Tenderfooted & toil in love

Tenderfoot: A newcomer or a beginner at something, one not used to hardships.

This dissolving relationship was my very first one. From the outset, it's been a hell of a learning experience. I went into it knowing what I wanted, but thinking that perhaps I was a bit too idealistic and inexperienced once the reality of a real relationship formalized, so I let some things slide. "Maybe this is normal...?" I kept going with the flow - filled with self doubt, feeling like I was wrong in regards to all those things I thought I wanted, even though I got a gut vibe that this wasn't totally what I wanted. Having never been in a relationship before, how was I to know, right? But on paper, it all seemed so right.

As Jack Johnson sings: "You can't always hold your head higher than your heart."

Self doubt in the face of a strong intuition spells trouble for the luminosity of the soul as it tries to shrink into what it's been given to fit into. It just felt like work to stay there - work in terms of all the relationship issues that would arise that just didn't fit me - yet, it all seemed to be status quo. "I'm supposed to what?" Why was this human love business so hard and not always so fun?

Consider the myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche, a mere mortal, was alienated because of her intense beauty, loved and impregnated by a god whom she had never seen, but one day did and was subsequently put through the ringer: she did away with her jealous sisters, ended up in a most unhelpful temple, was refused sage advice and assistance by the big goddesses Venus and Juno, was ordered to separate a pile of mixed grains - an impossible task - by nightfall (was helped by an ant and spared), was then ordered to gather wool from vicious sheep and get water from the unattainable river and then - THEN! - demanded to venture into the underworld and get a piece of Persephone's beauty creme for Venus's tired and stressed out mother-self. To make a long story shorter, finally Eros rescued Psyche and they got hitched by decree of Jupiter.

PS. Their daughter was Voluptas (meaning: pleasure, or bliss) -- the goddess of sensual pleasures.

Psyche didn't have it easy either, but at least she got to hook up with the immortal hunk of burning love and give birth to bliss.

Perhaps, beyond and in the midst of the human story, the moral of the stories lie in the journey, the lessons from the toil, and perhaps in both cases, it is the story of the soul searching for something more blissful - the divine partner.