Photo by: Stephanie Berghaeuser

For those of you who have followed monkeyinmymind over the last two years, you may have learned about my wife and her online parenting business, OrganicGreenMommy.com.  I have mentioned her from time to time in the pages of Monkeyinmymind, particularly in several of the posts that I wrote reacting to online Self-Help guru Steven Pavlina’s decision to “go poly.”

One of the posts I wrote was called “Steve Pavlina’s Take on Polyamory Causes Me to Re-think My Marriage.” While the title of this post was perhaps a bit spicy, implying that Pavlina’s foray into the world of multiple sex partners was inspiring me to do the same (it wasn’t), the article wasn’t at all about ending my marriage, but rather more about taking a deeper and more introspective look into the contractual aspects of marriage.  I wrote:

the issues of love, fidelity, sex, and marriage have surfaced to the forefront of my consciousness for a reason. I went off on Steve for his choice but perhaps should have instead used it as a wakeup call asking whether or not I am up to the task of deepening my intimate relationship. If I believe what I said in my response to Steve then my job now is to walk my talk. I realize that there is no better crucible of change than a marriage. Either you change and grow and live happily, or remain the same and live a life of misery. Hopefully if we chose the latter we have the strength and courage to distintegrate the unhealthy marriage.

When Circumstances Collide

Turns out, almost exactly 10 months later, that change would indeed not occur in my marriage; we chose not to change as individuals in the relationship and live happily within the context of the marriage.  But we still didn’t exactly have the required reservoirs of strength and courage to purposefully disintegrate our unhealthy marriage.  It took an unexpected circumstance, completely out of our control, to force us to face the current state of affairs of our marriage and make rapid and permanent changes in our lives.

On September 26th, my wife and decided to take some time apart from one another.  We agreed to work out a living situation that would minimize our exposure to one another so that we were unable to argue, fight, or poorly communicate in front of our impressionable, extremely perceptive three-year old.

Two days later, on September 28th, we learned that my wife had a 3 centimeter brain tumor, known as an acoustic neuroma. On October 3rd, she was admitted to the Neuro-Surgical unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.  On October 9th, Lauren underwent a 12-hour procedure to remove the tumor from an area just behind her right ear.  The surgery was a complete success, although an unfortunate side effect of the procedure was a complete loss of hearing in her right ear.  On October 17th, she was released from the Intensive Care Unit and returned home to her mother’s home, where we had agreed she would go following her release as her mother worked out of her home and would be able to provide care for Lauren.

Neurological post-op is no walk in the park.  This may sound horrible, but the only way I can put it into words for people to understand what she was like while in the ICU unit post-op was that she looked and acted as though she had just survived a car crash.  She was shell-shocked and physically disabled to a far greater degree than she was following either of her c-sections, the most recent of which she still hadn’t fully recovered from, giving birth to our second daughter just three months prior to be diagnosed with the brain tumor.

It’s important to note that this tumor didn’t just appear overnight.  These acoustic neuromas are slow-growing.  By the looks of it’s huge size (3 centimeters), this one had been around for a long time.  Who knows what kind of physical and mental impact growing a brain tumor has has had on my wife over the years.  Although the tumor was not malignant, and not mutating brain cells, the tumor was still occupying space in her brain, throwing out of balance the equilibrium of her brain fluid and providing tons of pressure on surrounding nerves, inner ear functions, and her cerebellum.

Anyway, this ordeal obviously affected both of us in a significant way, arguably her to a degree that I will never fully understand unless I expect to one day find myself in a similar situation (I don’t).  Shortly thereafter arriving at her mother’s home, she called me and informed me that she would like to end the marriage as soon as possible.

Prior to our discovery of her tumor, our decision was to simply temporarily separate, so as to assess the marriage with a little distance and perhaps a perspective of self-respect, self-love, and concern for the kids.

Following the near-death aspect of removing the large tumor, Lauren’s decision became more urgent and less “exploratory.”  She no longer wanted to separate as an attempt to save the marriage, but instead wished to separate immediately and divorce as soon as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts would allow.

Bless This Divorce

I have always believed that a “spiritual relationship” should always serve the maximal mutual benefits of both or all members of the relationship.  Otherwise, the marriage is not equitable; the marriage embodies a “win-lose” or “lose-lose” philosophy.  Who the “loser” is depends on the circumstances, but in an unhealthy marriage, usually everybody involves loses in one way or another.

I consider my relationship with Lauren to be a “spiritual relationship,” one rooted in love, respect, and trust.  When those parameters can no longer be maintained through physical contact, the only logical course is to abandon physical contact.  This usually involves similarly abandoning all of the material trappings of the marriage, to include the legal union itself.

