According to Princess Little Tree, there’s nothing in the world that I haven’t written about in the Transcendence Diaries over the last 12 years. I have no way of confirming that of course, but it has occurred to me more than once that I have been pretty silent on the subject of marriage. That’s actually been a rather deliberate intention. I believe (as do most others) that I already share more of myself with the world than is normal or necessary or perhaps even healthy, but I’ve never minded this too much. I’ve always still been able to walk down the street and get along pretty well in the world despite what I say here or how I say it. I’ve been very lucky in that. So there are certain things — not just for my own benefit but more for the benefit of those around me — that i choose to keep private. One of those things has been my marriage. But I will allow these thoughts to slip out, because I believe them to be semi-important; surely they are harmless enough not to harm anyone or infringe on anyone’s privacy. And who knows, maybe they’ll even be helpful to some.

Princess Little Tree, long time character here in the Diaries and now my wife, just left an hour ago to visit with her brothers in Vancouver, BC — which isn’t actually that far from the Seattle area. It’s a gorgeous city by the way if you ever have a chance to spend some time there, i highly recommend it. By all accounts this is a very good thing for PLT and her whole family. I’m terribly glad she took the time to go.

What I always forget though is how completely lonely and lacking it feels when she and I separate. It’s uncanny. It takes a few minutes for it to kick in… I may be busy running around like crazy multi-tasking, or i might be sitting down just studying or writing, but without fail, this eery quiet in the house suddenly hits me. She’s gone. She’s really gone. Not just off to the store for an hour, but off for a few days. For all the “boy won’t it be fun to have some free time, alone time, quiet time, guy time to do whatever the heck I want to” ideas that we “think” beFORE they leave, that preconceived vision of fun pales in comparison to how much we sincerely and genuinely miss our spouse once they’re gone. At least for me.

Friends used to tell me about this phenomenon all the time… Infinito TOTALLY changed when he met Carlita. Before she entered the picture, Infinito used to be a player. He was a drummer in a rock band… So use your imagination. It isn’t hard to envision what it was like. He was always surrounded by the cutest and prettiest girls. But he never seemed that into them. He always played the laidback cavalier stud. Then he started dating this new girl. A few inches taller than he. that’s the first thing I remember. A real knock out. One day we turned around and while taking breaks at rehearsal the other guys in the band and I would notice that he was on the phone with her, talking in freaking baby talk, saying things like “oh mammi, te amo… te amo, besos… besitos…” He was acting like a different person. Of course we made fun of him. But at the same time it was easy to see how happy he was. I had a feeling he had met the ONE. And sure enough, about two years later, Infinito was married.

Now truth be told I didn’t get it at all, until i was married myself. Marriage, for all it’s ups and downs, is an amazing blessing. And we’ll get to that. But first, to be fair and forthcoming, marriage is also hard as hell sometimes. It’s a balancing act. Yes it’s true that your sex life does change completely. There’s this whole cycle that you go through. When you’re single you can have sex as often as you like pretty much. I mean, I’m speaking from the vantage point of being a singer in a rock band… so my view, my reality may be different than other people; but even still, one assumes that regardless of who you are or what you do, there are always others you can find out there who will share in your desire to do whatever it is that you wish to do in life. So if getting it on everyday is your thing, I’m sure just about anyone can make that happen, rock band or not. But as these very Diaries show in countless entries, that kind of lifestyle gets very old very fast. And your heart starts to long for something more substantial.

Once you meet that someone special, you go through what they call the honeymoon phase. This is the making love 2 to 4 times a day without fail phase of the cycle. If you’re a good match, it’ll last for quite a while. This is pretty much heaven on earth. Especially if you’ve really met “the ONE”. As long as your engagement doesn’t last forever this phase will continue right through your wedding day and well into your marriage proper. Then things will die down a bit after a while. You’ll have your first fight. That will suck. If you’re a man, you’ll realize that you’re wrong a LOT of the time. In fact, whenever she says you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Accept it. It’ll get you through to the make up phase a lot faster.

