I am posting this in honor of the 28th year anniversary from when my husband and I first met. Andrea and I are very much OPPOSITES, and yet our love for one another manages to get us from one year to the next. As we know, love is NOT enough. By speaking about our story, I remind us of the QUALITIES all meaningful relationships require to survive; many qualities that are not honored by The System in which we live. A system that does NOT nurture VALUES, but instead feeds on lies, emotional poverty, and our weaknesses. And on propoganda of movements, that no matter how right they may be on paper, are here to separate us even more. However, we are not The System. We are human beings who have a responsibility to ourselves and future generations to protect the fusion of our wholeness. This post CELEBRATES the sacredness of marriage, family, and all types of living connection. This is not just another story about surviving marriage. It is not only for married people.

This is more than an INCREDIBLE love story. It is OUR human story.

This is about responding to life’s challenges, not giving up, respecting one another, and defending our birthright to be fully human, fully in love with our lives, and feel fully connected.

These are the things that really matter. And perhaps is what inspires me the most to continue surviving our differences.

ATTENTION: This is a long post. Feel free to use the TABLE OF CONTENTS to read it at your own pace.

Life Like The Movies

A REMOTE DESERT AREA OF NEW MEXICO. A DECIDEDLY UNCONVENTIONAL FAMILY LEADS A SECLUDED, SELF-SUFFICIENT EXISTENCE. WITHOUT THE USE OF MONEY, THEIR LIFE IS SIMPLE AND REAL, BUT NOT TROUBLE FREE. THE RESTLESS AND INCREDIBLY INTELLIGENT, 11 YEAR OLD GIRL CAN’T WAIT TO ESCAPE SPENDING HER TIME BETWEEN REAL LIFE COYOTE ENCOUNTERS AND SENDING OUT COMPLAINTS TO MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES IN ORDER TO RECEIVE FREE BOXES OF NABISCO COOKIES AND BRAND NAME SNEAKERS. HER MOTHER, A LOVER OF SILENCE, PROVIDES FOR THE FAMILY BY TENDING TO HER VEGETABLE GARDEN. HER FATHER, A ONCE FASCINATING AND ENERGETIC MAN IS FACING A BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION. HE HASN’T YET LEARNED TO LIVE WITH HIS INNER DEMONS.

This could have been speaking about my family. It wasn’t, but there are some very similar differences.

Surviving Marriage – Recognizing The Reality

You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside of you. 

rwandan proverb

The reality is that we don’t always see ourselves or our relationships as they are. Sometimes it does take seeing it all as an outsider, from a different angle to put it better into focus. In relationships as in life, you gotta know where you are before you can envision where you want to go.

I do this often now. I take a step back and look at us. Then I ask myself:

What is working and what isn’t? What is serving us and what do we need to let go of?

Surviving marriage, making our love last, and keeping our family united requires this type of self-study. Exactly as we must do in all aspects of our life.

JOURNAL ENTRY, August 5, 2015

As I watched this film with an emotional acuteness too intense to describe even to myself, as I sat breathlessly in front of a computer screen and the words, the images, each and every scene jumped right out in front of me reproducing themselves into vividly blurred visions of a not so hypothetical reality…

I recognized her, him, the girl and all their rawness, I recognized all that emotion and life, all that magnetism and mysticism, all that innate strength – the type of strength that can be acquired only when one is surrounded by nothing and everything.

I saw it all as though it were me, him, our daughters, us…

in a former life, in a distant future, perhaps merely as a result of a recent memory of my man’s dreams…

because sometimes as I listen to Andrea, when I hear exactly the same monologue over and over again, when I am no longer able to pay attention to his argument, when he has stopped speaking, but his fierce words continue to replicate themselves in my head, I try to envision what life would be like if I were to actually give in to his occasional outbursts of frustration, his frequent restlessness, his natural instinct to abandon everything – people, money, The System – and just runaway.

I wonder what our life would be like, who we would become, if we actually were to go completely OFF THE MAP.

Is this who we are meant to be together?

