Loving in the City

We get up. We go to yoga. We have done this before. But today I notice something I haven't noticed before. I have grown to love the friendly bustle, the cheerful honking of horns, the colourful markets, the calling voices mixed with cockerel crows and the weaving, purring motorbikes, piled high with incredible and unwieldy loads (I mean baggage, I'm not being rude about the Vietnamese). I have grown fondest of the roads which, initially, most bewildered me.

When I reach yoga we have a different teacher and it's only us in the class. This, and the fact that we have now learned ten of the twelve basic postures (the remaining two are deemed too difficult for the beginners course) means that our class is faster moving, with less explanation needed. By the end I feel limber, supple and truly exercised. I walk tall.

We meet up with O and go out, together, for breakfast in a small coffee house, tucked away from the main road. It's owned by a friend of O's. This, and its general atmosphere, make it feel cosy and peaceful. The food and drink also happen to be brilliant. 

Interestingly enough, the conversation turns to love. We talk about the difficulty of ending relationships, about the impossible decisions love requires of you both, the guilt of walking away from a relationship when the other person seems to need you, the fact that there is never a good time to say goodbye.

It's fitting for more reasons than my personal feelings towards Vietnam, and my imminent need to say goodbye to it (we leave the week after next for Cambodia). Tonight O has to attend a dance performance as part of her work, as an arts and culture reporter for a Vietnamese newspaper. We have decided to tag along, though probably in less VIP seating! It's a UK dance group, choreographed by James Cousins, and we were initially in two minds about it, trying as we are to sink as fully as possible into Vietnamese culture. Until we read more about it and realised the performance was inspired by Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood', an author and novel we both admire. 

And, again, fittingly, one of the themes of the novel is love, specifically love for a person who desperately needs you, who ultimately can become a drain on you, who, however hard you try, you cannot cure of the malaise they seem to struggle with. That's a simplification. Read the novel. Murakami does it much better than I can.

I think, (cat, to my delight, curled on my lap), about this when we return home for a 'rest' from our oh so great exertion this morning. O has imposed this and as soon as we get home the skies open and one of Southern Vietnam's legendary monsoon showers begins. How does she know? She has suggested we go out again at three,  notably this will be when this apparently unforecast shower has finished. She suggested that this morning when the skies were blue and the sun was blistering. The girl might be magic. 

I sit, cat warm in my lap, and consider the difficulty of loving and being loved without dependency. Love, by its nature, makes you vulnerable. There was a long time when I avoided it for that very reason, feeling that the pain involved when the relationship ended was greater than the love itself. It rendered it, in my eyes, emotionally uneconomically viable. I got over that, of course. You tend to once you actually fall in love. Love doesn't give you much alternative. The head very rarely rules the heart. 

But by loving you give the other person a handle on your heart. They have the power to hurt you, simply by walking away. The nicest people in the world have had to walk away, at least once, from a relationship in their time. There's no guard against it. No guarantee. 

This kind of dependency is fine, provided it's mutual and symbiotic. The mutuality may not be completely consistent, in my experience you tend to take turns over time. But as long as, on the whole, you both love and are loved with roughly the same intensity, it's OK. It's an interdependency. 

But what if something changes? Or if, from the start, one person required extra care, or special handling. What about if your partner suffers from depression, agoraphobia, anorexia, or any other of a number of very difficult disorders. Their battle may be life long. And it's your battle too. How do each of you manage this? So that the one retains dignity, and the other their strength? 

These instances are extreme, and can be permanent, but even the most level headed of partners might go through an especially traumatic period, rendering them more needy and, very often, less loving and pushing the partnership towards a precarious imbalance.

We vow to each other, 'for better for worse', 'for richer for poorer', 'in sickness and in health'. And, usually, we mean it. But it's hard when that's tested. M are I tested the 'in sickness' part quite early after our marriage, when I had major surgery and was laid up for some months. M was fantastic, though I am sure it was hard for him - and the hardest part of loving  person who is in pain is that they can't spare the energy to love you in as positive and active a way as they normally might have done. The 'strong' partner needs reassurance too. They need times when they are allowed to not have to be the strong one. They need, every now and then, to turn the tables and lie back and have their partner mop their brow. And that, depending on the circumstances, might not be possible.