After a few years, love making — and i hate to say this for fear of scaring away newbies (bare in mind this is only MY take on things based on MY own experiences, so take it in stride, but) love making starts to take a back seat to things both of you deem more important in life. Having kids, raising the kids you already have, buying your first home together, building your nest egg, and generally building up your home and family together. Love making doesn’t go away. It’s just not priority number one anymore. Which is most likely as it should be. You’re still doing it. You’re just not doing it three times a day anymore.

Even in the best marriages, there are times when you’re going to look at this person standing there yelling at you and think “I can’t wait to get out of this hell on earth with this crazy person. I don’t know what happened to her (or him), but they have changed!” But lo and behold, if you widen back and don’t take any of your feelings too seriously (as long as you’re not genuinely being abused), then you’ll do just fine. I have found that the most important things to keep in mind, and practice, are #1, remind yourself of who that person really is, of how much you loved them –oh yeah, did i forget to mention that there will be times when you will actually hate them? Sorry. But it’s true. #2, recognize that chances are they still love you too; they’re just stuck in a creation that they can’t see out of at the moment. Give them some space and time. Personally I find that girls need more space and time than we men do. But that sounds awfully like an over-generalization, so be weary of going there. If you do notice that they need space and time to heal and integrate or to forgive you, give it to them. Don’t rush to make up just because YOU feel good. That’ll just piss them off more. #3, recognize that you’re going to be wrong sometimes. No matter how convinced you are that you’re right, in whatever it is, you may not even see it, it may take you hours or days or weeks to see it, but if you stay open and honest, you will see it. And in that moment it’s very important that you acknowledge that, to yourself AND to your mate. Let them know that you see where you went wrong, that you’re truly sorry, and that you’re committed to not doing it again.

[A note on this: This is an unbelievably difficult thing to do for some people. Since I took the Avatar Course at a very young age, I was lucky to already have those tools from a very young age. I didn’t have to go back and relearn how to do life, because I learned early on how to navigate it with this amazing technology. One of the things I noticed is that when we are in the habit of doing something we label “bad” or “wrong”, it may be very difficult for us to see it. Ever try to tell a person who lies a lot that they lie a lot? Notice how crazy and indignant they act? That’s because they’re in massive resistance to this reality about themselves. I’ve noticed it play out in real time in my own consciousness…. I’ll be brewing about some fight I’ve had with PLT and for a second I’ll get this thought that maybe if I hadn’t have done “such and such” then perhaps we wouldn’t be in this position… but then as soon as I start going there, I feel this major pain reflex swell up within me. That’s resistance to being wrong or bad. So you have to start practicing being honest and open and widened back enough to feel if these things are true or not. If they are, if you really did do such and such and that really is why you’re in an argument with your mate, then you gotta feel it, accept it, try to feel where it comes from, why you do it, get to it’s core, let it go, and decide from that moment on not to do it anymore. Just don’t forget to apologize for it. Just because YOU’ve discreated it and don’t plan on doing it anymore doesn’t mean that SHE doesn’t need to hear you confess it and commit to not doing it anymore. This is important I’ve found.]

If you give all that to her, granted if you’re in the right relationship, there’s a good chance your mate will do the same with you. You begin to trust this process. It works. And before you know it, you’re back under the covers madly in love again. It may SEEM like an impossibility when you’re both caught up in some crazy argument or fight, but if you’re with a good person, it just works out that way. Pretty soon you’re even more in love than you were during your first honeymoon phase. I don’t know what to call this other phase… I haven’t named it yet. Which is funny, because I name everything… But it’s deeper than the honeymoon phase. It’s this unconditional love and trust phase. It’s partnership, but on a very intimate level. It’s a deep unspoken trust. And it’s very very fulfilling and comforting.

