MC says to call it quits

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I'd say you had a couple of interesting weeks.

Good point about actions. We all operate with our own assumptions, interpretations, and intentions driven by our self-interests. The perception/action/intention, though is a two-way street, filteres through the other's view. So, while your wife pointed out 4 different things that mattered (or maybe more correctly she noticed that were important to her), the question remains: Did the matter enough to alter behavior?

I've been through a similar conversation a number of times myself.

A couple of other points left hanging in previous posts:

Its natural to want to find a reasonable explanation for why things go the way they do, whether that be some book, some condition, some course or training that seems to explain or fit most of what we are and have experienced. An observation on my part: while various books may be useful in creating a language to explain and relate to what has and is happening in your marriage, in the end you have to adapt those "insights" to a language and actions consistent with who you are. And who you are is something that you state with words and with actions so that the external world and your internal worlld "know you."

You asked about what acceptance looks like. That is a good way of asking the question as acceptance is not something you do. One way it would look would be having and grasping as complete an understanding of your wife's POV and taking actions consistent with that. That is difficult when someone really won't let you in.

Acceptance is something created in a present moment. I can't tell you what it looks like exactly, you'll know it when you see.
However, an appropriate analogy is like describing "balance" when riding a bicycle. If you've never riden a bicycle, you know what that looks like but you don't know what it feels like (and how that translate internally to your own sense of experience) until you actually achieve it.

Balance in walking probably came well before you were programmed with language to relate to it in the same way. There you were acting on stimulus/response patterns that are partially hard-wired into your brain (just as sexual drive is also partially hard-wired). You created a muscle memory that really doesn't require language to have it happen. But to have it "occur" as something conscious is a bit more difficult to describe because the occurrence (awareness) only comes through language. Sometimes the language is not up to the process.

But by choosing a metaphor like balance for bicycle riding or skiing, the sense of balance (like acceptance) comes in a fleeting moment when all of a sudden your realize you "have it." It can disappear in an instant when it is no longer "present" (and we could say that you were no longer in the present moment). It can, with practice, become "second nature" and it is also something which you can continually "create" (until you don't).

I'm going to use some interesting language that may not make sense and is designed to be thought provoking. And it is a three-step view. This is why I use balance on a bicycle or skis as the metaphor...it is not some physical object you point to in space and time.

Being in acceptance (being accepting) is being related to something that is unimaginable to be related to, the occurrence of which, if ever, lies on the other side of being related to that is unimaginable to be related to.

Instead of acceptance, I could have used the word "present," or "love" or any other number of words that seem trancendental. But lets stick with acceptance and the metaphor of balance.

Read the above italicized paragraph several more times and just let it sink in. Don't try to think it through, don't try to translate it, don'tr try to understand it. If it reads as confusing, you are in a perfect spot. When you think you've got the general structure of the paragraph move down to the next paragraph below.

So, here are the three points.

What does is mean to be related to something. I'm going to use a tangible example. First, an occurring world occurs only because of language. The language you have been programmed with and use "give you" your world view. No language, no occurring world (different from stuff happening in the world, but without language there is no way to catalog and recognize it). The story of Helen Keller was a great example of this.

As a tangible example, you know what a door is. You see it and relate to it in certain ways, many of which may be cultural. In your experience with a door, you also have accumulated rules of doors. Thus, you "be related to" a door by recognizing and classifiying it in your vocabulary as a "door" and you relate to that door through all the rules you know about doors. You use those rules to know when you and if you can and should open a door, whether you should knock, what it means if a door is locked, etc. You also know how a door fits in with a structure (room, building, etc.).

To a culture without doors, any explanation you gave would be nonsensical both because the language and the "occurence" of doors is outside of their realm of experience. For them a door is unimaginable to be related to.

Are you with me so far?

On the intangible like acceptance it is the same type of deal...being related to that which is unimaginable to be related to. Just as it is to see balance on a bicycle, but until you actually experience it, it is unimaginable to be related to. You may have preconceived notions and expectations and they are just that.

I can tell you all the things you need to do to create balance and ride a bicycle and you would know the meaning of all the words...but until you actually experience the words are almost as meaningless as some nonsense language.

So you get on the bike and start doing those things you've been told to do to create balance in riding a bicycle. And you are likely to crash a few times. Someone might run alongside of you helping to keep the bicycle upright or you might have "training wheels" to help keep the bicycle upright to create a sense of bein balanced. Or you might give up thinking that this is too hard to do or too hard to produce the satisfaction that you think ought to occur.

But there is another possibility...that you get and experience "balance" and that happens in a present moment, not the past, not the future, right now in the here and now. So, by being related to that which is unimaginable to be related to (the possibility of being in balance or being in acceptance), there is a moment where it happens. In that moment it just seems to happen, its timeless. This is the completion of step two.

Step three is the occurring. The "occurring," where you say to yourself that you are balanced (or accepting), happens in a blink of an eye right after you are balanced (the occurring of which, if ever, occurs on the other side of being related to that which is unimagiable to be related to). In that instant and all subsequent ones, all the descriptions books, instructions, etc of how to balance yourself on a bicycle make sense (if we weren't speaking gibberish to begin with).

Now, if you've grasped what I've written, you can probably see how this could apply to just about every aspect of living.

Isn't love the same way? Didn't you have all these notions of what love was before you ever realized that you were in love? You can know all the things to do and loving is a state of being that exists in the present that you are always creating in the present moment. And when you aren't creating that you are in your past about exepectations, the way things should be, ought to be, etc.

This is soething that requires fairly advance persongood to sustain (and even though I can articulate it, I'm not immune to the conversations about the way things ought to be rather than the way things are).

One final thought on this. Making love is much the same way as riding a bicycle in balance. You (and your wife) know all the mechanics of sex. You can go through the motions and "do sex" upon one another and the physical sensations of the physiological act can be pleasurable. But you (and others) make a distinction between sex and ML, that there is something that "occurs" for you that you relate to differently than just the sexual mechanics. And when you consistently achieve that state, even though you might be doing much the same things over and over again, each time seems "new" and unique. In fact, we probably approach each time as if it was differnt because it is/was. When it loses it spark, it could be as much as doing the same old thing lloking for a moment from the past to happen again, rather than creating it in the moment.

Just something to think about.

One last thing on letting go...

It looks like things that you are withholding or something to do that looks like "letting go" to you. My sense is that letting go is quite different from what you think it is or what you've been doing.

The Captain