The Jeff Experience

Well, Valentine's Day is coming up. My husband, Jeff, and I have been together for ten years.

Years ago, the Grandmothers who appear in my night dreams said, “Intimacy heals.” Intimacy is about being open-heartedly present with another- husband, wife, partner, lover, or friend. Being in intimate relationship is not always easy. But then, healing is not always easy. When I’ve been alone I start thinking I’m actually making “progress” at being the person I want to be. But this kind of gratifying delusion is short-lived when I’m in relationship with another who does not see the necessity of making plans or cleaning out the area under the kitchen sink so it does not smell like garbage. Alone has its own challenges, but when I’m alone I don’t stretch or learn or heal the way I can in relationship with another, partly because- I don’t have to.

It takes great care to be with another. Jeff and I have attended a couple of IMAGO workshops- weekends that teach a method for creating safety to communicate deeply on things that matter to us. After the basic technique is shared (a mirroring dialogue) the facilitator invites couples to practise in front of the group. People generally pick minor issues for the dialogue but even these often touch past wounds and miscommunication. Every time I have been witness to one of these dialogues the same thing happens: I start out internally taking a side based on my own past experience or grievances and then, as the dialogue goes deeper, I see the vulnerable and courageous heart of the one who is daring to speak. And, every time I am deeply touched and surprised to rediscover what tender, vulnerable creatures we all are. Being in an intimate relationship puts the other’s tender bits in our hands, means we must be willing to allow our own vulnerability to be held by another imperfect human being.

I was recently asked in a radio interview what I thought were the important elements in a long-term intimate relationship. One of the things I mentioned was a shared sense of humour- the ability to make each other laugh. Because if you cannot laugh together at your own or the other’s human foibles, well it’s going to be a truly excruciating journey.

Jeff and I laugh together. Years ago I wrote a brief response to an email from a reader. The reader wrote back saying something like, “Wow, it’s like getting a note from Buddha or Ghandi!” So, when I’m complaining in a particularly unenlightened and loud manner about something like getting cut off by someone in traffic, Jeff will sometimes quietly say with feigned wonder, “It’s like driving with Buddha or Ghandi.” And we both laugh (after I give him a half-hearted narrow-eyed scowl.)

Similarly, I once heard from a reader looking for a mate, who complained that she was not going to settle for less than “The Jeff Experience” (having read in The Dance of how Jeff and I got together.) When I recently introduced him to people at an event where I was speaking, one woman said, “Oh, you’re THE Jeff.” So, of course, when Jeff has left a mess I feel I must clean up, or demonstrated once again his inability to find anything in the refrigerator, or is using the sniff test to determine if a piece of clothing is clean enough to wear, I mutter, “I think women out there should know that this is part of The Jeff Experience.” And we laugh together.

Laughing together is about accepting our own and the other’s humanness. Of course, intimacy is not just about acceptance. It’s also about active appreciation. Jeff often tells me is how much he loves my smile (and my cooking.) He says it spontaneously, when I am smiling, in a way that makes me believe him. He tells me that he loved my smile (along with my yellow shorts and long legs) when we first met forty years ago on a canoe trip. And I am always surprised that my smile means so much to him, that he still thinks I’m beautiful forty years later, particularly when I’m smiling. And this- this intimacy, this appreciation, this love- heals something in me I was only half aware was broken. And I am grateful for The Jeff Experience.