A dissolution of a relationship, or a divorce in a marriage, doesn’t necessarily represent a failure of that relationship.  Instead, a divorce can represent the logical and natural evolution of that relationship, or the “next right thing” that serves the greater good.

When the relationship no longer serves the  mutual benefits of both members of the partnership, then the partners appear to separate in the physical world.  In many cases there are no victims or perpetrators in such an occurrence.

That being said, we have an appointment in two weeks with our spiritual advisor to help us bless this divorce.  Our intent is to separate with love and respect, in a way that hopefully minimizes the negative impact on our kids, their future, and our finances.

Stay tuned to see how it goes…

Image by: Kriss Szkurlatowski

Like many others with an eye on the “internet Personal Development scene” I was taken aback at the beginning of 2009 when the popular blogger Steve Pavlina announced to the world that he was ditching a traditional marriage with his partner of 15 years for the practice of Polyamory (“many loves”), meaning that he (and his wife, Erin) had decided to open up their marriage in order to prevent it from degrading even further into a possible divorce.

His announcement was followed by a lengthy and detailed defense of his intentions that has received quite a bit of attention over the past few weeks, both positive and negative. Many of his readers, whether they personally practiced Polyamory or not, wrote in to his forums and other blogs to support his intentions and applaud his courage for announcing it so publicly. Others have taken issue with his stance on the issue of Polyamory and marriage, while still others, like myself in a post here or Pure Doxyk in a post here found aspects of his rationalization disturbing, indicating hints of selfishness or self-absorption that seemed to run contrary to his previous track record of providing usuable personal development tools and pieces of advice on his blog.

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the whole affair, I am starting to realize that my response in this blog was a bit of a rant and may have indeed run contrary to my stated purpose of this blog, to: Quiet the Monkeymind, the noisy thing in our brain that judges the world and others in order to prevent us from achieving moment-to-moment consciousness.

Is Steve Pavlina Onto Something, Then?

Well, no, not at least as far as me and the Monkey are concerned. But the realization I have recently discovered is that his post, as it exists within my personal consciousness, is nothing more than any other person, event, or thing that we summon into our life experience for the purpose of doing one of two things:

1) Growing, or

2) Perpetuating a lack of consciousness.

In other words, I am now beginning to understand that this talk of Polyamory isn’t about the merits of Monogamy versus sleeping with multiple partners, Steve Pavlina’s ego, or the opinions of thousands of others. Instead, what this is is an opportunity, a Call to Action, for me to personally examine the intimate relationships in my life, particularly my marriage, and attempt to draw something of value so as to improve, modify, or disband those relationships, as a means to create greater happiness and a deeper connection to the Universal Mind.

I guess what I’m saying is that I took issue with many of the points that Steve had made about his realtionship, his thoughts on Polyamory, and his mission in life to expand his own consciousness. I made the focus of my blog post about Steve and my perception that he has been misguided by his ego. In short, I was taking his personal inventory as opposed to using his message as an opportunity to evaluate my own relationship. What I am finding is that I had a lot to criticize about Steve but I also objectively should have a lot of criticisms about how I am handling my own marriage.

Six-Year Roller Coaster Ride

I will spare the details of the ups and downs of my marriage perhaps for a later post, but will say this: my relationship, while rewarding and important, has not been a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. We have had to deal with a lot of external issues and crises (9-11, unemployment, unplanned pregnancy, career struggles, legal problems, substance abuse related issues) that have strained a relationship that probably could have been better served by emotional and economic stability. What I’m trying to say here is that my wife and I love each other very much, but our personalities are intense, our dreams are big, and we both embody the extreme manifestation of masculine and feminine energy, respectively. In other words, while we share many of the same tastes and values, our communication patterns often create the perception that our intentions and desires are polarly opposed. Where I am weak she is strong and her weaknesses are my strengths. We have, subconsiously perhaps, not chosen an easy path by selecting each other as our life partners, as we daily encounter multiple “opporunities for growth” in learning how to deal with each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

So why I am going on about this? Well, now I am understanding that Pavlina’s post and the introspection and discussion my wife and I have had on the issues of love, fidelity, sex, and marriage have surfaced to the forefront of my consciousness for a reason. I went off on Steve for his choice but perhaps should have instead used it as a wakeup call asking whether or not I am up to the task of deepening my intimate relationship. If I believe what I said in my response to Steve then my job now is to walk my talk. I realize that there is no better crucible of change than a marriage. Either you change and grow and live happily, or remain the same and live a life of misery. Hopefully if we chose the latter we have the strength and courage to distintegrate the unhealthy marriage. If monogamous marriage is a path to expanded consciousness then I am on the right path for me. But maybe I’ve been siting on the side of the path, pouting there with my arms crossed waiting for someone else to change, while I need to just get back up and keep moving forward with an open heart.