Brave New Kitty

We had to get down to causes and conditions. – Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

The “War on Drugs” is unwinnable because drugs aren’t the enemy. Addiction isn’t even the enemy. In fact, to the people engaging in it, addiction is a viable solution. The question is, to what?

Addiction is an outcome of attempts to medicate stress and anxiety. As Psychiatrist Lance Dodes writes in The Heart of Addiction, addiction is an attempt to quell feelings of helplessness, borne out of self-love rather than self-contempt. Seen in this light, addiction is very much a solution, or at least, starts out that way. It’s only when drug use begins to have negative consequences—legal, financial, physical, or marital, for example—that it becomes a problem. A secondary problem, one that would not exist outside attempts to self-medicate negative feelings.

As we know, this is not the prevalent view. Far from it. The vast majority of psychologists, doctors, addiction counselors, and addicts themselves believe addiction is a disease with a physical cause. In a somewhat profound irony, the group that should understand the nature of addiction as a secondary problem, but don’t, are 12 Steppers. The irony isn’t that they believe it to be a disease (as described in “The Doctor’s Opinion“), the irony is that although they consider it a disease, they treat it as a secondary problem. Alcohol is mentioned once, in the first part of the first step. From thereon, the 12 Steps focus on personal change: surrendering to a higher power, doing a moral inventory, repairing relationships, atoning for wrongdoing while you were drinking, and developing daily habits to keep you on this path. The addiction gets you in the door, but that’s pretty much the end of it. Why? Because addiction is the outcome, not the source, of the problems, and focusing on the source—the underlying causes and conditions—is what works.

Staying sober in a 12 Step program is all about changing behavior. Any AA member can tell you this. In fact, anybody who’s walked away from an addiction, in or out of AA, can tell you this. There is no medical treatment administered, or even in existence to administer. Regardless of how you frame it, and no matter how many irrational beliefs cloud it up, sobriety is all about personal change.

What, then, is the evidence for the disease model? Well, the Big Book says the disease is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” that if you pick up a drink or drug after any period of time sober, the disease kicks into full swing immediately, picks up where it left off, and will lead invariably to “jails, institutions, and death.” These claims are validated by personal stories in the second half of the book where this is exactly what happened, as well as people who walk into meetings after some “experimentation” and verify it to be true.

It’s scary stuff, and enough to make a true believer out of many a person. But anecdotal evidence is not the same as scientific proof. These stories have a similar feel as what will happen to you if you masturbate, or don’t believe in Jesus, or study art instead of science in college. They are ways to coerce people into behaving a certain way. And yes, those who say such things usually believe them, but that doesn’t make them right. It’s the difference between dogma and truth, which is akin to the difference between cave light and sunlight. (And by the way, there are just as many people who tell the opposite tale: that after they kicked addiction and created a decent life for themselves, they were indeed able to drink in moderation.)

In the case of addiction, it’s the difference between the fear-based belief that it’s a disease and the logic-based understanding that it’s a secondary problem. And in yet another grave irony, AAers know this, even if they don’t know they know it! As they tout the disease rhetoric, they will say, just as earnestly, “If you don’t do a fourth, you’ll drink a fifth.” Meaning that if you don’t do the fourth step, the moral inventory, you’re going to drink again. And in most cases, they’re absolutely right, although few stop to question what a moral inventory could possibly have to do with their “disease” (the answer being nothing).

The fourth step is where the magic happens, if any magic is to happen. It’s where the opportunity for lasting change becomes possible. If a person does a “searching and fearless” inventory, he will come away from it with a deeper understanding of why he is the way he is. He will have gotten down to the “causes and conditions” of his addiction. Armed with that knowledge, he can now do something about it. (In fact, this is true for all personal change. Outside of AA, it’s just called something else.)

I am not inventing emphasis to make my point about the secondary nature of addiction. All 12 Step literature, as full of inconsistencies as it is, agrees on the crucial importance of the 4th step. There is no question among 12 Steppers that self-awareness is the key to long-term sobriety. It unlocks all the other character traits necessary for a person to live a meaningful, satisfying life. It’s the one step that makes permanent change possible. Without realizing it (which is a sad state indeed), successful AAers understand that addiction is about self-medicating the underlying causes and conditions; they understand that addiction is a secondary problem. Every single step treats it as such. Or, as one wise AA old timer puts it, “It’s not my drinkin’, it’s my thinkin’!”

