MY FIRST WISH

Lasting Love

Remember the first wish I made on my imaginary deathbed?

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I wish I'd enjoyed a long and happy marriage with a woman I adored and who adored me.

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WHY I WISHED FOR IT

At the moment I told Ed my greatest wish, I had no evidence that it was possible. I had never seen such a marriage. All I had to go on was a tiny glimmer of possibility that I could feel inside me. I also had the great gift of a new relationship with a willing partner, Kathlyn, who had the spirit of a true cosmic adventurer combined with a huge heart and a clear mind. I had never met anyone who had all the qualities I most desired in a woman. At the time, unfortunately, I was busily frittering away this big opportunity in the same way I'd messed up just about every relationship I'd ever been in: with indecision, lack of commitment, and an inability to keep my hands off other women.

My first love as a teenager was Alice, but even the glow of first love hadn't kept me from seeing Kathy and Joyce on the sly. Then came Linda, my first wife, and long before I left Linda, I was seeing Barbara and Jane. Then came Carol, who complained for five years that I was not committed to her. I strenuously told her how wrong she was, all the while enjoying wild, secret romps with Nancy, Donna, Barbara, and many others whose names I've forgotten. So when Kathlyn came along, offering me everything I'd ever dreamed of, my immediate response to this gift was to start seeing Lynne on the side.

So there I was, one foot in the relationship with Kathlyn, one foot out the back door. As soon as I formulated my first wish, I could feel this issue begin to seethe and ferment within me. I found myself asking, for the first time, why I persisted in splitting myself in half by pretending to be in one place while occupying another at the same time. Up until then I had never seen this dynamic as a pattern. I just thought it was the way life was supposed to be. Now suddenly I realized it was not only a problem — it was the problem.

One way a pattern stays hidden from oneself is through lack of awareness. But I had been going a step further to ensure that the pattern stayed in place. I'd added a drop of a superglue called self-righteous justification: I frequently proclaimed that monogamy was only for domesticated dull-ards, not for wild, free mavericks like me!

But suddenly this philosophy seemed hollow and false. Even worse, I was beginning to suspect that it was part of a hand-built defensive façade designed to hold me back from reaching a potential I deeply longed for. So, I asked myself, if my beliefs were indeed the problem, where had they come from? It only took a split second for the answer to become clear.

I had started out my life that way. I was literally born into the pattern.

My father had died shortly after I was conceived, so when I was born, my mother was both a grieving widow and an unemployed single parent. In desperate circumstances, she turned me over to my grandmother, who adored me and willingly took care of me. She had raised four daughters and had always longed for a son. At age sixty-five, she finally got her wish. But then my mother, out of guilt and her natural maternal urges, wanted me back, so back I went. Not long after, she changed her mind and returned me to my grandmother. For the next seven years, I shuttled back and forth between my mother and my grandmother in what was essentially a joint custody arrangement.

Yet it was my grandmother who felt to me like my real mother, whereas my mother was a person I visited from time to time. They lived down the street from each other, so if things became difficult with my mother — and they nearly always did — I could escape to the comfort of my grandmother's warm and loving presence. If I'd been given a choice, I would have probably never spent a single night at my mother's house. Ultimately, though, my mother insisted that I stay at her house permanently. After I started school there were fewer and fewer overnights at my grandmother's house. No wonder the thought of living with one woman now seemed like forced imprisonment!

The pattern was so obvious — why hadn't I seen it before I was in my thirties? I felt lucky I'd become aware of it, and at the same time embarrassed and stupid that I'd taken so long to see it.

HOW MY WISH CAME TRUE

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I'm enjoying a long and happy marriage with a woman I adore and who adores me.

* * *

I remember the exact moment when I realized the game was up — and that I was not going to spend the rest of my life playing out a destructive belief pattern created in childhood.

Not long after getting clear on my five wishes, I visited a friend and mentor of mine, Dwight Webb, at his place in New Hampshire. Kathlyn was in Colorado, where we both lived at the time. One day, I had Dwight's place all to myself while he was off teaching a class. As I strolled around the house, admiring the beautiful details of the cabin Dwight had built by hand, I had a sudden flash of insight: There was only one way I could find out if I had what it took to create the kind of relationship I really wanted. I had to make a deep, personal commitment to creating it — no matter what. The commitment had to be freely chosen by me, and it had to be large enough to include the likelihood that at some point in the process I would give up in despair when I confronted the biggest barriers to achieving my goal. My commitment needed to be powerful enough to get me through those barriers, and yet — this was the real kicker — there was no way to know what the barriers actually were until I made the commitment!

I made the commitment on the spot. Then I picked up the phone and called Kathlyn. I explained what I'd just realized, that I would never get to know whether the relationship of my dreams was possible until I made a whole-being commitment to it.

"I want to make a commitment to you, to create a passionate, creative lifelong relationship with you. Is this what you want?"

It was silent for a moment. Then I could hear quiet sobs over the phone. "Yes," she said at last.

I felt a deep smile spread through my whole body.

"Wonderful. I'm glad. I commit to creating this with you, and I commit to regarding anything I confront along the way — sexual feelings for other women, fear, despair, anything — as just stuff of mine that's coming up to distract me. I promise not to give up until we create the relationship of our dreams or we both agree to call off the quest."

"I make that promise to you, too," she said.

* * *

That conversation was more than a quarter-century ago, and everything I dreamed has come true. In fact, the fulfillment of my dreams has gone far beyond what I imagined was even possible. Along the way...