hung up about such things?
Or what about video games? Or an attachment to having things clean and tidy? Or the drive to avoid failure? Or the desire for the perfect body? Or the urge to watch television?
Or what about an e-addiction? Signs that a person may have an addictive-type attachment to electronic messaging have recently been designated. Do you find yourself preoccupied, feeling the urge to check repeatedly? Is your attention stolen away, so that you regularly interrupt real-people activities in order to read / respond to your messages? Do you feel discomfort if you fail to look at every message as it comes in? Have people who love you tried to point out your addictive-type attachment (but to no avail)? Have you found that even when you want to curb your e-addiction behavior, you can’t? Have you found that this has disrupted your regular day-to-day activities, work, and relationships?
And the list goes on……..
[Again, it is not these things (sports, approval, video games, neatness, perfection, etc.) that are unhealthy. It is our attachments to them that are unhealthy, diverting life-giving love from those we claim are #1 in our lives.]
Many people (mostly men), when they have heard that I gave up sports for over a year in order to break my attachment to sports, have exclaimed, “Why so long?!”
When I was a kid, there was a small creek near our home and one day I decided that I wanted to divert the water in that creek. I had built a “fort” a few feet from the creek and I wanted to get the water to flow through the middle of it. I envisioned how sweet it would be to have a stream flowing right through the middle of my make-shift structure.
For the next several days I worked at digging out a new ditch for the water --- first 6 inches deep, then a foot, then 2 feet deep. When I thought that my ditch was deep enough, I took rocks, dirt, sticks, logs (just about anything I could get my hands on), and I dammed up the creek right near the start of my new ditch.
Sure enough, the water began to flow right through the middle of my fort, and I went home very pleased with my efforts. But the next day, when I went back to the woods to enjoy the fruits of my labor, I was shocked to find that the water had returned to its original creek bed.
Anyone ever experience this --- not with water in a creek, but with addictive-type attachments?
The flow of love from our attachments is not easily diverted.
My wife doesn’t like this phrase, but the way I often put it is like this: “You have to be willing to do violence to yourself.” In other words, if you want to see positive change in your life and in your relationships, then you have to want what is good / healthy / constructive in the long run more than you want what is easy / pleasant / enjoyable in the short run.
Truth has to win over comfort.
Otherwise, the flow of love will quickly return to its previous path.
