Falling in Love Again
Cancer makes you question everything.
You realise your days are numbered. You realise your days have always been numbered and you’ve been ignoring that universal and obvious fact for most of your life. Oh sure, at some level you’ve known you were ultimately going to die, but it always seemed like an event that was so far away it didn’t register as important.
Then cancer.
Then the possibility that death might be closer than you think.
Suddenly, your life so far gets thrown into sharp focus. What have you done with it? What can you mark up as achievements? What dreams did you realise and what got lost along the way?
Perhaps the most important question of all finally occurs to you: Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life?
Some people are transformed by cancer. They walk away from boring jobs, leave abusive or uncaring partners or abandon a life they inherited rather than created. Some finally find the courage to take big risks. That might involve jumping out of a plane or finally having an honest conversation.
There’s not much about cancer you’d call wonderful, and yet…
It is wonderful to have the opportunity to take an honest inventory of your life so far, to acknowledge the achievements and the joys, to mark the disappointments and the failures. It’s very reassuring to be in a place where we understand that our lives have been very much like every other person’s life. The colours and the flavours of our experiences are different but the ebb and flow of joy and sorrow is common to all of us.
It’s an opportunity for deep conversations about what has been and what will be and how it will all be evaluated. My husband asked me, ‘Is there anything on your bucket list?’
I’m one of those people that’s found ways to do the things that were important to me as I went along. I don’t have a burning need to hang glide (did it), or parachute (not doing it). I can look back over the last 50 years and be proud of some of my achievements and embarrassed by some of my behaviour, just like everyone else. So this was the answer to my husband’s question.
“I’d like to fall in love again.”
It was a punch to the heart. He looked away. He sighed. He curled his lips in and waited, with that look he gets when he’s about to say something difficult. Then he said this.
“I can understand that. I ………..”
He hates it when I cut him off mid sentence but I really had to.
“Oh Sweetheart! I didn’t mean with someone else! I meant I’d really like to fall in love with YOU again!”
We’ve been together a long time. Like most couples, we’d settled into a routine where our patterns were well known and predictable. We were comfortable. We were both content. But faced with the sudden possibility that I might not be around much longer I’d taken to contemplating what really mattered to me. What really matters to me is connection, intimacy and love.
Stuff is just stuff. You buy it. You enjoy it for a while. Then you have to maintain it. You give it away. You buy more stuff. It will never make you happy.
Achievement is a little more rewarding but ultimately no less fleeting. Who will remember what I did during my working life? Or the art or the writing or anything else I produced? Most of us will not have any impact beyond our circle of friends, and perhaps some of the people they know.
But love? Ah, what is there that compares to it. It’s no surprise that research into human contentment keeps turning up intimacy and connection to others as the main precursors to a good life. There’s also our personal experience. Think back to the times in your life that brought you the greatest joy and they’re probably about love.
So how to fall in love again? With the same person?
I started with a New York Times article that’s become so well known it turns up in television shows (most recently Big Bang Theory). It reported on a piece of research where strangers asked each other a series of questions and many of them fell in love. Here’s the link:
The 36 questions that make you fall in love
We spent a few evenings working through these questions. It was fun. We had some great conversations and were surprised to find that we still had so much unknown territory to explore. I think part of the reason we fall in love is that the early stages of a relationship, when we are getting to know each other, are so fascinating. We are not just fascinated by our new friend, we recognise that they find us fascinating in return. Is there anything more attractive?
I started thinking that perhaps the reason the 36 questions worked so well was less to do with the content of the questions, and more to do with the process. When you’ve been married for a while you stop being fascinated with each other. You also stop having that experience of your partner finding you fascinating. Questions that give you the opportunity to get back there could be about almost anything.
I spent some time researching similar ideas. It turns out that there are a lot of lists that people have put together. Some of them are about building greater intimacy, having better sex, building commitment, having interesting conversations or just getting through a party where you don’t know anyone. Working on the basis that the process of setting aside time to ask each other questions and to listen to the answers was more important than the actual questions, I bought a few packs of blank playing cards and copied out anything even remotely interesting.
