The brilliance that lives in your ambivalence
Recently, I was speaking at a men’s summit, where the average age was about 18 to 25. What I want to say briefly, before I get deeper into it, is that these men were really incredible. High achievers, very introspective, and really wanting to bring their hearts and souls to every area of their life. They were especially interested in love and relationships.
After my talk one of them asked me a question about his long-term girlfriend, which drew quite a crowd. Apparently, other men had been caught in this conundrum. He said to me, “I love my girlfriend, and I’ve been with her for 3 years. I’ve been thinking about proposing, but I’m worried that I might be making a mistake, and I am feeling anxious about the decision. I wanted to explore: what’s going on in me that I’m scared or can’t just easily propose?”
What a brave question for him to ask. I think the question he asked is one that many of us have when we’re approaching the idea of long-term commitment and marriage. What an important and beautiful thing it is that we pause for big decisions that we’re uncertain about.
I told him that it is normal for someone to believe that their hesitancy or ambivalence is a problem with them, and sometimes it can be. Even if it is a challenge that lies within us, where maybe we are afraid of closeness or whatever other pathology can lead to hesitancy… the truth is that ambivalence is always wise, even if it is from an internal challenge. What ambivalence is asking of us is to pause, to take a moment and evaluate. Our system is trying to say that there is something that needs to be explored here on the path to making a commitment, a commitment that matters to me.
When I was anxious about proposing when I was 27 years old, the most common response I would get from people was that I was just afraid of commitment. It was dismissed as being normal behavior for men, but I thought to myself, “We want men who are more emotionally connected? Men who are introspective about their feelings and able to be vulnerable about them.”
The moment that I am, my feelings are dismissed, and I’m told that commitment is something that feels synonymous with walking the plank. Because my hesitancy wasn’t navigated with curiosity, I did end up getting engaged and then ending that engagement. While we could say that she wasn’t the right person or it wasn’t the right time (both of those would be true…), what lay below all of my hesitancy was not a fear of commitment, but rather a fear of where commitment might lead.
Little did I know that 8 years before, a massive betrayal in a relationship that I was deeply devoted to would lead me to write an unconscious script: when I let people love me, they betray me, and when I love people, I betray myself. Given that information, it would make sense that I would date unavailable people, be unavailable myself, and when it came to being loved by an incredible person and loving that person back, my nervous system would go into freeze, or even worse, run.
The truth is that that pain, and that ending of an engagement, would be the beginning of one of the greatest adventures of my life. It would lead to the desire to humanize relationship endings and teach people to turn towards themselves with curiosity when swimming in the shame of uncertainty.
I tell you this story because I want to remind you that your response to anything is wise, while your response might be dysfunctional or seek to sabotage your relationships. You might have shame about those choices and behaviours. I encourage you to see what you have done, and what has gotten you here, with grace.
Your hesitancy and/or uncertainty has been trying to prevent you from experiencing something that you have not yet fully healed. One of the core messages of my talk to these young men was that what is not resolved is repeated. If you do not go deep into your grief and your pain, it will unconsciously run your life.
In order to navigate these pivotal moments in our lives, it’s important that we don’t surround ourselves with people who bury their suffering below bourbon or try to get over their ex by getting under the next… God knows I tried to do both. Although bourbon wasn’t my choice… it was a little spiced rum mixed with some ‘90s R&B, and a situationship, or friends with benefits, that would allow me to control the depth of intimacy while still experiencing intimacy and connection.
Little did I know that the mysterious attraction that I had to unavailable people and the magnetism I had for those who were subtly or completely unavailable would be due to an unconscious desire to prevent myself from getting devastatingly hurt, while swimming in and circling the drain of my own suffering.
I’ll finish by pointing to this: what you want most in life, love, stands right next to what you most fear. In order to walk towards what you most want (love), you must become intimate with and connected to what you most fear. It is actually through asking your pain, “What skills and abilities would you need me to know to walk confidently towards your greatest fears so that you could walk past them into the never-ending abyss that love ultimately is?”
I say all of this while humbly walking alongside you. The container of commitment is least of all comfortable. Its purpose is to reveal to you what must be healed so you can merge with the other and the divine. They are not separate. Yet the greatest conundrum is that human relationships require that you swim in the etherically confusing reality that you are both a separate self and one, all at the same time. You must nurture yourself and, in doing so, nurture the other — and, receive the feedback from the other to develop oneself, which develops the us.
If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you will. All at the perfect time.
That young man came back to me later in the day and said to me, “It feels so different to turn towards my confusion, seeing that it is wise. I have a lot to think about because I think I actually know why I’m hesitating, and I’m afraid to tell her.”
I acknowledged how courageous it was for him to come up and ask that question, and how it’s even more courageous to honour that his system is picking up on something that needs resolving to make him feel more excited about choosing one another. This is the beautiful work that love demands.
Big love,
Mark
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