How Meditation Ended My Marriage.
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Whenever someone would ask what made me love the man I married so much, I would respond with, “… I just do.”
It was simple and straightforward, the way I loved him. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone so much and so deeply.
We lost many hours of sleep to long conversations about spirituality and God, about our childhoods and dreams for the future.
We kissed for hours on end, and reached out an arm or a leg to the other if we awoke in the middle of the night not entangled with the other. With him I felt sexually fulfilled in a way that only true, deep and profound love can provide.
Eventually we softened around our excitement for the other, and as the high of a new relationship dissipated, we experienced the joy, and the difficulties, of loving each other in a space of familiarity and comfort.
We went through our fair share of trials and tribulations. His lack of emotional awareness; my lack of emotional control.
I wondered many times if we would make it through the problems that arose from those issues.
In the most troubling times, I would enter meditation, telling myself, You will be open enough to hear your answer, Jessica, and you will also be strong enough to take whatever action is necessary.
I was open to that answer being It’s time to leave, but it never was. I always left those meditative periods feeling overwhelmed with love and gratitude for him. I had never before experienced love that transcended my partner’s shortcomings — his humanity.
I was blown away by the depth, the vastness, and the simplicity of my love for him. I just loved him. Purely. Easily. Without choice or question. My love for him was a gentle, soft, quiet knowing.
Eventually we got engaged, and then married. We became family, in name and within our hearts. We bought a house and planned for kids. Our respective shortcomings — our humanity — remained, unsurprisingly.
We often struggled to find middle ground when he needed space, or I needed closeness. But I continued to love him, simply, and he continued to love me the same way.
And then the sky fell. Or rather, my sky fell. I began to work through old trauma that had stood unaddressed for many years. I fell apart. I struggled to show up to work, struggled to eat, and spent most evenings curled under blankets on the couch weeping.
It has always been difficult for me to let others see me in a state of disarray, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter as disarray had more or less become my default.
I’d never needed closeness more than I did then, and I’d never been more afraid to ask for it. But I did, and he did his best.
When he would come home from work to find me in a puddle on the couch, though, I could feel his fear. He would freeze. He was afraid of my pain, afraid of me. I told him that I didn’t need him to say anything, I just needed him to be there.
He would try, but he struggled to step outside of his fear. I began to feel like a stranger in my own home.
So, in search of a safe place, I turned the never-used office in my home into a zen den. As it always does, desperation led me to meditation. I retreated to that room for hours at a time to meditate, cry, write, and read (wash, repeat). It became my refuge.
I began to rely heavily on my newfound daily meditation practice for peace and comfort, to feel cradled by the love that my husband struggled to offer me. That I struggled to offer myself.
It was in that room that I unintentionally awoke a divine and powerful part of me that had been asleep for many years.
And, much to my horror, this divinity within me was unwilling to compromise on the matter of emotional and spiritual presence in her marriage.
She reminded me that I deserved these things. I fought back, thinking that I must surely be losing my mind to even consider leaving my husband whom I loved and respected! But those words — I want more; I deserve more — wouldn’t leave me.
I wanted so badly to un-see that my marriage was unsustainable if I wanted to grow, but I couldn’t. So I was faced with a terrifying decision: stay, and shrink; or leave, and hurt, and grow.
The time had come. So I left. And I hurt, and I cried. A lot. I made many mistakes.
And I grew. I began to heal. And I haven’t stopped meditating since.
My marriage ended the same way our story began: softly, quietly, gently, and with an abundance of love and respect. The fact that my marriage ended doesn’t mean that my marriage failed, nor do I believe that marrying him was a mistake.
I am overwhelmingly proud to have been that man’s wife, proud to have loved him and been loved by him. I thought he would be my forever love, but he wasn’t, and that’s okay. That is not failure; it is simply an ending.
Writing this article is my letting go. It is my Thank You. It is my final I Love You. With this I turn the last well-worn page of our book, and lovingly and with reverence stow it away.
*****
Jessica Knott is an avid spiritual seeker, semi-accomplished yogi, and steadfast believer in the power and beauty of the human experience. Vulnerability, authenticity and passionate self-expression are her drugs of choice. She is currently completing a 200-hour Yoga teacher training program. You could connect with her via Facebook or Instagram.
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