Marriage: Challenging Old Patterns

"To make room for something new to happen in your life is to see without filters. You can ignite the spark of fresh ideas and aliveness within your body when you step out of the shadow of the past. You take off a veil of tired old reactions and patterns and step into the reality of the moment."
- Charlotte Kasl, If the Buddha Got Stuck

I'm in wedding mode - talking photo shoots, planning the honeymoon, addressing invitations - and in the midst of it all mulling over what it means to be married.

Having been there once before and failed (at the marriage, not at the relationship and its purpose) I can't help but colour my perception of being married with that experience, wondering what to do differently and what it takes to make it work. Reading the above passage last night triggered a thought that maybe I should stop doing that.

By focusing on the past I'm creating my present and future based on the person I used to be and outdated expectations of how I thought my life would turn out. Maybe if I let that go - or at least let it be - I'll free up the emotional space it's been hogging and make room not only for new experiences based on who I am today, but maybe even a new definition of what marriage could be.

I've known this intellectually for a while, last night it seems to have clicked at another level.

Gone is the belief that being married means losing myself, I can be me and we can be we.

Ousted is the expectation that being married necessarily means buying a house and settling down if that's not what we want. All of a sudden I'm thinking road trips, travelling across North America with Cassie in tow, parking our Airstream by a secluded lake for a midday skinny-dip.

In are the notions of discovery, choice and possibility.

I'm thinking adventure in tandem, whether that means hitting the road or setting roots, and that excites me.

How liberating.