Love in Action

This is a piece I was asked to write for a forthcoming Malaysian book.

Love in action

You couldn’t wish for a more romantic beginning. We met on December 31^st, 1999: the last day of the last century of the last millennium. It wasn’t more than a casual conversation, but it marked the beginning of a friendship that was, unbeknownst to us, to blossom into a relationship and a love beyond our previous experience.

Our paths kept crossing, more because of a mutual friend, than because of any conscious effort on our parts. Each time we’d meet, we’d have lots to share, lots to talk about. Then, six months later, she needed to change teaching jobs. I suggested she look for work in my city, a quiet and compact city with a country pace of life, and she took me up on my suggestion. She found work easily and I suggested that since my housemate was moving out, that she save herself the tedious job of setting up house all by herself and move in with me.

And so it was that she became my new housemate. Our friendship continued to grow as we spent more and more time together, but neither of us seemed to regard each other as anything more than a friend. But one thing was clear to me: I really enjoyed her company and we got on and lived together better than any other woman I had previously lived with. I remember thinking that if my next wife was half as easy and smooth to live with, I’d be a very lucky man indeed. For the ultimate test of any relationship for me isn’t necessarily what happens between the sheets, but what happens once outside.

And then we went on holiday to Vietnam and spent a wonderful time exploring the country there. We came back, settled into our daily routine and then one day became more than friends. I don’t know how normal that is for that to happen between a man and a woman, for a deep friendship to grow and blossom before anything sexual happens, but that was a very different experience for me, and to be honest, it felt like our relationship had matured naturally into something very special. It was only then that she told me that she had had very deep feelings for me for the longest time, but her pride had never let her express them until I had opened myself unto her. But she was very happy too at what had transpired, and how our relationship had deepened.

We shared a full life together, managing to balance our interests, supporting each other unconditionally, committing to full emotional and mental honesty within our relationship. We found that the more honest we were – with ourselves, with each other, then the stronger our relationship became. It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always pleasant to live up to that standard, but once two people have an unspoken pact to be real and truthful at all times, it’s a lifelong pledge that demands total integrity.

We lived together for two years before we left for England for me to study a Master’s in Anthropology. This was an extremely difficult time for the two of us. We were living, cut off from the outside world, in a beautiful but remote country campus: I had to commit my full energy to the course, and she had to find a niche for herself within a less than friendly social environment where she was also not allowed to keep herself occupied by working.

Whilst there, we got married. A small, quiet and intimate affair, and I’m sure the registrar who married us was subtly weaving a magical incantation whilst she read the formal vows for us to repeat. I looked at my wife to be: she felt it too. The registrar was secretly weaving a love spell, binding us to love and honour and cherish each more deeply than the words would seem to allow.

And then we parted. I had to do field work in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania and she returned home to South Africa. We next met up back up in the Republic of China nearly five months later where we returned to our old stomping ground to work and be with each other again.

During this time we grew together and learned about how love works on a day to day basis, learning to care for each other and look out for each other’s interests. Friends who were also in relationships remarked on how strong we were together, but also how independent we both were. We’d holiday once a year together, but then I’d take off to somewhere exotic by myself to explore my passion for photography. We had friends in common, but I’d understand her need to have quality time with her girlfriends, and she understood my need for male bonding time too. Yet all around us we saw relationships where couples did everything together as one and lost themselves in the process, and secretly dreamed of freedom. Or we’d see couples where one or both would seek to control the movements or activities of the other. Either one couldn’t go out without permission or the other would be prohibited from exploring an interest or passion. This baffled us. For me, true love was about interdependence, about being able to be together and also apart when we needed to, about having choice, about being equal partners in an honest and dynamic relationship.

But last year we felt that something had changed. We both still cared for each other, but the driver; the energy of the relationship had changed. We looked at the reality of how we were relating, not how we wished it were, but what was actually happening, and saw that we had changed, we had evolved as people, our interests were now very widely diverging with no shared point of contact. We were spending less and less time together as a couple and that if we were really honest, and really cared for each other, we’d share this.

And this we did, discovering we both felt the same way, that our relationship had indeed morphed into something other than a husband/wife relationship and that if we wanted to be honest and remain in integrity we’d have to recognize this and honour this. After all, who wants to be like a mother who cradles her dead baby to her breast, refusing to recognize what is, hoping that somehow it can be brought back to life? “You can make it work,” our friends told us. “No, we can’t,” we replied, knowing this to be the absolute truth – like a soufflé that can’t be re-heated. “But you guys are so good together, you’re perfect for each other,” they’d say. And we’d reply, “It’s because we love each other and are so good together that now we have to recognize that it’s over, and that the best course is to respect that and let go.”

This seems so counter-intuitive: We’re brought up to believe that if a relationship ends, it’s broken or a failure; however, the truth is that relationships are like everything in nature: they have beginnings, middles and ends. The wisdom is to recognize that and to let go with love when a relationship truly is concluding.

Agreeing to separate was, of course, a painful process, but we faced our pain, and made amends for small hurts over the years. Even the way we separated was beautiful with practical agreement reached as to what she would take and what she would leave behind. There was no pettiness over material objects, and that made for a smoother and more loving parting

It’s coming up to a year since we parted, and we both still live in the same city. We still see each other to catch up with new developments, and we both openly share the details of our newly emerging single lives. We’ve asked ourselves whether either of us harbours a secret wish to get back together and neither of us do. Perhaps that’s the surest indication that we read the signs accurately and made the perfect decision to part ways.

As for me, I’m eternally grateful that I experienced such a profound, mature and loving relationship with a woman who was my perfect equal on so many levels. Perhaps the lesson here is that true love isn’t measured by how passionately one holds on, but by the grace and ease with which one lets go.