Look at it this way. This is the person that you’re going to share a bed with for the rest of your life. Every single night for the rest of your life you and this other person are going to sleep side by side, right next to each other, bad breath and messy hair and all. But none of that matters. Because, if you’re with the right person, you will find that there is nothing more comforting, nothing more satisfying, nothing more caressing to the spirit than this ritual of spending each and every night together side by side.

I assume one has to be in the “right” marriage though. Because honestly, as a buddy of mine, The Poet, and I have occasionally discussed, you literally start missing the person 30 minutes into their absence when they leave on a trip of any kind (if you’re aware they’re going to be gone for an extended period that is…). It still blows me away. Because until this relationship I didn’t have that experience as a reference point. So I doubted those who made such exclamations.

Which leads me to realize how important it is for each of us not to waste even one day with someone who is NOT “the ONE” for us. How will you know? You’ll ask them to marry you. You’ll be consumed with the idea; and with them. Oh yeah, I know, you “don’t believe you need a piece of paper”; you’re not a traditionalist or a mainstreamer. Hah! You’re preaching to the choir baby! Remember? This is the Ambassador here. I not only used to say the same thing and feel the exact same way, I wrote that fucking book.

Then i met “The ONE”. And all that bs flew out the window and I immediately felt, for the very first time, this unyielding unquenchable longing to have children with and get married to this person. Because then, and only then, can you really understand what “marriage” is, or why it even exists. Without that feeling, those feelings, then yes marriage does appear to be “an archaic man-made government mandated tradition to protect women and children and secure a more civil society”. Gotcha. It is all that. For sure. But just wait till you meet the ONE. Then everything changes… Even for the most wild crazy iconoclastic brilliant and bohemian of us on the outermost fringes of society. You’ll want to throw out your list of “why marriage is not for me because I’m too smart/cool/hip for it”, because you will be consumed with making sure that this person is with YOU and YOU only. And the only way to assure that happens is to put a ring on that finger and walk down that aisle. Besides that, you’ll just WANT to. I know it sounds insane. But you’ll just WANT to. You’ll actually start thinking about. You’ll dream of it. You’ll fantasize about how beautiful she’s going to look on your wedding day and showing her off to all your friends and family. It’s a crazy thing, this metamorphosis from bachelorhood to bridegroom. But it’s a great ride.

Until then, it’s all a guessing game. It’s all cafe chats with friends over wine and appetizers about this one and that one and what that first date was like or why you know you should break up with so and so but maybe not this week…. It’s endless. And it’s all a big waste of time. Looking back now i can see, there is no “guessing” necessary. As everyone says, you’ll know. It’s a “lift you up off the ground and toss you around like a tumbleweed in a twister” kind of KNOWing; an “I can’t do anything else but think about and talk about and take actions that have to do with them and if I can’t be with THEM all the time then i don’t want to live!” kind of thing. It really is like that. Not just for rom-com loving, air-headed, romance obsessed tweens or silly romantics. It happens to the best and brightest of us, the staunchest sharpest minds.

I know you’ve heard and read this before, and I know that if you’ve been waiting a long time that you have your doubts. But I promise you as someone who waited a LONG time for it that it is exactly like that. And if it hasn’t been yet, then you just haven’t met the ONE yet. So wait it out. Don’t settle. Because life’s too short to settle for second best when you can have BEST.

Perhaps there is no better way to sum it up than with the words “true love”; maybe that’s why those words and that expression is so commonly thrown around… (though words don’t do it justice and if anything tend to bring it all down, make it much too earthly when in fact it’s quite a spiritually uplifting experience through and through…). I believe it is something — along with true inner-peace and personal freedom (democracy) — that everyone should be blessed with at least once in their lives. For I forget sometimes what a true blessing it is. Until I am reminded, as I was today. So this is my wish and prayer for you, and you and you and you. That this magical mystical true love finds you, if not today then some time very very soon. For there is nothing else like it in the world.