Relationship Glitches & The In Between

Everything was set. All the gifts bought, wrapped, under the tree. The tree was a masterpiece—even if I say so myself. A silly misunderstanding over the television on Christmas Eve almost ruined everything.

The misunderstanding was so silly that I won’t tell you what it concerned, but it did cause us to go to bed angry, feeling separated and not okay with each other. There is tension at Christmas time unlike any other. We repaired to our separate corners, licking our wounded egos, and sulked the night away.

In the morning, we were tentative with one another, aware of the delicacy of both ourselves and the other. Like a neck with a kinked muscle.

Slowly, over the course of the morning, through tea and breakfast, and presents the kink unkinked itself. How?

We returned to the love we have for one another. The way we did it was to assume the love was there. Hiding perhaps, but there, between us. We repaired to the space in between our egos, the space in the middle, where our true relationship lives.

May I paraphrase the marvelous Rainer Maria Rilke? I’ve substituted the word glitches for his questions.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the glitches themselves... Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the glitches now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Glitches are usually about me, me, me or you, you, you. The place where solutions to glitches are found is the place in between. The place of us. If you’ve encountered some glitches this Christmas Day, consider a gift you give yourself—a ticket to the place in between . . . glitches no more.