Love can be a Clamp; Post #9 10.20.19
Love can be a clamp; think about it... Has your love for another person ever kept you from doing something you wanted or needed to do? My Beloved found her courage despite the holding force of love as a clamp.
In response to me discussing my revelations in caring for my aging parent’s financial affairs, my beloved, had this to say after having discussed our potential parting for almost a year and a half; “I think perhaps you are also being asked to look at your own end of life care? It is one of the things that I am clear has me feeling unsafe about being with you. Because of our age difference I see that I am going to come into a kind of career prime maybe while you are coming into your end of life. I do not want to be pulled off my path to keep you afloat. I feel right now that this future burden is too much for me. You need to have your own money and your own plan”.
She went on to text;.
“It feels very selfish to say such a thing, but there it is looming with me…”
“I do love you and I am wondering what it’s like to love me while not losing myself in relationship to others”?
And later on under duress; “I love you so much and I can’t stand it here with you”; “I don’t want to be partnered with a debtor. I feel our age difference so much right now. If you had your money worked out, I don’t think it would matter. I like your maturity. But I imagine I will be coming into a kind of career prime while you are beginning your end of life journey and I don’t want to slow my career to float you.” Tough words. But that’s how love is. And its taken here 1 and ½ years to say it so plainly and with conviction.
Love can be a clamp;
We are faced with the hard truth that boxing and constriction can happen in love; inasmuch as love frees and lifts it can weigh us down and hold us in position. My blog began here as a celebration of the joy of love. And truly, love is a joy. But it is also a fierce energy that can keep us from moving forward. I am hereby committing to also discussing the shadow aspects of love. I am in the unenviable position of admitting that my Beloved Meridian is right. I have been a debtor. I have struggled with money my whole life. I’ve made a lot of it. I have been what most the world over would term highly successful. And… I’ve lost it all, and made it again, only to lose it all a second time. The specter of borrowing and spending a bit more than I have has been with me always. The above text was a pointedly clear and strong statement reflecting the clamp of love. It has been so hard to actually consider parting because of the confusion created by loves clamping force.
Recently my sister and I have had the deep and important job of helping our parents with critical end of life financial decisions. This has been emotional and taxing to say the least. We have had to dig into all of their accounts, ask hundreds of personal financial questions, and talk with them about the math of things like; “how long can we afford to live as we have”? “How long till the money runs out’”? I had the extraordinary experience of asking my 79 year old father if the life insurance policy I held in my hand was still in force? “No”; came his simple, stroke addled response. ‘Are you sure’; I asked? “Yes”; ‘Okay’, I said. I set down these papers to look at others. While I was turned in my chair and considering the new papers, I heard the sound of a paper shredder I had not known was there in the office. I was aghast! I said; “dad, what are you doing. Please shred nothing”! It turns out this policy he was shredding was actually in force! The premiums had been auto deducted from my parent’s checking account since 1993! They had simply forgotten in their stress over my father’s stroke that this was occurring. And this “Long Term Care policy was the key to providing proper care for them! My intimate dive into my parent’s finances revealed that they were also still, and had been, debtors their whole lives. Their nest egg was running down and each search for various stocks and policies was a search for a way to possibly preserve their quality of life as my sister and I met the truth that they had only 20 to 24 months of money left should we attempt to keep them in accommodations in the grade to which they were accustomed. This was extremely sobering to process and pointed inexorably to their financial behavior over time. And so, my own financial behavior came to the fore for consideration. And the true reason my partner of 5 years was rethinking partnering with me, and had been for 1.5 years, was the safety of real dollars. Love can be a clamp. Her love for me had prevented a purely rational decision. Few females in my audience would disagree with my Beloved’s shared feelings. And I had to admit that, from my parents, I had been shown a financial model. Love was clamping down on my sister and I and Love had clamped down on my parents as one or the other of them had said no or yes to borrowing over the years.
Releasing the clamps of love is not unlike swimming in syrup. A profound and muddy intensity of feeling kept my Beloved from speaking her mind to me. She loved and loves me so, but could not say; “no Andrew, I cannot partner with you under these financial conditions”. This same intensity in the feeling of love had kept my mother from saying a complete “no” when it was clear my father could no longer drive their big motor home. Their beautiful and exciting life of RV road travel had come to an end, but my mother had said yes to financing a new smaller motor home to keep my father happy, and to keep the dream of the RV life alive. We were facing the cost of this debt; my sister and I had come to our own need to say many no’s to our parents to aid them in living properly from here forward. Loves clamp had kept us from speaking up two years earlier when we began to see the need for radical change. And loves clamp had kept our parents from responding properly to our insistence at that same time.
A kind of release is needed. A courageous unfastening hand on the handle of the clamp that love can become.
Thank you dear reader!
Andrew
