This is a picture of us a few years ago with a gathering of friends. Since then, I’ve gotten more gray in my hair. Carlin is even more beautiful. We celebrated Carlin’s 88th birthday on July 24th with a wonderful celebration in our community in Willits, California. I will be 83 in December.
At this time of life, Carlin and I reflect on what we’ve learned and what we want to pass on to our family when it is our time to end our life on the earth. Beyond the material things we would pass on, we think more about what has really been important in our own lives and what gifts we want to give to our six grown-up children, seventeen grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.
For us, our greatest gifts have come from what we’ve learned about love. Once we began sharing with our family, I realized I also wanted to share with our community of friends and colleagues who follow our work at MenAlive.
In a previous article I wrote about an expanded understanding of marriage. In his book The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationships David Whyte says,
“Human beings are creatures of belonging, though they may come to that sense of belonging only through long periods of exile and loneliness.”
Most of us have experienced the feelings of exile and loneliness that Whyte describes. I found Whyte’s description of the three marriages to be very helpful.
“This sense of belonging or not belonging” says Whyte, “is lived out by most people through three principal dynamics:
- “First through our relationship to other people and other living things (particularly and very personally, to one other living, breathing person in relationship or marriage);
- “Second, through work,
- “Third, through an understanding of what it means to be themselves, discrete individuals alive and seemingly separate from everyone and everything else.”
Whyte goes on to say,
“To neglect any one of the three marriages, is to impoverish them all, because they are not actually separate commitments but different expressions of the way each individual belongs to the world.”
This one sentence forever changed my views of love and marriage.
In recent years I have come to believe that there is a fourth marriage that has been invisible to most of us. It is like water for a fish wo are immersed in from the beginning of life, so are never aware of their deeper connection. I believe that our connection to the human tribe is a fourth marriage.
I first became aware of this marriage from Daniel Quinn, the author of the book Ishmael. In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, he says,
“The tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees.”
We have become estranged for our human tribe, and we don’t have to be experts to see that humanity is in trouble. Humans have become disconnected from what works for all our fellow creatures in the community of life on planet Earth.
Thomas Berry was a geologian, and a historian of religions. He spoke eloquently about our connection to the Earth and the consequences of our failure to remember who we are.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”
Carlin and I met, fell in love, and became partners in love and life in 1980. I had been in process of writing my first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man. Meeting Carlin helped me put the last touches on the book, which was published in 1983. Most of the book describes my family history and tumultuous relationship challenges. It is not surprising that the welcome video on my website is titled “Confessions of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor.”
Here’s how I described the beginning of the relationship.
“The only way I can describe meeting and growing to love Carlin is to say it was subtle. There was a definite attraction at first, but it was like no other attraction I’d ever had with a woman. Every other relationship I’d ever had started out with a bang. With Carlin it was different. There was a deep knowing when we met that I almost didn’t recognize. If she hadn’t taken the initiative, I’m not sure we would have gotten together.”
Carlin has always been a bit older and wiser than me about the important aspects of love and life.
I continued sharing my experiences in the book.
“All my life I had been drawn to people who reflected what I felt was lacking in me, although I never realized it at the time. The attraction was based on the fear that I would remain ‘incomplete’ without them. There weren’t flashing neon lights, just the quiet, pure gentle light of unconditional love. It was a new feeling for me.”
I now believe that the beginning of this deeper understanding about love was the result of my joining a supportive, caring, men’s group a year before Carlin and I met. Instead of my old pattern of chasing women (My second book, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions, describes that part of my journey), the men’s group taught me how to love and appreciate myself as a man.
Although four of our seven group members have died, the three of us continue to meet. Carlin says that one of the main reasons we have had a successful 46-year marriage is because I’ve been in a men’s group for 47 years.
Shirley Luthman, a writer and teacher I had in graduate school described what is possible when two people come together who have learned to deepen the male and female aspects of our being:
“When two people meet who have learned to balance and express their own female and male energy nothing ‘begins or ends with a bang.’ Energy builds and you learn to trust and appreciate that continuity and harmony so that you can feel very deeply and yet not cling or fear loss.”
When the book was published, we had been married three years. We had learned some things, but we were only getting started.
Love and Life Learnings
- An expanded understanding of marriage opens new opportunities for success in love and in life.
- All four marriages are intimately related. As David Whyte reminds us, if we neglect one, we impoverish them all.
- Engaging all four marriages helps us to reconnect with the community of life on planet Earth which is necessary if humanity is going to survive and flourish.
- Love is a lifelong practice that gets better through the ages.
In future posts I will talk more about our personal love story and what we continue to learn about living fully, loving deeply, and making a positive difference in the world. I look forward to your comments. Feel free to drop me a note to Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Love Story” in the subject line.
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