Psychology of March

Denise Said

It’s half-past March. The Ides of March gone by and it’s officially spring as of yesterday. So far so good. I’ve had wobbly moments this month where I could have sunk into my usual late winter blues. This year I was determined though to approach the month , not fiercely dreading it, but looking forward to it, realizing it’s always been a creative time for me, despite illnesses and depressions of the past that always seemed to strike me at this time. I decided to think of myself like the earth in its last moments of winter, building up energy before bursting in bloom.

I can’t say it’s been a highly creative month except for making a few of my greeting cards and running another series of girls fertility/cycle classes (which I LOVED doing), however I have felt very healthy and happy. This week especially I felt a shift, a calmness, and a real gratitude for my life and my life with you Max. Maybe it was the 70 degree weather and sunshine and my taking the time to sit read an engrossing book, maybe it’s from being in a progesterone state of mind, maybe it was the loud, absolutely breathe-taking opera music I was listening to while driving home at night, maybe it was a peaceful moment reading to Stephen about dinosaurs and really feeling our placement on this planet in time, maybe it was from a deliciously quiet moment in a new library where I just sat and read a couple magazines. Maybe it was just my new approach to March.

The library moment gave me what I needed for today’s blog and another reason to feel grateful. When I walked into the Scotch Plains Library I wandered a little bit until I strongly felt a magnetic force pulling me to the magazine section. The first magazine I noticed, and not one that I have ever read or picked up before was Psychology Today (March/April 2010). The cover had a man and woman wearing comfy close-fitting beige underclothes doing a sort of swing embrace with the man lifting the woman in the air Fred Astaire-style - with the title The Love Fix in bold black catching my eye. I perused the magazine shelf a little more checking for Mothering Magazine, and my article, but it wasn’t there. (What’s wrong with that library? Ah…actually it might have been in the kids’ section.) So I kept perusing and found myself drawn back to the Psychology Today. I picked it up, found a cozy little odd chair and sat. I looked around me. No one was stopping me from sitting and enjoying myself. At one point a child came near and I panicked and thought “Oh no! She’s senses I’m a mother and needs my help!” But no she was just wandering my way.

I started in on the article, entitled The Expectations Trap by Hara Estroff Marano, and saw immediately why this article had found me. It was saying exactly the same things that we have been saying in our blog. Excitement struck through me! Holy Toledo! We are on the right track in our thinking about our marriage ideas. All our ideas were right there in black in white and so nicely written out by a professional writer. Max, I might let you go into more of the details, if you feel so inclined, since I think you would a better job of explaining the main points in the article. (I went out and bought the magazine two days later.) The entire ten-page article should be read by anyone in a marriage or thinking of getting married. And the photos! I loved the photos of the cover couple throughout the article stretching and twisting in different dance/yoga/gymnastic-like poses, which I think illustrated so beautifully the different aspects of the marriage dance. Sometimes we’re walking on the other person. Sometimes we’re flying out the door. Sometimes we’re in a most intimate embrace. The quote that struck me the most was this one: “Important as it is to chose the right partner, it’s probably more important to be the right partner. We focus on changing the wrong person.”

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Max Said

Unfortunately, it appears that March is messing with me instead this year :) I don’t really think this, but I am fighting some combination of a head cold and mild heat stroke I guess. Just the sudden heat and a push to finish building Stephen’s “Family Pond” I suppose. All this is to say that I a bit groggy as I sit down to write this entry.

I am very happy that you have found a different way to approach March this year. It really is true that anything in our lives is what we make it. I think your new outlook on this month is a sign of the shift you have made towards just taking ownership of your own happiness.

The Psychology Today article is a truly uncanny thing. That you would be drawn to even pick this magazine up out of the blue is enough to convince me that the universe has some plan going on here. But then to read the article and find that just about every major point in the article was mirrored by one of the blog posts we have made over the last few months sealed it for me. There are two things that I find extremely exciting and positive about these remarkable overlaps. First of all, it makes me realize that what you and I have distilled from our 20+ years of learning from and about our relationship are fundamental and universal truths about long-term committed relationships. The second is that these truths are being spoken intelligently and cogently in a major US publication.

The bottom-line conclusions that both the author of this article and we ourselves have independently reached are that having a successful relationship means dealing with our own issues and becoming conscious of the cultural messages that do not serve us so that we can make choices driven by our inner guidance systems. I believe that both of these conclusions apply to just about anything. Even March :)

I echo your excitement about the Pysch Today article and am going to recommend this as required reading to anyone that I know who is in or looking at entering a long-term committed relationship.

I am going to go before I have another sneezing fit.