It took me a long time (we’re talking 40-plus years) to realize that an argument or fight with another is an ideal opportunity for personal growth. Yet for years I did just the opposite, pointing my finger at my partner and desperately trying to show her the error of her ways. “If only YOU hadn’t done this,” I’d say indignantly, “I wouldn’t have had to respond that way.” My partner, naturally, would have none of it and just as unconsciously proceed to explain that, in fact, it was I who had created the problem.
And so it would go until one of us grew weary of it all and moved on to the next relationship to repeat the process all over again. You know these people: they’re the ones who keep marrying the same type, who keep suffering the same conflicts at the office, who endure the same family agonies year after year. Years ago someone I know, upon being forcibly removed from his fourth marriage, memorably complained to me that he couldn’t understand how he “kept getting stuck with all these insane women.” To which I replied (after experiencing considerable pain from smacking my palm against my forehead), “WHO is the common denominator in those four marriages?”
I cannot find fault with him because, frankly, I was (and on occasion, still am) the same way. I was like a Samsonite salesman, dragging my accumulating baggage from one relationship to the next. Inevitably disagreements would emerge and I’d dive into my luggage to find just the right argument from old, the one guaranteed to ensure this relationship would fail like all the others. It is astounding how often we can repeat the same mistakes. Monkeys in laboratory settings make better decisions than some humans in relationships.
There is a reason a relationship is considered a “mirror” into ourselves. The monk meditating away his life on a mountaintop will never achieve half that of a man in a really turbulent relationship – provided the man is willing to become more consciously aware of his thoughts and behaviors. A relationship demonstrates things about ourselves that simply are not available in a solitary existence. They test us, push us, demand more and more from us. No mountaintop vista will ever do the same.
