Love Across the Divide: How to Bridge Differences in Your Marriage

Is there someone in your life that you love dearly and they vote differently from you? And their choice to vote so differently is making it hard for you to be close to them? Love them, even?

Our nation’s polarization is ending marriages. This is my attempt at this difficult topic. I’m going to write as if it’s your partner that votes differently because that’s a huge struggle for people right now. But if it’s not your partner, each time I mention “Partner” I invite you to substitute the person’s name with whom you struggle.

 

The fundamental difference in my marriage

I want to tell you a story about when I realized my husband and I believed RADICALLY differently and how I thought to myself, “Our marriage is over. Our marriage is over. How could we POSSIBLY continue if he believes this way?” But this story happened 24 years ago. And my marriage has gotten stronger and stronger because I leaned into the difference rather than fighting it or pretending the difference didn’t exist.

This conversation matters because I believe world peace begins at home. Peace, kindness, open-heartedness, understanding, compassion, empathy…they are all an inside job. When we can cultivate these values in our own hearts, we can nurture them in the world in which we live.

The hardest place to practice those values of peace, kindness, and compassion is with your partner. Why? Because your partner is the person you’re closest to. Or, you used to feel close. Now you might feel alienated, angry, seething even. These emotions are not the opposite of close, they are signals that the closeness is still there, but hiding or buried. These are emotions of longing for something to change.

Today we’ll talk about 3 ways to employ your imagination to help with that change:

• Calm your own fear (hint: your imagination is working against you)
• Remember your connection (and here you’re harnessing your imagination of the past)
• Then you can get curious (this last one is about how imagination can help you see the world differently)

 

Here’s my story:

My husband and I had been married about 13 years when we went to dinner at my favorite Asian Restaurant where there was a spoon in the bowl of pastel colored butter mints. The mints were tiny and the spoon was big. This was before the world changed and everyone was still able to put their hands all over those mints that went into my mouth.

I was seated with my back to the door. I had noodles on my plate and I was sipping a buttery chardonnay when my husband said, “I’m an atheist.” My ears began to ring and suddenly everything got fuzzy. Tears leapt into my eyes. I cry easily, but this was different. These tears kept coming, but I had no lump in my throat. They were just a faucet, raining down my cheeks.

“What?” I said. I didn’t need to say more because my entire animal body was stunned. He could read the incredulity on my face.

“I’m an atheist.” He repeated the exact same words. No more explanation. Just a fact he had finally accepted about himself. His animal body was just as clear as mine.

What you need to understand about me is that I am a Believer. I believe in everything. I believe in Jesus and Buddhism and Poetry and Art and Beauty and Laughter. More than anything, I believe in Love.

 

The many paths of my belief

I graduated high school and went straight to Mother Teresa’s convent in the heart of The South Bronx because Mother Teresa included everyone. She loved the lepers that were dying in the street of Calcutta. She made no distinctions of faith. She simply said, “What would Love do?” and she invited everyone to join her as she helped those ostracized people die with dignity and comfort. Love.

I went to Mother Teresa’s convent after I made a piece of art that surprised me: three cotton balls, each of them stretched and thinned to wispy clouds. Three cotton balls with three letters: G-O-D. The three wispy cotton balls were joined together with two safety pins. Mother Teresa was a life preserver for my faith because everyone was accepted. There was no damnation. No one left out. She was going to be my safety pins that held my faith together.

I got off the plane at LaGuardia Airport and my taxi driver dropped me 2 blocks from the convent. I can see now what I couldn’t see then. He didn’t want to drive next to the gang of teenagers between us and the convent. He didn’t want to get robbed. So he stopped 2 blocks away.

Wearing my knee-length skirt as the nuns prescribed, I dutifully got out of the cab, lifted my suitcase with one hand and walked to the door. I knocked and the nun who answered the door was wearing the familiar garb of Mother Teresa: white with that beautiful blue stripe. I was here. The safety pins would hold.

Then the nun said to me, “You can’t stay here.” I hadn’t even seen them as I walked in, but now I thought about the gang of boys outside. Through the small skylight in this anteroom where she had me waiting, I saw twilight turning the clouds above me pink. I didn’t know anyone in New York City.

