page forty-four: Shopping For Furniture At The Jewel

I was once leading a class where we closely examined relationships and how we could make them happier. When discussing marital conflicts, I suggested to the women that we could not blame a partner for not doing something that did not even occur to them. My suggestion was met with loud protests.

"That would mean we cannot blame them for anything!" said one lady. Another said, "Nothing I want ever even occurs to him. Am I not supposed to get upset by it?"

It was alright to feel what one felt, I countered. My only attempt was to point out that the men in their lives were not deliberately denying them their desires. They were simply oblivious to them. They didn't think the way we did — and so we would need to lower our expectations and, where possible, train them.

I gave the analogy of shopping at our neighborhood grocery store, Jewel. You couldn't buy furniture from the Jewel. You could fight with the manager and threaten to sue them, but to no avail. It simply wasn't what they offered. And in doing so, you might miss the strawberries that were on sale.

Many disagreed, holding firmly to their right to react. And who could blame them. But I had a long history of my own that many were unaware of. Two women in my own life, had taught me a great deal.

The first was my mother. I was raised in a home where she relentlessly wrestled with my father for not remembering things, not picking up his clothes or helping around the house. Witnessing it, I naively imagined (as I suspect, so did she) that all the other men in the world were perfectly domesticated, unlike my dad.

Then I got married and began living with my husband's family. To my utter shock, my father-in-law was no different. But the story there was different. My mother-in-law was gentle and docile. She simply picked up after him, expected nothing, and said nothing. I couldn't believe my eyes. And my ears couldn't believe the silence in the household.

I asked her about it one day. She replied in her quiet manner, "It's how men are, and I don't want to waste energy fighting over things we cannot change."

She had a point. But then so did my mother, who believed men were teachable and that it was a wife's duty to do so. Two strong women, two opposite sides. One had become a warrior and the other a martyr.

In my own marriage, I struggled between the polarities of my mother's courage and my mother-in-law's serenity. Was it a wife's dharma to teach, or as my mother-in-law often said, "to adjust"? I eventually arrived at the "You cannot buy furniture at the Jewel" theory. Appreciate what is. Adjust to what is not.

But in reality, this is easier said than done, which is precisely why my class erupted in protest. Preaching is so much easier than practice. It has, however, gotten better over the years. The key, as I discovered, was starting within, looking deeply and addressing my own hunger to be validated and my need to be right. Doing this inner work* has brought about clarity, compassion, and a deeper understanding of my blind spots.

One memory that surfaced a few years ago helped put things in perspective. It is of my father who was a floor manager at an automobile factory. I remember him sitting on weekends, carefully yanking out the nails and metal bits that had worked their way into the soles of his shoes from the factory floor. It was a scene I took for granted as a child. He never spoke about his job or its conditions, and I don't recall him ever buying himself a new pair of shoes.

The image told me something I had missed for years. While our mother lamented that he never really saw her, I now realize he never even really saw himself. Men have their struggles the same way women do. While we were enculturated to please, they were to provide. We were taught to yield; they were asked to toughen up. No wonder we keep missing each other.

With so much work to be done to bridge the gap, we may be light years away from a perfect marriage, where every need is met. Perhaps all we can hope for is a conscious one. So maybe, we stand somewhere between my mother's resistance and my mother-in-law's restraint, and open our hearts to what is possible. In doing so, we create space for the other's journey of becoming.

Perhaps my grocery store analogy was more important than I had realized. It inspired the group to give me a gift at the end of that series: a mug with the words, 'You Can't Buy Furniture at the Jewel.' I still have it. It reminds me every day to appreciate what is.

*I share my mid-life journey, and the inner work that helped me see the world more clearly, in my book The Yoga of Self-Love: The Sacred Path to Wholeness and Healing through Inner-Child Work.