And it's hard, too, for the afflicted partner. I was fighting my weakness and losing. I was ashamed of my inability to see past the pain sometimes. I constantly questioned myself about the reality of my need for rest. Was I actually weakened? Was I just being lazy?

Being the dependant half is deadening. We each need to be needed and it is when we become too aware of ourselves as an unmitigated drain that we tend to make drastic and unwarranted decisions. We all need, sometimes to be the strong one. It's an act of love to allow your partner to take care of you, and an act of love to receive it without panicking. If one of you seems to always be the more dependent, based on their personality, circumstances or the kind of ongoing battle I mentioned earlier, it's part of the responsibility of the supporting partner to allow themselves, in some small way, to be supported back.

Nothing gives you more strength than doing something for another. And everyone deserves the opportunity.

It's not that simple. Some battles are so huge and so all consuming that such a philosophy simply doesn't register. Some supporting partners are so tired and so ingrained in their role that they can't find the strength to allow themselves to be supported.

My heart goes out to both people struggling in that kind of relationship. Being the supporter doesn't necessarily feel heroic.

 Often in fact it feels as though the weaker partner might actually be stronger without you. As though perhaps their struggle is somehow your fault.

It's hard. Love is really hard. And it takes effort. Sometimes gargantuan effort.

We go with O to District 7. We eat a gargantuan amount of ice cream. District 7 us newer, cleaner, quieter and posher than other areas of town. In comparison, it's like a ghost village. It's nice and a respite fLoving in the City

We get up. We go to yoga. We have done this before. But today I notice something I haven't noticed before. I have grown to love the friendly bustle, the cheerful honking of horns, the colourful markets, the calling voices mixed with cockerel crows and the weaving, purring motorbikes, piled high with incredible and unwieldy loads (I mean baggage, I'm not being rude about the Vietnamese). I have grown fondest of the roads which, initially, most bewildered me.

When I reach yoga we have a different teacher and it's only us in the class. This, and the fact that we have now learned ten of the twelve basic postures (the remaining two are deemed too difficult for the beginners course) means that our class is faster moving, with less explanation needed. By the end I feel limber, supple and truly exercised. I walk tall.

We meet up with O and go out, together for breakfast in a small coffee house, tucked away from the main road. It's owned by a friend of O's. This, and its general atmosphere, make it feel cosy and peaceful. The food and drink also happen to be brilliant. 

Interestingly enough, the conversation turns to love. We talk about the difficulty of ending relationships, about the impossible decisions love requires of you both, the guilt of walking away from a relationship when the other person seems to need you, the fact that there is never a good time to say goodbye.

It's fitting for more reasons than my personal feelings towards Vietnam, and my imminent need to say goodbye to it (we leave the week after next for Cambodia). Tonight O has to attend a dance performance as part of her work, as an arts and culture reporter for a Vietnamese newspaper. We have decided to tag along, though probably in less VIP seating! It's a UK dance group, choreographed by James Cousins, and we were initially in two minds about it, trying as we are to sink as fully as possible into Vietnamese culture. Until we read more about it and realised the performance was inspired by Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood', an author and novel we both admire. 

And, again, fittingly, one of the themes of the novel is love, specifically love for a person who desperately needs you, who ultimately can become a drain on you, who, however hard you try, you cannot cure of the malaise they seem to struggle with. That's a simplification. Read the novel. Murakami does it much better than I can.

I think, (cat, to my delight, curled on my lap), about this when we return home for a 'rest' from our oh so great exertion this morning. O has imposed this and as soon as we get home the skies open and one of Southern Vietnam's legendary monsoon showers begins. How does she know? She has suggested we go out again at three,  notably this will be when this apparently unforecast shower has finished. She suggested that this morning when the skies were blue and the sun was blistering. The girl might be magic. 

I sit, cat warm in my lap, and consider the difficulty of loving and being loved without dependency. Love, by its nature, makes you vulnerable. There was a long time when I avoided it for that very reason, feeling that the pain involved when the relationship ended was greater than the love itself. It rendered it, in my eyes, emotionally uneconomically viable. I got over that, of course. You tend to once you actually fall in love. Love doesn't give you much alternative. The head very rarely rules the heart. 

But by loving you give the other person a handle on your heart. They have the power to hurt you, simply by walking away. The nicest people in the world have had to walk away, at least once, from a relationship in their time. There's no guard against it. No guarantee. 