Obviously, I survived and I’m happy to tell you the story of how I didn’t become a nun on another day. But this closed door opened a dozen others. I went to find the new safety pins that would hold my belief together. I went to an Ashram, sat near a huge fire and circled my heart with grains of rice as I chanted. I paraded with Celtics and drew cookies out of pillow cases. I walked labyrinth after labyrinth, asking where or what is God.

I tell you about this collection of experiences so you will understand how many paths of belief I’d traveled before the night at the Asian Restaurant with the spoon in the open bowl of mints.

 

Let each light shine on its own

“I’m an atheist.” It kept ringing in my ears. My tears wouldn’t stop falling. I asked to leave the restaurant. We’d never, not once, left a dinner date without finishing the food…the conversation…the evening.

I walked straight out into the rain. No lovely mints from the bowl with the big spoon.

I got in the car and looked out the window the whole way home. The rain slid down the window and the streetlights highlighted the water droplets on the window as we drove by each one. Then darkness. Then another streetlight and I saw the tears on the window again.

We didn’t talk about his atheism again for more than a year. But I could feel it there. In his body. His certainty. And he could feel my sadness.

And yet, we continued to eat dinner. We continued to take the kids to the park on Taco Tuesdays and play obstacle courses on the playground. We continued to have Friday Afternoon Club with Cheetos and pop for the kids, margaritas for David and me. We continued to pop popcorn on Sunday nights and watch a movie. As a family. Every week.

Then one day, several years later, I was struggling with the candles on my altar. The flame on one of my candles kept going out. I asked David for help to free the wick with his skilled carpenter hands. He got out his knife. He carved away the wax. Then he lit both candles. “Put this one just a little bit further way,” said my atheist husband, “That way the flame doesn’t go out.” The way I’d initially placed the candles, the dripping wax of the tall candle was drowning the flame of the shorter candle.

I thanked him and told him I knew he needed to go. Those were the medical school years. When he was always in a hurry. Always called away to books or the hospital.

But he stayed.

He put his arm around me and we watched both candles burn. The wicks both got brighter. The flames wiggled in the breeze from our forced air heat. Still he stayed.

I felt the warmth of his hand on my back. Our breath, now united, swayed us side to side ever so slightly.

We never said anything out loud, but in that moment we both felt the wisdom of the candle’s separation.

Just a little separation gave room for both candles to shine brightly. That day, in my Albuquerque living room, my atheist husband wordlessly taught me about God’s redeeming love: Let there be space. Let each light shine on its own.

Because there were no words exchanged during that moment, I can’t be sure what David thought. I suppose I used my imagination. I imagined he valued my altar. I imagined he’d seen me tending it for years since the restaurant with the bowl of mints. I imagined he never felt pressured by me to believe differently than he did. I imagined he valued the way I lit the candles most days, filling our home with a sandalwood and honey scent.

 

The bridge between differences

Years later, we were camping together. The kids were already in the tent asleep and it was just the two of us sitting and staring into the coals of the fire, an occasional flame flickering up from the heat of the coals.

“I want to read you something,” he said. He read me a story of love and compassion and complication. “This is how you believe. This is what you’ve shown me about God.”

We have built bridge after bridge over our divide because, after my initial torrent of tears, I actually understood why he was an atheist. He understood why I was a believer. We made room for each other’s different beliefs in our own hearts.

We held hands. We unrolled from the same toilet paper. We saved for a down payment and bought a house. We ate waffles on Sunday mornings. We argued over cleaning and we laughed each time our kids put on a show for us to watch. We shared a life.

And, do you want to know what has made our life the best? The combination of our differences steeped in a deep flavor of inclusion. Not just the dreamy, idealistic inclusion that made me want to go to Mother Teresa’s convent, but the everyday inclusion of dirty countertops and kids who needed rides to different places at the same time.

I’ve told you this story because I know how hard it is to live in a house where you wonder, “How? How did I find myself attracted to this person who is so different from me?” or “How can we stay married when we see things so differently?”

I believe that peace begins at home. Kindness begins at home. Love begins at home. When we can find love there, I believe we can carry that loving kindness into the world and love our neighbors. Our fellow Americans. Love conquers all. Love heals all.

But love is a verb. So the rest of this blog is about practicing that verb.