Nevertheless, addiction is overwhelmingly viewed as a disease. The fundamentally dogmatic nature of the 12 Steps (and of the “medical” treatment programs based on them, making up more than 90 percent of the addiction treatment industry) accounts for this and makes systemic change difficult, to say the least. With the disease model so irrationally rooted in our collective psyche, opportunities to understand the true, secondary nature of addiction are scarce. And this lack of understanding accounts, I believe, for the dismally low cure rate of addiction (somewhere around 10 percent). It commits a grave disservice to those seeking help from the treatment establishment.

The addiction treatment establishment is stuck in a dishonest rhetoric that hinders the very thing it is trying to accomplish. It is its own worst enemy, belied by the miniscule number of people it actually helps.  Knowing this (and they do know this), don’t they  owe it to suffering addicts—aren’t they obligated?—to at least examine their views? That they seem unwilling to do so indicates, perhaps, that addiction relief is itself a secondary concern.

The question is, to what?

And speaking of effortlessness…I watched a film the other night called “Man on Wire.” It was about a tightrope walker named Philippe Petit who, in 1974, sneaked to the top of the World Trade Center, strung a wire to the other building, then went out there and did his thing. For forty-five minutes, he danced back and forth across the wire. He had both feet in the air numerous times, he lay down and gazed up at the sky, he bent down on one knee and saluted. It was an amazing thing to see. Afterwards, while thinking about the film, about Philippe dancing playfully on the air, with no greater purpose than the act itself, it occurred to me that this was the personification of effortlessness, of living life in that wonderful place where work and play intersect.

As mesmerizing as the tightrope act was, it was just as fascinating to watch people’s reactions to it. Not one person had a negative thing to say, not even the police, who arrested him the instant he came down (he was later released with all charges dropped). There was this sense that everybody who witnessed Philippe up there in the sky, nothing more than a dark speck against the heavens, identified with him somehow. There was a sense of loftiness, of being part of something great, or greater than yourself. As I watched him, my heart swelled. Out on that tightrope, Philippe embodied a universal aspect of the human spirit. It was impossible to watch him and be unmoved.

This reaction concurs with Philippe’s own description of the act. He described his twin towers walk as his life’s work. If death came from it, he said, what better way to die, than doing what you love? His passion was obvious in his every word and gesture; his eyes sparkled with mischief, his mouth smiled even when he spoke with intensity. Here was a man who’d figured out how to squeeze the most out of each moment. And his joy was contagious—but how? It’s not that watching him made me want to tightrope walk hundreds of feet above the ground. But it did make me reflect on the wonder of consciousness, and on human nature at its finest.

Philippe was no daredevil, although it looks that way on the surface. This was no whim. He planned the walk for six years, practicing endlessly, memorizing the physics involved in the endeavor, and enlisting a competent team to help him. He centered his whole life on making it happen. He threw everything he had into it. And through his effort, hard work, and planning, he made this amazing thing happen.

I think what I’m calling “effortlessness” is really a whole bunch of things, all embodying the highest calling of the human spirit. Philippe’s tightrope walking literalizes the act of living life to the fullest. Excellence. Determination. Focus. Courage. Mindfulness. Strength. Passion. When all these intersect (or maybe even just some of them), the result is a beautiful creation that looks and feels effortless. The lesson here is that, yes, hard work will get us where we want to be in life. But it’s so much more than that. When we answer our calling, work and play meld into one seamless entity. They are one and the same. Life takes on a lightness and playfulness that is completely in tune with the Universe. No note out of place.

I’ve experienced moments like this. I’ve gotten so absorbed in my writing that I’ve lost track of time and even felt like there is no separation between me, the creator, and what I’m creating. It’s an amazing experience, and if you’ve ever had it, you know what I mean when I say it just feels right (and wonderful). I haven’t been able to live my life in that effortless state, but I recognize it in Philippe. His tightrope walking wraps it up in a neat little package, a tremendous gift he presents to the world. “Here!” he says. “Take this! It’s just as much your legacy as it is mine! Do with it what you will!”

