Feeding the fire of love

It seems that only now (about 6 months after the break-up) I am able to fully contemplate and understand what happened between Richard and I. I share with him in an email:

"We saw our beautiful love dwindle, slowly die down. We were both standing by the fire and we watched it die down without really understanding what was going on. We were sad, then we started feeling cold, then we left and sought warmth elsewhere.

What is crazy is that I understand now (and it staggers me that I did not understand at that time not so long ago) that one has to feed love, or the fire of any relationship for that matter, and that there are huge stacks of wood all around, right nearby! I could not see the wood before, I could not see anything – apart from the dwindling fire and the night all around.

Love (or friendship, etc) is not something that happens to us, it is something that we create. The trick is that when one falls in love, it is not a fire, it is fireworks bigger than ourselves, and we make "oooh!" and "aaah!" and all we think of is enjoy the show – I think this is what happened to us. I can see, objectively, that we gradually stopped giving each other the gestures/signs of love that we were naturally giving to each other during the first weeks. In the light of the flames, all I was doing/saying made you happy, and all you were doing/saying made me happy. It was easy, it was beautiful.

I remember that, when the fire started to die down, we started sending each other slightly hopeless email, saying that we hoped that the fire would start out again, without (neither you nor I, I think) understanding that it was entirely up to us. We were talking of our beautiful love as if it was external to us. We did not even realize that the reality of our behavior towards each other was changing day after day (in the wrong direction, we were doing less and less the gestures/signs of love). Instead, we thought it was fatality, or we thought it had to be the other one’s fault. On my part, it was pure ignorance, I had no idea how to do, I really was in the dark (the most amazing thing is that I was seeking, but in the wrong place). It feels to me now like I know, like a late discovery, and it seems now so obvious! I think that neither you nor I had had that realization. When I was with M. for example, he knew. He was throwing wood into the fire. I was impressed, even, I really could see how he was doing it, but I hadn’t had the realization myself. And it was working between us.

I see and practice this now in my relationship with other people. I see the IMMENSE SPACE there is to work on the relationship and make it luminous – each moment, each word, each gesture. I see the heaps of wood. There is much space, and, when you realize that, there is no more space for conflict, "games", fights, quick reactions, or even no-love. Everything is fluid, workable, nothing is set. A log here, a bunch of branches there. There is space. It is even fascinating and FUN. I also thought that it was fatality, that I did not get along with my parents, or that I was having regular fights with F., or that things were tensed between my boss and I, etc. Well, this is not at all the case. I know now my responsibility in this, I see the immense heaps of wood I can take from at any moment to feed the fires of my life, and I’m having a blast doing this. Everything is now bright, intense and warm, the cold night is no more. It is crazy. I was until now navigating with my eyes wide shut.

That’s it. It strikes me now, this passive and defeatist attitude we both had. It was totally inadequate, that neither you nor I felt responsible for what was going on between us. We were lamenting: "why? Are we unlucky? Maybe we are not "made for this"? Let’s hope that it will come back", and other inadequate thoughts. We were doing as if our love was not on our personal sphere of influence, as if it was coming to us from who-knows-where, while it was sitting there right in the middle.

We also, of course, started the game of finger-pointing: it must be the other’s fault if this is not working, the other is not enough this or not enough that, they don’t do things right and this is why it is not working.

My life has changed a lot since I’ve realized these things. Everything is more fluid, more soft, more rich, more pleasant, more intense, more fun! It is sad that I had to loose you to end up here – probably I needed something as painful as this to finally come to these realizations."