 

Calm yourself first

We all know that curiosity bridges divides. Practicing that curiosity? Well, it takes skill.

It’s hard to be curious when you’re afraid. When you’re afraid your rights, or your job, or your body, or your gun will be taken from you, it’s natural to be afraid. So, while you might even really WANT to be able to be curious, your curiosity will only be rote and fake if you don’t first deal with your own fear.

To deal with your fear, I’m going to help you. We’re not trying to FIX what’s making you afraid, OK? Don’t put that pressure on yourself. We’re just going to calm your animal body’s response down for a moment. A magical moment when your heart can open and you can offer your partner genuine curiosity.

Notice your body right now. Take a deep breath and notice where there is tension. Where there is ease. Do you feel some tightness in your low back? Take a deep breath and send your breath there to your low back. Is your jaw clenched? Or your tongue glued to the roof of your mouth, sucking your cheeks in? Take a breath and send your breath there to your mouth.

Feel how your breath is capable of unknotting those places of tension in your body. Notice how your skin eases when you do this.

Breathe and feel how safe you are right this moment. Notice the seat of your car that might be heating your low back as you listen to my voice. Or notice the safety you have to clean your home in this moment. Or notice the freshness of the air you’re breathing as you take this walk.

Notice how you are not struggling to take this breath. Notice how independent and supported you feel in your car. Notice how nice your home is; how safe you feel in it. Notice how well your body is…even if you are experiencing some struggles, notice the part of you that is safe and well.

When we focus on how well we are—and how safe we are—we calm our parasympathetic nervous system. This is where we rest and digest.

When we savor our safety and our wellness, we activate and cultivate calm. Can you notice how, even with just this short meditation I’ve offered, your breathing is deeper? Your skin is a bit softer—like a stick of butter on the counter in July? And your stomach and chest are just a little lighter, less tense?

The first thing we need to do when talking to our partner about a politically charged difference is to calm our own system. Because far more than your words, your animal body communicates with your partner.

An invitation to release tension

Have you ever sat with a soft animal and petted them for a full 10 minutes? I’m a dog person, and I had this amazing dog whose name was Ode Yedder. She was always at my side. She laid on the carpet beside me when I was writing every day. And, when I began to get riled up because of something I was writing, she would stand up, come and put her nose in my lap to invite me to pet her.

Some days I resisted her invitation, “Yedder! Lay down. I’m busy.” On those days, my writing stayed tense and worked up.

But some days, I responded to her invitation. When she tucked her nose under my arm and gave a little flicking motion, I let my hand come to rest on her head. I felt her soft fur. And then, seduced by her softness, I got up from my chair and lay down on the carpet to pet her.

I let my hand stroke from her soft ears all the way to her tail. Then I did it again. And again. Until I felt my throat loosen and my breath deepen. Often, a few tears would slip down my cheeks. Release.

When I stood to return to my desk, invariably, I found the way out of the tangle I was facing on the page. Ode Yedder also invited me to calm down when I was frustrated with my children or my husband. She sensed my animal body tension, and she simply stood up and came to my side, reminding me that petting her allowed me to calm myself first.

When I was calm, I dealt with everything better. Everything.

I believe Ode Yedder’s invitation will work for all of us. I don’t have a dog at home anymore. But I haven’t forgotten what my sweet, pound surprise pooch taught me: I can calm my own animal body by loving her. Or loving the sunshine outside. Or loving the warm mug between my two hands.

If you want to talk about hard issues with your partner, the first thing you need to do is to arrive at the conversation soft. Open. The way Yedder taught me to live.

 

Notice your animal body

Why is it so important to calm your own body before engaging in a topic about hard things? Because 90% of our communication happens non-verbally: with your animal body. It is impossible to *say the right words* and make up for all that tension and fear that lives in your body.

So notice. When you struggle to communicate with your partner about what happened on the news today, notice your animal body first. Remind yourself that you are safe.

And here, I can feel so many of you saying to me, “But we’re not safe, Rebecca! This is an urgent matter! We can’t lay down and pretend. We have to rally the troops!”