When I was at the gym the other day, I saw something that got me thinking about the idea of effortlessness. My exercise bike overlooked the main entrance. As I pedaled and sweated away, I noticed that most of the people coming in were carrying huge duffle bags that looked packed full and uncomfortably heavy. Most of the women also had purses (why do you need your purse at the gym?). They leaned to one side as they walked to offset the weight of their burdens. One red-faced, straining woman even lugged a large cooler—what she needed a cooler for, I can’t possibly imagine. She had to make two trips to get all her stuff inside. She looked exhausted, and she hadn’t even started her workout yet.

Health clubs are all over where I live, including several branches of my club. So there’s no reason for anybody to drive more than ten minutes to reach one. When I go, I wear my workout clothes, I bring a bottle of water and a book or headset, I do my workout, and I go home. I do not see the logic in bringing a change of clothes and showering at the gym when the comfort of home is just a few minutes away.

Why, I wondered, do people make things so hard for themselves?

This got me thinking about other instances where people make life harder than it has to be. Corporate America is a stellar one. Back when I did cubicle duty, I often overheard conversations between people comparing the amounts of work they brought home with them, how much time they didn’t get to spend with their kids because of it, and how this work ruined or at least greatly modified their weekend plans. This wasn’t occasional; these conversations happened all the time. It made me wonder sometimes if I was doing something wrong because I didn’t have these problems (and I certainly didn’t have these conversations). I always had plenty of work to do, but as long as I prioritized my workload, I rarely had to work late or bring work home. (Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were talking about working, while I was working. This corresponds to a study that found the average worker wastes at least 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday.)

There are other things, too. Why do people who live in small apartments get big dogs? Why do low-income families have more children than they can comfortably afford? Why do people live in places where they have more than a half-hour commute to their jobs? I know there are plausible answers for all of these questions, but the fact remains, these are all things that make life harder than it has to be.

Effortlessness is the opposite way of living life. I don’t mean slothfulness or not giving a damn. Rather, effortlessness refers to taking the simplest route, finding what works best, avoiding unnecessary complications. It’s what happens when you’re completely engaged in what you’re doing; it’s what the phrase “getting lost in your work” means. A story in Zen philosophy illustrates this. A poor cook must sharpen his knife every month and a good cook once a year, but the master cook, who “meets the ox with his mind,” hasn’t had to sharpen his knife in nineteen years. He has developed his skill to such an advanced level that he can expend the least amount of effort for the greatest effect. Perhaps more importantly, he understands the beauty in this; he understands that excellence is something worthwhile to achieve.

Ironically, tremendous effort is involved in effortlessness. But because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like effort. It feels a lot more like play. Effortlessness is another name for flow; synergy; working smarter, not harder–all terms that mean being at one with whatever you’re doing.

Millions of web sites and books are devoted to these topics. A Google search on “work smarter, not harder” returned 354,000 hits; a Google search of “synergy” 24 million. Streamlining life is biiiig business. Everybody seems eager to be more efficient and smarter about how they spend their time. And yet, I see the opposite attitude everywhere. People saddle themselves with responsibilities, tasks, and obligations that they just don’t have to. They work constantly, but don’t seem to get very much done. When they’re not working, they’re usually worrying or feeling guilty about it.

Why?

Well, I think there are a few reasons. For one thing, a cultural component biases us against too much leisure time. Americans—and maybe all industrialized cultures, I don’t know—tend to look down on people who “don’t work hard enough.” We tend to not trust people with a lot of free time. Without knowing anything else about them, we label these people “lazy” or “unambitious,” maybe see them as trying to get away with something. In many corporate cultures, using vacation time is seen as a weakness or lack of commitment to one’s career. Even in less extreme environments, leisure time still tends to be anathema, an indication that you’re not pulling your weight or don’t have enough to do. This attitude creates a workplace where people can easily become more concerned with looking busy than with actually getting their work done. Talk about a skewed view of the good old-fashioned work ethic. What irony!

Another reason is an overdeveloped sense of duty. This permeates our culture down to its toes. People can get so caught up in what they think they’re supposed to do that they never stop to think about what they really want to do. When work is driven by duty, there is no emotional connection to it, so it feels flat and mechanical. Effortlessness is not possible under such conditions. Also, when duty is a person’s driving force, so much energy is required to keep slogging through life that there isn’t a lot left for creative pursuits. Many “mid-life crises” are about people waking up to this awareness in a panic, frantic to change. (And better late than never, I say.)

