The Horse Yellerer

My wife and I have been married 20 years, and usually when I say that to someone it is said with a sense of pride, as though I've run and survived a grueling marathon or something, and now know the secrets of relationships. But to tell the truth, I'm not sure I know anything more about my wife today than on the day I married her.  

Now I know that I'm supposed to say, that over the years, our struggles over raising children, starting jobs, deaths in the family, having money, not having money, and various rather graphic medical discoveries left unmentioned, have led us to know and respect each other with the deep insight usually reserved to Buddhist monks.  But to me I began confused and I remain confused.

To my point.  My wife went through college earning her degree in counseling and spending a couple of years working with families and their miss behaving teenagers until one day she felt like throttling them all for being idiots and quit.  I love my wife for that move.  It indicates a certain sense of ‘life is way to short to put up with fools' feeling- something that the Buddha actually said himself (but in better words).   However, one remnant of her counseling days is that she has entreated me to go to what she calls a relationship ‘tune-up' with a professional counselor every now and again.   

On the appointed day I meet her in an old, nicely kept, but dark Victorian house - home to a number of counselors that look like they belong in some WW I British sitcom - slightly disheveled, faint dusty smell, seemingly unaware of the world.  We sit down and spend an hour saying lots of code words like ‘What I hear you saying is...' I pay attention and espond the best I can.  After an hour of this, I haven't a clue what was said or of what importance it all was.  But the thing is, and this is the important part, when we emerge my wife will stop and give me a big smile and hug, and we'll go off and have a great dinner.  

I can only assume that she has spent the hour in her element, talking in some sort of coded language.  The counselor, who has nodded frequently during the hour, clearly understood what was going on.  I'm guessing that I'm just another unwitting male participating in a universal men's training course that is passed on from mother to daughter and has been going on since the dawn of time.

I met a woman personal coach at a recent work event who, being a counselor herself, told me how she uses horses to ‘center' her clients.  Now I'm all for centering, seems both healthy and politically correct, and I was intrigued by the horse angle so I got her to explain. Turns out she just has her clients - mostly middle-aged men and women business types, walk next to a rather large horse.  That's it, just walk.  

Apparently, in the beginning hours of training, women try to befriend the horse, talking to it, stroking its flanks, trying to make meaning out of its whinnies, coaxing it along if it stops.  Men just walk off expecting the horse to come along.  

What you're supposed to do is just ‘be with the horse'.  Don't change it, don't fight it, don't expect anything, just be there, and if you want, think ‘hey cool horse' every now and then.  

And as silly as all this may sound, I figure that's exactly what my wife and I are learning in our tune-ups.  Just to be there with each other and be okay with it.


Enter Text Here