LOVE OR GROWTH-WHY NOT BOTH—A WOMAN’S DILEMMA by Barbara Brewster

Continued from last month- excerpt from Barbara’s acclaimed book, Love or Growth, Why not Both?

Part 3 – TO LIVE IN A CERTAIN STILLNESS – June 3 

Talking on the phone with Bev, it’s such a relief to unload, share, open, listen and be loved and accepted.

“I’m like a starving woman, devouring this time alone.”

“I understand your need for freedom. At the same time, I happen to know how caring, loving and wise both you and Sid are. In the last few months, you’ve worked together and grown. Sid has changed, and you’ve not tried living together under the new conditions as the people you’ve each become.”

“Yes. And that’s what I’m open to – after I’ve savoured my solitude. Right now, I can’t see anything else beyond that need. I’ve been hungering for it so long. I must first eat before I can know how I’ll feel when I’m full. Then, no doubt everything will look different. It’s possible that I’ll be attracted again both to Sid and to relating.”

Bev shares how Robert helped with preparing food, helped her clean houses. How she so enjoyed the things he did, giving of himself. “It was wonderful, but something wasn’t so wonderful. What?”

“One thing,” I offer, “is that pressure we feel to be their fulfillment. Men plug into women to get their sense of self and then are disappointed or threatened when we aren’t ‘it’ for them.”

“That’s exactly what Robert Johnson says in WE. Here, let me read it to you. He says, “A man feels that in woman he will find the meaning of his life, find completeness, wholeness and ecstatic experience. Man has expected his wife to live his unlived life for him; he has expected her to complete his life and make it whole without his having to help himself.” Robert wasn’t interested in expanding his sense of his own self or in developing his ideas of relating. Even though he had hobbies and interests, in terms of loving and relating, he came to me for his sense of completion.”

“Exactly. And that can be exhausting. Another aspect for me is that things have developed to where Sid does all the sexual and romantic initiating. I’m avalanched under his desire. So, it’s hard to come to him bringing desire, because he’s carrying enough for both of us. There is no mystery. There is little left of himself that is unrelated to me.”

“Some women would give their left arm for that devotion.”

“I know, he’s focused his whole life on me. That’s what makes it so agonizing to let go of him. Do I have to? Is it possible to have freedom and be in relationship?”

Neither of us knows.

Later, talking on the phone with Sid, he says, “I just spoke with Rob and Di at the sheep farm. I’m flying to Australia in August.”

Everything shifts. An hour ago I was looking for house sitting situations.

After hanging up, I sit in the darkening living room, my revved-up body beginning to relax. I’ve got my sabbatical! And without having to cut off the marriage. Two whole months to savor the silence and flow with my own rhythms and processes. Heaven.

When I think of Sid gone in Australia, really out of touch with me, I feel a loss of him. And I feel a surge of pleasure in knowing him as a man who undertakes trans-world travels. His striking off on such an adventure gives him an air of independence and spirit – and unavailability – self-containedness that makes him much more interesting. I no longer feel the pressing need to avoid meeting each other. I now feel that we are partners on journeys of mutual self-discovery – no longer adversaries but friends supporting each other in our evolution.

If a man graduates [from his projections] it opens up a new world for him. He discovers that there are parts of himself, potentialities and forces, that he can’t live out through a woman. He discovers that he can’t make woman the carrier of all his unlived life and his unrealized self. He finds that there are things that he must do by himself and for himself: He must have an inner life; he must serve values that have meaning for him; he must have interests and enthusiasms that well out of his own soul, that are not merely spin-offs of his life with woman.

Robert A. Johnson: WE

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