But neither corporations nor our duty-based culture are the main cause of people making their lives harder than necessary. As with most behaviors, I believe the primary payoff is more personal, and that is the convenient distraction it provides: when people engage in busy-ness for its own sake, they get to ignore their inner calling. They get to feel okay about themselves (in an empty sort of way) without taking any actual risk toward doing what they really want to do. They get to believe they’re productive, quiet the complaints of those around them, and sometimes even look like a martyr, without ever putting themselves out on a limb. Such a worldview not only garners admiration and respect from most, it also saves a person the heartache of failing at anything that really matters. How’s that for a payoff?

With so much at stake, it makes perfect sense why so many people avoid creating effortlessness in their lives. Doing so would require them to pay attention to that annoying little inner voice. Ewwww! But ignoring it won’t make it go away. It will only result in ever more intense levels of distraction to fight it off (have another baby!) and a bitter old age.

It’s a means/end dichotomy. People want to see themselves as productive, but they don’t want to take the risk required to actually become so in the fullest and truest sense. So they create an illusion and satisfy themselves with that. As always, self-awareness is the key to creating a better life—or the obstacle standing in the way of it. This is why “work smarter, not harder” will always be huge business: it caters as much to how people want to see themselves as it does to actual change. I have no doubt which market is biggest, or which provides the most repeat business.

Nobody can lead a completely effortless life; we all have daily chores and obligations we’ll never feel fully engaged in. But if we understand the principle of effortlessness, and why it’s important, then we have an opportunity to maximize it in our lives, and minimize what isn’t connected to our deeper selves.

Principle: Willingness

“Progress, not perfection” is another 12 Step cliché that has made it into mainstream culture. A Google search returned almost 380,000 hits, and not even the first page was all sobriety/recovery related. There was an artist’s blog, an AIDS program, and a self-help book with that title that looked to have nothing to do with sobriety. It got me wondering whether “progress, not perfection” has its origins in the 12 Step movement at all, or if it goes further back than that. I suppose it doesn’t really matter; while the idea is of powerful use in the addictive struggle, it also, like many of these clichés, transcends it. It has a lot to say about the human condition.

One of the Google hits was a link to Everything2.com, which had this definition: “A phrase associated with programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. Used to underscore the importance of small increments of improvement…” So maybe Bill Wilson was the first to use it, although there is no way to know how reliable this statement is. Whoever first used it, I’m sure it was with this meaning in mind. Small increments of improvement are important, and equally important is learning to recognize them and be content with them.

Any 12 Stepper can tell you this cliché speaks to the quality of willingness. Willingness to grow, learn, stay sober, make an effort, do the next right thing, “work the Steps.” As addicts tend to be all-or-nothing thinkers, bringing with them into sobriety a lifetime of high highs and low lows and not a lot in between (which I believe is a predilection for, not a result of, addiction), it’s important for them to learn to be content with “patient improvement.” This concept creates space for the slow grind of change and allows people who think in extremes to not give up when things don’t go exactly how they think they ought. In other words, it nurtures a sense of willingness.

Not only addicts think in extremes. To some extent, everyone does; this is why this cliché resonates with mainstream culture. Every one of us can identify with it in certain areas of our lives; every one of us must develop the fortitude to move toward what we want in whatever increments possible. We must become willing to create the life we want, in the face of whatever stands in our way.

All true and all valuable. And yet, there is much more meaning to be reaped from this phrase. A great paradox lies in “progress, not perfection.” It is the paradox of the human condition itself, which is that perfection is not possible, and yet we must keep trying to attain it.

We can never create exactly the life we want. Not as long as we inhabit an imperfect human body with an imperfect mind and live in an imperfect world. We will never know all there is to know, not even about ourselves: it is the dialectic of progress. With every step forward, we encounter new questions, concerns, possibilities, issues, and problems. Learning new things brings new opportunities and desires. We branch off in new directions. We may abandon old goals, or refashion them to fit into our new worldview. And if we’re lucky, this process never stops; it continues until we die.

Thus, not only must we be content with patient improvement, we must accept that it is, in all honesty, the only choice available. But this is not a bad thing. Understanding the infinite nature of this process—of progress—doesn’t have to be frustrating. It is, in fact, incredibly freeing. There is no goal to attain, no end to reach for. There is only the journey, and what we make of it.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have goals, plans, or ideas. Of course we should. But these goals, plans, and ideas, however important they are, shouldn’t define who we are or how we feel about ourselves. The belief that they can do either is an illusion, anyway. Reaching a goal feels good, but it doesn’t change who you are, as anyone who’s ever done so can tell you. Only the willingness to make progress toward unattainable perfection can do that.