This kind of dependency is fine, provided it's mutual and symbiotic. The mutuality may not be completely consistent, in my experience you tend to take turns over time. But as long as, on the whole, you both love and are loved with roughly the same intensity, it's OK. It's an interdependency. 

But what if something changes? Or if, from the start, one person required extra care, or special handling. What about if your partner suffers from depression, agoraphobia, anorexia, or any other of a number of very difficult disorders. Their battle may be life long. And it's your battle too. How do each of you manage this? So that the one retains dignity, and the other their strength? 

These instances are extreme, and can be permanent, but even the most level headed of partners might go through an especially traumatic period, rendering them more needy and, very often, less loving and pushing the partnership towards a precarious imbalance.

We vow to each other, 'for better for worse', 'for richer for poorer', 'in sickness and in health'. And, usually, we mean it. But it's hard when that's tested. M are I tested the 'in sickness' part quite early after our marriage, when I had major surgery and was laid up for some months. M was fantastic, though I am sure it was hard for him - and the hardest part of loving  person who is in pain is that they can't spare the energy to love you in as positive and active a way as they normally might have done. The 'strong' partner needs reassurance too. They need times when they are allowed to not have to be the strong one. They need, every now and then, to turn the tables and lie back and have their partner mop their brow. And that, depending on the circumstances, might not be possible.

And it's hard, too, for the afflicted partner. I was fighting my weakness and losing. I was ashamed of my inability to see past the pain sometimes. I constantly questioned myself about the reality of my sickness. Was I actually weakened? Was I just being lazy?

Being the dependant half is deadening. We each need to be needed and it is when we become too aware of ourselves as an unmitigated drain that we tend to make drastic and unwarranted decisions. We all need, sometimes to be the strong one. It's an act of love to allow your partner to take care of you, and an act of love to receive it without panicking. If one of you seems to always be the more dependent, based on their personality, circumstances or the kind of ongoing battle I mentioned earlier, it's part of the responsibility of the supporting partner to allow themselves, in some small way, to be supported back.

Nothing gives you more strength than doing something for another. And everyone deserves the opportunity.

It's not that simple. Some battles are so huge and so all consuming that such a philosophy simply doesn't register. Some supporting partners are so tired and so ingrained in their role that they can't find the strength to allow themselves to be supported.

My heart goes out to both people struggling in that kind of relationship. Being the supporter doesn't necessarily feel heroic.

 Often in fact it feels as though the weaker partner might actually be stronger without you. As though perhaps their struggle is somehow your fault.

It's hard. Love is really hard. And it takes effort. Sometimes gargantuan effort.

We go with O to District 7. We eat a gargantuan amount of ice cream. District 7 us newer, cleaner, quieter and posher than other areas of town. In comparison, it's like a ghost village. It's nice and a respite from the roads but also a little sterile. Its a restful afternoon.

Afterwards, we go to the performance. It's fantastic. As someone who has read and loved 'Norweigian Wood' I was spell bound. Midori was played by a man which really helped to show the struggle the main character has being not just between two women, one more dependant than the other, but between the dependent and ultimately hopeless Naoko and the rest of his life. It also emphasises the issue of dependency and interdependency I had been thinking about when I wrote the earlier part of this blog. (I appreciate that this makes little sense if you haven't read the book! But indulge me) The dances between the main character and the Midori character are full of balances, but the main character struggles also to reach out to a fragile Naoko all through the performance. Dances with Noako are very one sided in thus sense. He quite literally supports her. He holds her up. And all the time she is stalked by the ghostly figure of her previous boyfriend, who committed suicide so many years before. He is both that memory and a figure of death, which, in the end, she embraces.

The second performance, 'Where we were then' was James Cousins' award winning choreography, which earned him the Matthew Bourne award a couple of years earlier. (I know this because they announced it at the beginning, not because I am actually culturally well read.) Its a two dancer piece and throughout the entire  performance, the woman never touches the ground. In the end the nan walks away from her, leaving her still suspended mid air. He is sad, but he is also free.

Love is hard. You have to work hard to keep yourselves balanced in your daily , weekly, monthly dance together. Each of you has to bear some weight. 

But I was wrong when I thought it not worth it. Love is tough. But, if it's right then it's worth the gargantuan effort that it takes, over time, to keep it so.