A Meditation On The Struggle Of Romantic Relationships

On my first day back at Cornell, my girlfriend broke up with me.

I cried. A lot. We had something together, but she wasn't in a season of life where she was focusing on relationships, and she didn't want to string me along.

Walking back to my dorm, I felt strangely empty--like my heart had been clawed from my chest, leaving a gaping hole. The birds chirping wasn't as pleasant to the ear. The green of nature felt duller, like a dusted painting. The air felt stuffy even though it never gets humid in Ithaca.

In the last few days, I'll do something awesome and think: I should share it with--oh...

I know how to navigate it. Years of philosophy, spirituality, and more have drilled it into me.

"Don't focus on what's outside of your control."

"If you go into a relationship thinking the other person will make you whole, it's doomed to fail. You have to be desireless."

"Be patient. You'll find the right person eventually, I know you will."

Intellectually, this sounds great. I've directly experienced the negatives of going against everything from above. It's emotionally I struggle to resonate.

I used to value control a lot. Two years ago, I organized my day into thirty-minute chunks of time, trying to squeeze every last drop of productivity from my daily time sponge. I gravitated heavily to activities like writing, resistance training, and reading, where my skill was directly proportional to the amount of time I put in--under my control.

But it had a cost.

One day I was standing in front of the washing machine, five minutes left in the cycle. I agonized over what was most "productive" to do in those five minutes. I spent so long thinking I ended up doing nothing. Then, I got a text from my girlfriend: she wanted to "talk."

My worst fears were confirmed when I entered her room a half hour later, and she was sitting there with a box of tissues. She almost broke up with me. She felt unheard of in the relationship because of my constant work. Trying to optimize my productivity, I thought I could optimize my relationship as well. Turns out, relationships aren't things to be optimized, they're journey's to be experienced, opened to, and surprised by.

So, why didn't she break up with me? Because that day, I made the commitment to be more experiential, less controlling, and more open to the whims of life. For the next few months, I was the perfect boyfriend. I got her flowers. I wrote her poetry. I took her out to romantic dinners.

Unfortunately, we broke up a few months later because of differing life trajectories, but I kept that Zen approach to romantic relationships as I continued dating.

In my following dates, I tried to be open, less controlling, desireless. I learned from my spiritual readings that to desire too heavily could lead to neediness. You fall in love with the idea of a person rather than the person themselves. If you are truly ready for a relationship, you don't need the other person--you are whole as you are.

For a while, this worked. I went on dates. I accepted any rejections didn't necessarily speak faults of my own.

But there was a problem: my heart was like a stone.

After every failed date, I would shrug my shoulders and think, "well, let's look for the next one." It didn't take long before I felt something was wrong. I was going on dates, but I didn't, feel anything.

It was as if I entered the dates wearing a set of plate armor. Each emotion was a sword or an arrow trying to jolt its way into my heart, but my plate would "defend" me against the hurt that came my way. I saw dates like a battle. Could I make it through without having my heart broken? What I failed to realize, is relationships are more like a dance. And who the hell wears armor while dancing?

Living without armor in the open air is much more intimate and liberating. We want our armor to make us look strong and courageous, but it's taking off the armor that takes strength and courage.

It's so usual and tragic that to avoid a broken heart, people live in a state of no-heartedness. In the willingness to have your heart broken a million, a trillion, a zillion times, there's living in love.

So, I opened myself up.

I could no longer accept the idea to simply let it flow and become desireless. It went against a lot of my spiritual teachings. But the same line kept coming into my head over and over:

"I'd rather feel and be hurt, than not feel anything at all."

I feel more. I hurt more. I love more. The dating period during my spring semester of Junior year is one of the most melancholic yet exultant of my life.

I am usually extremely positive, both from the habits I've formed and genetics. Feeling sadness, melancholy, in a weird way feels good. I'm experiencing more of what it means to be human. I feel alive.

I was always told to be patient; the right person would come along sometime.

It's great advice. Forcing a relationship isn't going to do you or the other person any good. But once again, the tip doesn't get to the heart of how it feels to want a relationship with every fiber of your being.

Emotionally, not having a romantic partner seems like a cosmic joke. If you are whole in yourself, not having someone to share it with feels wrong. It's like a peacock with no feathers. A garden with no flowers. Peanut butter and jelly without the peanut butter.

Be patient. Hah! I want a partner now.

My mind continues spiraling back to a quote from When Harry Met Sally: "When you know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

So why isn't it starting?

As I've been processing the breakup, one more spiritual idea has helped me immensely: connecting with the underlying music of the Universe.

There is a cosmic background music underlying everything you do. It's always present, just not always noticed. You don't hear it because you don't listen. But if you tune your mind, it can energize you when times are tough.

A few days ago, I was sitting at Beebe lake when two kids sprinted by, grins on their faces, and PB&J sandwiches in their hands. Shortly after, their mother and father came with fishing rods. While the father fished, the kids laughed and played as the mother watched, smiling.

At that moment, I felt their love. Even though I was hurting, I was tapped into the music of the Universe. While walking around campus, I try and tap into the music. Couples walking together. Birds feeding their chicks. Plants bathing in the sunlight.

I might be hurting. But that doesn't mean everyone else is. If you take the time to look, you'll see love is all around.