I believe that the infinite nature of progress is spirituality itself. It is the essence of our being, and “progress, not perfection” is really talking about our spiritual migration toward wholeness. And herein lies another great paradox of the spiritual journey: we don’t need to become perfect to become whole. The journey itself—our choices, our actions, our beliefs—provides the wholeness. If we understand that, then progress becomes…enough. Enough to live a satisfying life.

That’s the best we can ever hope for.

My partner Jim and I were far from experts when we started this thing. We both had some dismal experiences in our past and a lot of baggage, childhood and otherwise. But we had some things going for us, and probably just as important, we got lucky. We stumbled onto some ideas early on that we both recognized as crucial elements to the success of the relationship.

Between what we had going in and what we figured out together in the first month or so of our relationship, we came up with a few solid ways to create and maintain intimacy that have really worked. I’ve boiled them down to three main ideas that I’m going to share here.

Before I do that, here’s a quick definition of intimacy so we’re all on the same page. Intimacy is feeling safe and comfortable being yourself with another person. This is a broad definition, but intentionally so. What’s more important than feeling safe and comfortable when you’re with a person day in and day out? I can’t think of a thing.

I don’t know if this will be helpful to anybody; a lot of it is simple, common sense. But until I figured it out, intimacy was like an impossible fantasy that didn’t exist in the “real world.” I felt hopeless that I could ever feel that way with another person; probably because of the family I grew up in (but that is another topic). In any case, if a caring, loving, supportive relationship seems like an impossibility to you, read on. Maybe you’ll find something to spark a new thought or awareness; I sure hope so.

1. Prerequisites
First of all, we both had some necessary prerequisites for a relationship; we were good raw material for each other. Simply put, we had a lot in common. But the really important things we had in common were maybe not what most people might think.

Jim and I had known each other for years, and it was only when he taught me how to ride a motorcycle, now six years ago, that we grew closer. From the outside, I know it looks like motorcycles brought us together, that they were something we had in common. But that’s not how it was. Motorcycles were merely a catalyst, an opportunity for us to get closer and discover the traits we liked and respected in each other. Without these traits, these prerequisites, there would have been nothing to build a relationship on.

What we realized as we got to know each other was that we had a lot of shared values. There were obvious things, like we both loved the same things about motorcycling and neither of us wanted to have kids. But we also had very similar spiritual beliefs, and we both considered spirituality an important aspect of life. We both valued honesty over kindness, meaning that we would rather be told the truth than have our feelings spared. We both valued critical thinking. Above all, I think, we were both avid seekers of truth, and we both sought that truth in a very similar way, on a very similar path. (We also shared other important values such as openness, willingness, and kindness, but these are kind of bottom-line essentials, and, I hope, too obvious to discuss here.)

Because of our shared values, we also shared a common language. We’d read a lot of the same books and thought about a lot of the same things, so we had a kind of shorthand with each other. He could say something about the Pre-Trans Fallacy, for example, and he didn’t have to explain what it was. Or I could talk about how Spiral Dynamics has helped me understand some particular behavior, and he would know instantly what I meant. In this common language, there was a tremendous sense of connection. There was a tremendous sense of understanding each other. Conversations about important stuff came easily, and we didn’t have to struggle to be heard. It was a fantastic feeling.

Shared values, I believe, are the most necessary prerequisite for compatibility. Jim and I also had a lot of superficial interests in common—motorcycling, taste in film, ethnic restaurants—but these alone are not a strong enough glue to hold a long-term relationship together. There has to be a deeper level of connection.

2. Honesty
Honesty was certainly a value we shared, but when you care about someone’s feelings (or want to avoid conflict), it’s easy to slip into saying what you think a person wants to hear. Since both Jim and I are “people pleasers” by nature, we really struggled with this. We hated to hurt each other’s feelings or disagree. But hurt feelings and disagreements are inevitable in a close relationship. So one day, when I suspected he was taking care of my feelings rather than saying what he really wanted, I called him on it. He resisted at first, and it would have been easy to drop it at that. But something bubbled up from somewhere, and I found myself saying how crucial it was for us to be honest with each other, no matter what. I don’t know where it came from or why it came to me at that particular time, but a look of dawning comprehension came over Jim’s face, and at that moment, I think we both internalized, in a conscious and deliberate way, how necessary it was to be honest with each other. And to this day, this assumption underlies all of our communication.

