Buddhism for the Unbelievably Busy by Meshel Laurie

Author:Meshel Laurie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

8

I’M AN

Unbelievable Ex-wife

Let’s face it: romantic relationships are hard work. If they’re going well, it takes a lot of time and energy to maintain them. And if they’re not going well, you can find yourself unbelievably busy either trying to ignore it, or trying to fix it.

I remember accusing my ex of making my already difficult life harder with his ‘carry on’. Just listening to him talk sometimes felt like an extra job that was keeping me from something else. There was a time, of course, when I longed to listen to him talk! That’s good old Impermanence in action yet again.

Sadly, yes, I am an ex-wife now, after being a wife for nineteen years. I can still get emotional about it if I try hard enough – I can miss the great days of our marriage, in which I felt completely loved and supported by someone who really knew me and liked me anyway. Time has healed me a lot, though. I used to find myself daydreaming about nice memories from my marriage until I thought my heart would just give up and ooze out of the bottom of my trousers and into the nearest drain, but that doesn’t really happen much anymore. I still think it’s a shame the marriage ended, but I don’t long for it, nor do I keep begging him to love me again.

My unbelievable busyness built steadily over the course of our marriage, but of course it exploded when we had kids. Before that, every moment I wasn’t working was devoted to Adrian, but naturally that changed when our two babies arrived. From that day on it was babies first, second and third, with work maybe fourth, and then sleep taking every other position on the priority list.

If we ever did manage some leisure time, all we really wanted to do was be alone with ourselves, not with each other. Pretty rapidly he’d excuse himself to find a drink and I’d curl up in bed with my phone to quietly scroll my life away. We were both looking for escape and, frankly, I just didn’t have anything left to give.

The rigours of keeping a relationship alive are part of the overall busyness that threatens to consume you. To keep growing with another person takes time, attention and energy – all of which are in short supply in our busy lives. We might summon those forces, but at different times to our partners, making it seem like we’re never able to connect anymore. We may feel like we’re not prioritised in their lives. When we dig down, we may discover we’ve been taking them for granted. We may even realise we’ve been using unbelievable busyness as an excuse to avoid ending a relationship we no longer want.

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