“Relax,” the Gentleman reminded me as he kissed me, the constant tension that runs through my body jumping from my lips to his. “I can feel you shaking.” Oh dear. I’m so tense I shake. I am a human Chihuahua. If I were a dog, I would be in Paris Hilton’s purse. Shame. Shame shame.
I have spent my entire life anxious. It took me 24 years to realize most people aren’t overwhelmed by the world all the time. I would panic in the grocery store as I found myself overwhelmed by noise. In high school, if I couldn’t find all my colors of pen so I could write my notes in rainbow order, I was distracted all though class. The idea of getting lost made me feel violently ill; I once got lost in rural Tennessee, panicked, and proceeded to drive 100 miles an hour on roads with no names in the wrong direction (logic was clearly not with me at the time). Even as a child I was a perfectionist to the point that when my parents once attempted to reprimand me by lightly smacking my hand I beat my head against a cement column in our house for an hour and refused to stop, aghast at my own misbehavior. I was the human version of Dobby, with no tea towel and better hair.
I’m doing so much better, in large part due simply to the realization that most people don’t live like this and it doesn’t have to be this way, but by nature I still am relatively more anxious than most people.
Even with all this progress, I’ve actually managed to clench my jaw so much from stress that my jaw throbs and sometimes I can barely open my mouth. Sometimes I even find myself unable to eat my favorite cereal (Grapenuts. Yes, I am an old person. Yes, I know they taste like dirt. Yes, I still love them. Mmm dirt. The taste that goes crunch.). Even my dentist says I have to relax.
I’m a go-getter, a doer. I like having goals, and I’ve been described as “teleologically inclined,” meaning I’m all about results and the endgame. I like checking things off lists, and I love accomplishing things that are difficult. But every time I try to relax, and especially to meditate, I find myself more stressed. With visualization exercises, if you’re supposed to visualize a warm relaxing sensation spreading through your body, I’m always convinced my imagined warmth is spreading too slowly. When I focus on my breathing, I find a catch in my throat as I become hyperaware of my lungs. And then the more frustrated I get at my lack of success, the worse these issues become. It’s a viscous cycle of anti-relaxing relaxation attempts.
Tonight the Gentleman suggested that I can’t approach relaxation as if it is something to be achieved. There is a difference between being and doing. I have to work on simply being. The more I actively seek to relax, the more tense I will be when I feel like I’m floundering. And then it finally dawned on me:
The only way to succeed in this is to let go of the idea of success.
The same thing, I think, applies in dating, too. When we’re hunting for something in particular, we don’t appreciate people’s authentic selves. We construct them in our minds, overlooking who they really are, or else when their true selves register with us we’re constantly measuring them up to some preconceived notion we have of who our ideal partner ought to be. Then we find ourselves disappointed, our dreams fading into a reality that tastes bitter in our mouths after the sweetness of imagined success.
In having such a particular idea of what success means we lose what actually makes a relationship successful: recognizing and appreciating someone for who they really are. Being present, not in some false dream we’ve created for ourselves.
We treat so much of life as if there are goals to be attained. We reach for brass rings we’ve placed for ourselves, in turn losing sight of the twists and turns of the merry-go-round. The ride itself is the prize, the goal arbitrary, distracting us from what is at hand, be it relaxation or a relationship.
It’s the little moments that count. It’s learning rather than mastering. It’s not a forward progress necessarily. It’s simply movement, attempts, breath in, breath out, less effort, more existence.
Relax. Just relax. And be. If anything, it’s a place to grow from, with no particular end in mind.
Forget the ring. Take the ride.
Tinder Buttons 