Honesty—and I’m speaking here of emotional honesty, sharing feelings and desires candidly—is sooo important. If you fall into the trap—and it’s very, very easy to do—of telling your partner what he or she wants to hear, you end up not getting what you really want. If you do this repeatedly, then you end up never getting what you want. Then you end up resentful, distant, and emotionally shut down. As does your partner, who is doing the same thing with you. The result is a sad, disconnected, un-intimate partnership, a superficial connection that neither person is happy with.

If you’re not able to be emotionally honest with your partner, you will also never feel fully safe or fully comfortable. How can you, when you aren’t able to speak your truth? How ironic that what begins as a gentle way to spare the feelings of someone you love turns into such a destructive monster. But it does. And until you decide you’re going to be honest and deal with whatever consequences occur, you’re never going to feel truly intimate with your partner.

Honesty is the kindest way, as well. It may not seem like it at the time, but it always, always is. Honesty is the only way a person can know and understand you; it is the only way to help a person better know and understand himself. Without these two things, we go through life oblivious about the areas of our lives we should know the best. How sad! I can think of no greater kindness than the truth, gently told, to a person we love.

This is not to say you must tell your partner every single thing on your mind all the time, or expect it in return. (That’s just bad boundaries.) But you must develop the willingness to not shirk from honesty just to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. Doing so is a death knell to intimacy.

3. Playfulness
Successful relationships take a lot of work. Being emotionally honest requires effort and fortitude. As do kindness, tolerance, and forgiveness. But if a relationship is all work, forever talking about feelings and working through issues and striving, striving, striving to do it better, what good is that? The whole point of being with someone is for the enjoyment of it. If you’re not spending at least as much time having fun as you are working through your problems, then you’re kind of missing the whole point.

In the early stages, it’s easy to have fun. Everything is new and magical and exciting. But when that wears off, and you’ve started to notice your partner’s shortcomings, and it begins to take some effort, is it still fun? Can you do the tough work of building real intimacy and still enjoy being together?

Not only enjoy being together, but have fun. Play. Laugh. Be good friends. Ideally, best friends.

Jim and I have gone through our ups and downs, times where it was harder than others to appreciate and enjoy each other. But at our core, we like each other. And because we like each other, we have fun together.

It helps that we’re both playful people. We have a whole assortment of silly games we play with each other. There’s the Homograph game, the Cliché game, 20 Questions, Cool but Dumb, Is It Anything; I could go on and on. I won’t explain the games because in themselves, they’re not important. The point is that we’re playful with each other, frequently laughing, looking for the quirky view or the most interesting idea about whatever we happen to be doing. Such playfulness makes mundane tasks like driving, grocery shopping, and doing housework fun.

Adults in the modern world have a tendency to treat life with morose seriousness. I suppose because there is so much to be serious about: bills, career, health, mortality, politics. Raising kids. Global warming. The Middle East. All true. But there is another way to see things. Alan Watts (one of the authors Jim and I have in common) talks about the “fundamentally playful nature of the Universe.” It has been my experience that when I’m fully present in the moments of my life, it’s impossible to worry about the future or fret about the past. They simply don’t exist. There is only the eternal now, and when we are living in it, there can be only joy.

I don’t succeed in living there all the time (far from it!), but I have experienced it enough to realize the truth of it. And Jim and I aren’t always happy-go-lucky (far from it!), but we are playful with each other a great deal of the time. This makes our connection really special, and really vital, and, I think, really healthy.

When two people share values, language, and are able to be honest with each other, they have the tools to create real intimacy. But playfulness is what makes it all worthwhile.

Summary
A healthy relationship is not exemplified by the absence of conflict, but by the ability to work through it. Ours is no exception. Because of our shared values, our willingness to be honest with each other, and a fundamentally playful attitude towards life, we are able to not only work through conflict, but to create new levels of intimacy as we do so. Some times take longer than others, but we always manage to get there. And with the tools we have, I expect this most exciting of all adventures to continue indefinitely.