There’s an old jiujitsu friend at my academy. She’s a very seasoned black belt who helped me grow from my beginning days to this day. A few months ago she moved from California to Arizona and given that she was practically on our mats all the time I missed her presence.
She visited California every once in a while but I kept on missing her because my schedule was off with hers. Then boom! Today I was happy to not only see her in the academy but on the mats. I asked if she was training but unfortunately she had a shoulder injury so she couldn’t train.
Then we got to talking about what we’ve been up to. We discussed our individual lives and that eventually rolled up into talking about society and politics especially since she moved a few months ago and we’re contemplating moving now.
When I talked about what motivated my potential move, I told her about my discussions with my wife around how the next 10 years of our marriage would go. You can read more about that here:
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I’ve been a software engineer my entire adult life. I have never done anything else. And I just submitted my resignation notice and my last day will be the 25th of July.
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As a life coach and a guy who generally talks a lot, I like to believe I have a pretty good sense of “reading the room” when it comes to certain topics. Today my impression around my discussion of my life was that it would just be discussed and we’d move on to a different topic.
But today my friend had a more keen interest in my life. She asked me, what if your wife wants to do something you don’t want to do? This question sort of caught me off guard because well, what the fuck would I do? I haven’t really entertained that possibility at all because I don’t really have that much of a dislike.
So I told her exactly that, I’ll just do it for the sake of our marriage because my wife was willing to put down a lot of things she wanted to do for the sake of our marriage. Why shouldn’t I be able to do that? My friend asked, what if it’s something you really don’t want to do?
As I sat with that question I felt like perhaps I come off as this guy who is locked into this marriage against his will (lol). But I explained, thankfully we have a deep connection in our values and we don’t have that many core opposing views on things. Then my friend asked, how does that work?
My wife and I talk about this a lot because we also think we have a pretty unique marriage. We have a complete 100% transparency policy where we don’t keep anything from each other. This doesn’t mean we know everything about our lives, but when there is a need to discuss something we talk about it in full, radical transparency.
We talk a lot about our feelings, we talk a lot about our individual reflections on life. But the important side effect of this trait is we don’t bullshit when it comes to discussing our needs from each other. Prior to marriage, my wife (then girlfriend) had a very clearly defined list of deal breakers. If I couldn’t meet them, then it would just mean the end of the relationship instead of marriage.
I thought it was so extreme of her at the time. I thought I would keep my demands and keep teeter tottering around uncomfortable topics as they came up, and eventually persuade my wife into siding with me. But since day 1 of our marriage talks my wife had such a good foot down I couldn’t bullshit with her at all.
And it’s not like she was bitter and angry about it, demanding me to choose her priorities. She was just laying her cards out on the table and asking me what rational decision I was going to make. Her approach to difficult decisions made me realize that difficult decisions are difficult because I want to both eat the cake and have it too; I want both my wife and my wishes.
Since that wasn’t going to happen and I really wanted to have a marriage with my wife, I ended up marrying her out of my choice. For the first few years I still struggled with letting go of my insistences but over time I realized that all that does is bring my life suffering. I may have picked up Buddhism years later but even then, I hated suffering.
I can always have a good life because my wife isn’t in the way of my happiness. I can always have a good marriage because I can gladly replace my individual joy with a collective joy. Both can exist at the same time, but we always force ourselves into an all or nothing situation. Upon this foundation we lucked out into generally being very compatible with each other, I’d say that is a blessing.
As I explained this I found myself wondering how a simple conversation on the jiujitsu mat came this deep. Then I proceeded to start training with some other people and later as we said goodbye she thanked me for the conversation. She told me she was really personally curious about how people make relationships work, and that she had a lot to think about from our conversation today.
I think that’s the interesting conclusion from today, we never really know the impact of the conversations we are going to have with others. From our perspective talking about something may feel so ordinary and bland but it may blow somebody else’s mind. I know I was on the receiving end of those conversations, and today I happened to be on the giving end of those conversations.
I talked about my marriage and happiness that comes from it. But today I was saddened to learn my friend’s husband had passed away. My prayers today are dedicated to Kevin Irwin, may his soul accept my offering and reach nirvana wherever he may be now.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
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