If you have not walked down that street, stop spraying near every lamppost. Those commenting on how others decide to term their personal lives is the stuff of gossip, and does not in any way express the concern for relationships they claim to uphold.
The phrase under the scanner, and that caused sniggers, is 'conscious uncoupling', used by Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her musician husband Chris Martin after a decade of marriage. It was a joint statement, but Paltrow has had to bear the brunt of "sickly self-serving twaddle". This should tell us something about the stupendously 'unconscious' lives making lobotomised decisions that are holding forth.
Parting is never easy. In intimate relationships, you have to reclaim yourself. You do seek euphemisms, because it has to do with how you project your life from past to future. You feel like shit even if you are the one to opt out. You feel like shit even if you knew it was coming. You feel like shit when you stand bare and look for warts because you must have screwed it up. You feel like shit as vultures view your vulnerability with binoculars.
You have to look the voyeurs in the eye, with their happy shared-diaper duties, joint-account couplings, looking for your availability, your blotches. You feel like shit. But you have other things to do, even if the relationship was your priority, and not just because you were given the keys to the kingdom in a barter. You may not even have a signed piece of paper. You just have your dignity.
You may not utter the D word or mention the breakup for months, years.
Gwyneth and Chris had to announce it because their lives are public, and they did so gracefully:
"...we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate. We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner."
For anyone to assume that only celebrities have to deal with verbal issues to break the news reveals ignorance. On legitimised kingsize beds, in denial about their compromised existence based on mortgages and suspicions camouflaged as concern, they do you.
Take this from Jan Moir in Daily Times:
"An irony-free chunk of classic Paltrow pretentiousness, it made them sound like two camels detaching from a desert train in search of tastier macro-biotic foliage...Like a pair of tights who suddenly find out that they were stockings all along. Being ‘consciously uncoupled’ certainly made breaking up the family home and ‘co-parenting’ nine-year-old Apple and Moses, seven, seem like something holistic and pure; an experience you’d order at a wellbeing spa, along with the coffee enema."
Besides the use of terrible metaphors (unless she has an organic acquaintance with camels), this bilge will not fathom that It is holistic to be conscious when you make a life-changing decision. Being free from dithering is pure.
It is pure when you don't live on dregs of how you are measured. It is holistic and pure to not be stuck in a groove of a fake smile and the warmth of nostalgia for what you were when you are. It is pure when you are fair to the roads you travel through, not just the moss that's gathered around you.
When you decide to uncouple, you can't just 'unconsciously' walk away into the sunset.
© Farzana Versey
FV:"It is holistic and pure to not be stuck in a groove of a fake smile and the warmth of nostalgia for what you were when you are."
ReplyDeleteHi FV, Beautifully expressed. Nostalgia and the past can become oppressive to the point of choking what you are or want to be. On hindsight, one wishes one could have handled all this better in 20 different ways, but just say no coulda,shoulda,wouldas. Best one can do is do the right thing whatever the "cost".
Hard enough to deal with all this without children involved, like with Gwyneth. The judgemental bilge by that stupid journalist is so...well, words fail me, so I will go with "yuk".
Al:
ReplyDeleteNostalgia has its moments. But, many are stuck in a situation where they are appreciated only because of their former credentials. Ans they delude themselves.
There are indeed many ways one could deal with situations, but with emotions the perception of the situation too alters, often without respite to adjust to it.
" But, many are stuck in a situation where they are appreciated only because of their former credentials. And they delude themselves. "
ReplyDeleteFV, And when one doesn't have any credentials to speak of, other than making a choice and trying to make it all work, then there is point at which the personal cost of losing yourself in order to gain something that may or may not exist, or may just be a matter of delusion/fooling oneself, so then one has to make some hard choices down the spiral staircase of self-doubt, and (as you say) the view keeps changing like that picture that changes depending on the angle that you look at it.
Finally, you just take all the snapshots in your mind's eye and throw it in the corner of the mind's attic in order to become functional, at the very least. Anything more is a bonus, really.
The former credentials I spoke of do not cease to exist; they merely become different.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, after all the titters, some commentators are now trying to understand "conscious uncoupling" is a broader way.
Take this:
{Such sentiments are at the root of "conscious uncoupling": it's all about personal growth and expressing love for the process that got you there.
"A conscious uncoupling," Sadeghi and Sami explain, "is the ability to understand that every irritation and argument was a signal to look inside ourselves and identify a negative internal object that needed healing … Conscious uncoupling brings wholeness to the spirits of both people who choose to recognise each other as their teacher."}
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/29/paltrow-martin-conscious-uncoupling-gurus