My husband and I have been making shadows on the wall for 27 years. Though this July, we will celebrate 25 years of marriage. We have weathered the storms of relationship conflict. I think the only way to sustain a relationship is by communicating. Stay talking and listening. And of course Compromising. Funny thing is that out of conflict, comes growth. And we often grow more alike as the years pass by. We learn from each other. Sometimes we are the follower, sometimes the leader. Sometimes the weak one, sometimes the strong one. Sometimes the teacher, sometimes the pupil. There are shifts and changes along the path we tread together. Morphing. He's become softer, calmer. I've become a little more headstrong and fiery. We've taken on a bit of the other. Blended characters. So when we took a wee romantic stroll around the Mount a couple of weeks back, I looked at our photos of the shadows we were creating and it came to me that they expressed a sentiment of singular and combined forces of a relationship.
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| Man blending in with environment |
Sometimes, he would walk ahead of me, while I lagged behind, taking photos. Other times he would wait for me and we would walk together, some way, till he would lag behind to get a closer view of something that had caught his eye. Then I would get to walk ahead..... a little like our relationship.
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| Temporarily on my own. |
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| Hamming it up, always having fun! |
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| Capturing the moment of alone-ness. |
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"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction"
Antoine de Saint-Exupery |
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| "Happiness is a healthy mental attitude, a grateful spirit, a clear conscience, and a heart full of love." Anon. |
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| Dancing to the rhythms of Life Together. |
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"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
Peter Ustinov |
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"Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief."
Anon. |
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| "Not all those who wander are lost." J. R. R Tolkien |
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"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tsu
"The path to a happy relationship begins with a twinkly smile, and mutual sense of awe and wonderment in each other."
Jizzy Green |
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| "Shall we dance?" |
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| Hanging in there...... |
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| A sense of peace and alone-ness |
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| Self portrait |
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| All of Life, is a Journey into the Unknown |
There have been times over the last 27 years, as in all real relationships, that I could gladly have run away from my twin shadow, but I was determined, like my twin shadow, to stay and figure it out. We talk, we laugh, we whisper, sometimes we shout. But at the end of the day, we try to go to bed at peace with one another and ourselves. And make more shadows on the walls.......