Here’s what I’ll say to that: come live in this moment. Just for a moment. Are you safe now? This moment? Are the walls of your house falling down? Are your clothes on fire? If you don’t have an actual emergency, come into this moment. This moment and feel the safety that is actually available to you.

Our nation is alarmed. Alarm is the most contagious emotion there is. If you spend a lot of time watching news or scrolling through social media, you too will feel alarmed.

Imagine how ridiculous it is to think you can have an intimate, connected exchange with your partner if your animal body is alarmed.

It’s not gonna happen.

This is why sages through the ages say, “Peace is an inside job.” Or “Peace begins with me.” The way to begin the peace process is to learn to find peace within. You can calm your body.

When your body is calm, then you can reach out with genuine curiosity.

I brought this lesson into the disagreements I had with my atheist husband. I took his hand and asked him to take a walk with me. Or, I asked him to rub my back. Or I asked him to dance with me in the kitchen. When I let my animal body enjoy his animal body, I relaxed. My heart opened.

And that calm gave me the energy to be curious.

So, if you want to be able to talk about hard political differences with your partner, the first step is to get your animal bodies aligned and breathing at the same, relaxed pace.

If your partner is high strung, you can be a leader in this endeavor by calming your animal body first the way Yedder taught me. Yedder was calm. She sensed my tension. Then she invited me to be calm with her.

When you are calm, you can employ the magic of mirror neurons. These are the gems that allow the strongest emotion in the room to be contagious.

Once your body is calm, you can go to step 2: Remember connection.

 

Remember connection

Curiosity is a skill. Assumptions invite fear. Love and belief in the goodness of your partner will open the discussion.

Remember why you fell in love with your partner. Remember the values you shared when you first began sharing your lives together. What were your hopes for the future?

David and I fell in love outside. I remember a day when we were young and we drove up into the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado. We pulled over to sit on the rocks. The infinite blue sky was streaked with wispy white clouds. Moss-speckled rugged rocks soared skyward.

Below that epic skyline was a meadow filled with butterflies. We hiked across the meadow to a pile of rocks. We climbed the pile, and David found a flat spot where he lay down. He has always been able to nap anywhere. Another of the rocks was hollowed out and that bowl was filled with water. I took my shoes and socks off and slipped my feet into the water.

Then I began to sing John Denver’s song, “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” I’m a little shy about singing, but I’m even more embarrassed to tell you that I sang that song right there in the mountains. It sounds schmaltzy. And fake.

But it didn’t feel fake on that day. On that day, I was falling in love. Falling in love inspires schmaltzy moves as corny as singing a John Denver song while seated in the belly of the Rocky Mountains.

I’m aware that my embarrassment in telling you this story is that you’ll think I’m too sentimental, or too earnest. You won’t take me seriously.

But I’m here to tell you that nothing in my life has ever felt as serious as that moment when love felt so real. So attainable. All my 19-year-old lonely angst melted away and I felt like I belonged. It’s just that it’s also a vulnerable moment. We all dream of tasting love like that, but we’re also scared of it.

Scared that we won’t ever get to really taste it, or scared that if we taste it once, we’ll never taste it as good again. Or scared that the love will fade and you’ll see this person who votes so differently than you do, and you think, “How could I have been so duped?”

The reason I am inviting you to remember your Rocky Mountain moment is because it is your set point. There are many times in my marriage that I’ve doubted our love will last, and, in those moments, I return to my then boyfriend’s napping breath. I see the wispy clouds in the endless sky and I slip my socks off and feel the cool of rain water captured like magic by a bowl made of grey granite.

 

Panic blocks intimacy. Connection opens your heart.

Our emotions follow our thoughts. What you choose to focus on matters. When you focus your mind on a memory of deep connection, you reengage that connection. Your skin softens. Your heart opens.

When you let yourself get panicked about how different you and your partner are, and you run images through your brain of all the tribal messages you hear on social media and you lump your partner into a box of thoughts and memes and label them…well you’ve already created a wall that keeps intimacy out.

When you tell yourself scary stories, your body believes you and sends out a message of fear and warning. Your partner’s animal body hears those signals louder than anything you might say.

Practice remembering your Rocky Mountain set point when you fell in love. Nurture that remembrance because it’s opening you to be able to have a candle moment where no words are said, but you learn how to separate just enough that each of your flames burn brightly.

