The Inside Job

There is a concept in Buddhism called Anitya. It basically says that nothing lasts. Everything that exists is temporary, constantly changing, on its way to becoming something else or nothing at all. The whole universe runs on impermanence. Always has.

Which makes marriage a genuinely strange idea when you think about it that way. Two people deciding to build something permanent in a universe that has never once honoured that contract with anything else. Not mountains. Not stars. Certainly not feelings.

But I do not think that is an argument against marriage. I think it is an argument for changes inside one.

Here is what actually kills most marriages. Not the big dramatic betrayals that make for good stories. It is the Tuesday. And the Wednesday. And the Thursday that looks exactly like the Tuesday. The school runs and the grocery lists and the work calls and the what do you want for dinner and how was your day? The bored reply of - nothing much, how was yours? Routine is not the enemy exactly but it is very good at making two people invisible to each other without either of them noticing it is happening. You stop having conversations and start having logistics. You stop being curious about this person and start managing a shared calendar and a ‘To-Do List’ with them. And one day you look up and realise you cannot remember the last time you actually looked at each other.

My wife and I have been in that loop more than once. We pull ourselves out, things get better, life gets busy again, and slowly the loop comes back. That is not a failure. That is just what life does to people who are trying to keep several things alive at the same time. The wrong thing is not falling into the routine. The wrong thing is deciding the routine is just how things are now and stopping the effort to pull yourself out of it.

Which brings me to blind spots.

When you are driving on a highway you know not to drive in another driver’s blind spot. It is dangerous. They cannot see you there. So you move. You speed up or slow down, you make yourself visible, you do not just stay there hoping they somehow sense you are present.

Marriage works the same way. Over time, without meaning to, we drift into each other’s blind spots. We become so familiar, so assumed, so permanently there, that we stop being seen. And the fix is not a grand gesture or a serious conversation about the state of things. It is just movement. Something deliberate and different. A different restaurant. A question you have never asked. Noticing something small and actually saying so out loud. Making yourself visible again to someone who loves you but has genuinely stopped seeing you.

Love does not fade. We do. The relationship does not get boring. We stop being interesting in it.

It is an inside job. Always was.

So adjust the mirror. Move out of the blind spot. Slow down sometimes, speed up when it needs it, take a different route home just to remember the city is larger than your usual four turns. Honk if the other is dozing off. And my wife helpfully added, “And if the car needs to be towed too often, get a new one.” 😬

Oops! Oh well… but the point stands. Keep the engine running. Keep showing up. We’re all going to the same destination anyway.

Might as well take a few detours along the way to enjoy a coffee at an unfamiliar cafe, together.