The challenge here was not to edit too savagely. As you’ll see from the 36 questions, something surprisingly inane might lead to a really great discussion. When it comes to your partner, you don’t know what you don’t know and you shouldn’t make assumptions.
I put the cards into a little decorative box that I picked up at the discount store. It’s now part of our lives for one of us to suggest that we ‘do cards’. About once a week we’ll sit in the family room and take turns drawing a card and answering the question on it. Sometimes we’ll both answer the same question and sometimes we’ll just stick to our own card. Sometimes we’ll get through several cards and sometimes a single card will prompt and entire conversation.
The cards help us to ask each other questions that would be difficult without a third party. Drawing a card that starts, “Do you think……….” allows for an open discussion, where asking the same question directly can get caught up in assumptions, hidden subtext and anxiety. There are definitely questions in this stack that would unnerve me if my husband had asked them directly (Where is he coming from with that? What’s the point of that question? Is he trying to tell me something?) but the card makes it neutral. And either of us is allowed to decline to answer. We just put the card on the bottom of the pack and draw another one.
It’s a fun game. The result is that we’re now connecting the way we did when we were first dating. My husband continues to surprise me with his wisdom, insight, humour and kindness. The cards provide me with the joy of his undivided attention, and an opportunity to talk deeply about things that really matter to us, rather than the functional conversations we have everyday.
At one point, Graham suggested marketing the cards. Proving that most great ideas have already occurred to someone else, I found a sight called The School of Life. Guess what they sell. Yep, cards with questions on them.
We’re not through my home made cards yet, and we could probably work through the pack a few times and have several different conversations, but when we’ve exhausted them I’ll be buying some of these.
As a consequence of spending time together, talking about a huge range of things and sharing our feelings and opinions, we’ve found that we feel closer than ever. This has carried over into other parts of our lives. We’re enjoying each other’s company and looking for events to share together. I’m remembering what it is that made me want to marry this man.
It’s also helping me to understand that, post surgery and without breasts, my body matters less to my husband than my mind and my heart. We will both get old. I’m hoping we both get really old! Our bodies will continue to be less attractive to anyone else. This has nothing to do with our deep connection to each other. We still love to touch and hold each other. We will never stop discovering things about each other. To the rest of the world we are just ordinary people, but to each other we are fascinating.
Have I fallen in love again?
What do you think.
Reposted from my blog at positive3neg.wordpress.com
Comments
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Wow thanks for posting this. I loved reading it and I'm now about to organise some cards my husband and me!1
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Intimacy is very underrated in its non physical form. The pleasure of exploring someone's mind and having intricate conversations does get lost over time.
Cancer seems to trigger conversations that reveal personality aspects that have fallen dormant or may never have been explored--it certainly has with my relationship. The problem is the atmosphere is so laden with uncertainty and fear. My brutally fatalistic attitude works well with my partner's gentle optimism in many ways, but not when the stakes are so high.
It's only been in the last couple of weeks, as I was reaching the end of my treatment, that the pressure is starting to come off and we are seeing how much closer the experience has brought us. Those fraught conversations, so often had in the car, have born fruit that is in no way as bitter as the environment it grew in. We will quietly enjoy that bounty, curled up in bed on a rainy morning or walking single file up a bush track. I don't think we ever tell out of love, but we stopped being intimate. That is changing, it's a lovely thing.
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Love this. Yes....my breakdown (before bc diagnosis....but same year ) brought similar discussions. My husband and I started to do things we had stopped doing due to kids and a busy life. We started to go for rides on his bike again. We had a 1 week trip not long prior diagnosis which was so special. We had planned a huge trip which didn't happen due to treatment. Last weekend when I was away without him I bought my triple layered motorbike pants at last. He realised I was ready. Got home tonight and there it was ...the new planned trip...over 3000 km. It will be next year...but damn it it's gonna happen. And on those trips we reconnect. ..just us...talking for hours again with no distractions.2