We’ve calmed your animal body, and you’re letting mirror neurons do their work. You’ve found your set point and you’re focused on the love that you and your partner share. Now we have a foundation from which we can get genuinely curious. Real curiosity that your partner’s animal body can feel.

Your peaceful countenance will calm your partner’s countenance and you can have a meaningful connection.

 

Then curiosity

Deep curiosity. Remember. Then get curious. Remember. Then curious.

Curious about the biggest things. Values of freedom, independence, safety, choice, … what are the biggest values underneath the arguments?

If your partner feels differently about immigration, get curious. What does that look like?

If your partner feels differently about abortion, get curious. What does that look like?

The important thing here is to get curious about the deepest values your partner holds. What is the most important part of freedom? What is most important about safety?

When it gets heated, return to remembering. Return to your home base of why you picked this person. Your animal body chose them. Why?

My father thought my mother was stupid. He told himself over and over that she was stupid. He confessed to me once that he realized she was stupid on his honeymoon. Your brain goes searching for evidence to support any belief you have. So my father found evidence for my mother’s stupidity everywhere.

They were married for 20 years because my father didn’t want to divorce and repeat the mistakes of his own father. Over and over, during those 2 decades, my father would see micro pieces of evidence for my mother’s stupidity. And his animal body told her so every. Single. Day.

He didn’t say an unkind word to her. But his animal body was full of contempt for her.

My father understood academia. Books. Knowledge. Learning. He was a physician. When he finished his medical training, he turned his brain to philosophy and got his masters degree in philosophy of religion. He believed he could read his way to God.

I remember how much he loved Dostovesky’s book The Idiot because Prince Myshkin was such a Christ figure. Simple. Straight forward. Love embodied.

It’s so ironic to me that he couldn’t ever see my mother was a Prince Myshkin of sorts. She was the one who sensed every emotion in the room. She was there with a cool cloth after I threw up.

One day, when I put the hot iron down onto my nylon top and, not only did my top melt, the pieces of it were now covering the iron. I was horrified. I’d ruined my mother’s high quality iron. But she was unphased. “How would you have known?” she said to me, “We learn by doing. Today you learned not to iron nylon.” Then she laughed which let me laugh.

What an EQ, right? But Dan Goleman hadn’t yet written his book about emotional intelligence. Consequently, my father hadn’t read it.

My mother allowed my father’s opinion of her to creep into every neuron of her brain. She told herself she was dumb. She stopped herself from reading widely because “she wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway.” She didn’t realize her birthday tradition of M&M’s and crepe paper gave everyone a sense of belonging and safety.

My father didn’t know how to imagine my mother’s intelligence. He didn’t know how to ask her why the crepe paper mattered. He certainly didn’t know how to bring the wash cloth when I was throwing up.

My mother didn’t know how to reject my father’s opinion of her. She didn’t know how to see her life of laughing about mistakes and M&M richness as brilliance.

I compare my parents to landscapes. My father was the brilliance of the trees, ever aiming skyward, accruing knowledge like the rings on the trunks of those trees. My mother was the steadfastness of the beach, warm and inviting, and swept clean by the tide so that every day was a new chance with her.

We are best as a society where the forest meets the ocean. Where we can welcome knowledge with the warmth of acceptance. Where we allow the tide to wipe our assumptions clean each day yet we each stand tall and rooted deeply.

Here’s an example:

Just recently we were at my nephew’s wedding so I had lots of time to spend with my husband’s extended family. One evening as we all sat around, we were playing The Favorites Game.

What is your favorite genre of music? Who is your favorite artist? The questions helped us discover new things about each other.

Then I asked a new question, “What is your least favorite genre of music?” And the answer my nephew, who is a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music, gave opened my eyes and my heart.

“I don’t want to answer that question. I don’t want to have a least favorite genre of music. Because then I’m walling myself off from learning why someone else likes that music.”

Deep curiosity, right? Curiosity so tenacious that he knows answering a simple question like “What don’t you like” might prejudice himself toward a person he hasn’t even met yet.

What if you brought that kind of curiosity to your relationships? A calm body. A remembrance of your deep love. Then a curiosity so tenacious that you protect conversations that haven’t even happened yet.