Before Surviving Marriage – You Leap

On August 7, 1995 I met a young man with the wildly free spirit of an uncontaminated boy. He approached me. I offered him a taste of my ice cream cone. We walked on a Caribbean beach. I was captured by all that shiny hair, the muscles, the tattoos, an accent, and most of all, his insanely intense eyes.

After a week I was on a plane returning home to reality: pedicures, a promising career, perhaps even a proposal. 

The small aircraft had not yet left the runway of Princess Juliana International Airport when I turned to my best friend, Karina, and said:

‘If I never ever see him again this guy has changed my life, altered my perspective forever.’

‘Got a crazy feeling this is not ending here,’ she responded with a raised eyebrow and a grin. 

This girl was smart, Russian, and had some crazy superstitions about paper towel, spare change and love. She was one of the true ones and I trusted her. Her support was essential to my future.

Essential for me, a New York gal who had hardly ever left the big city before, to find the courage to leap into love and the rest of my life,

August 21, 1995, A wedding rehearsal in NYC

I walked into the church for my brother’s wedding rehearsal. Only two weeks had passed, but it truly did feel like light years away. I was being held up in some type of alternative space.

I walked towards her. My stepmom hugged me. Then pulled suddenly back, looking me over. Taking me in.

‘You look different’, was all that she said with a smile. 

She immediately knew what I knew. She knew that this guy had changed my life. And even if I were never to see him again, like nothing, he shifted everything.

Because this exotic creature – as gentle and real as a baby giraffe taking his first steps, tripping over his long, lean legs one minute, taking giant leaps the next, and at the same time as uninhibited and full of ferocious energy as a full grown tiger seeking his prey –  this exotic creature, was something unimaginable and rare.

If you’re going to love someone or something then don’t be a slow leaking faucet—-be a hurricane. 

shannon l. alder

Patience, Acceptance & Creating Your Own Rules

Our story had all the parts of a modern fairytale. It screamed out radiant color and everything else was mere black and white in comparison. 

The Caribbean sea, the endless beaches, the devastation of a hurricane and the primitiveness that followed, the passion of youth. An Italian boy. The good girl. A language gap. A scooter. 

We were the most improbable match. It was love at first sight. 

Through the years our love story has shown us its impermanence. We spent the first months listening to Boyz II Men, Babyface and Randy Crawford’s ‘Mad Over You’. And the music helped us to beat the odds when nobody thought it would last, especially our own parents.

We were broke. Already from the beginning, our spirit at times felt like it was breaking. It was hard being just the two of us against our international worlds.

When the music eventually stopped, we remained on guard. Replaced it with patience, acceptance and more patience.

Even now, when doubts unveil themselves, we are as malleable as our love. We change form, color, and texture to adapt to our changing needs and desires.

We have learned to move to our own beat. Create the rules. And we are ready to respond to the consequences. We want it that badly. We believe in us that much.

I have learned that both love and life require this level of devotion.

I have gotten to know him over and over again.

I dedicated myself to following the ebb and flow of his excitement, disappointment, joy and rage.

I believe that he would say the same thing about his journey towards me.

Surviving Marriage: Honesty, Forgiveness & Support

Some days are easier than others, but I always choose to pursue the ups and downs, the ins and the outs, falling apart and then falling back together. The goal always: fall back together. As few permanent injuries as possible.

So we have hurt one another, said words that cannot be unsaid, did things that cannot be undone, and loved each other imperfectly every single day and we rise up from this by remembering that we are honest and forgiving and that a long time ago we told one another that we can always begin again.

Every day I work on myself. We work on us. So that we manage to survive each other’s differences. Survive this incredible love story and our sacred promise of marriage.

Nevertheless, there are days when I wake up after a night of turning it all over in my sleep-sick head questioning- WILL I BE ABLE TO SURVIVE HIM (THIS) EVEN TODAY?

You can be vulnerable, horrible, crazy – COMPLETELY LOST – over and over again. and you are still doing life right.

Trust that there is no right or wrong way to do life. There is simply you continuously learning to be vulnerable enough to live your life as fully as you can.

This applies to our parenting, our marriages, every essential connection as whole human beings.

FROM THE POST, YOU ARE DOING YOUR LIFE RIGHT – HOW TO EMBRACE YOUR VULNERABILITY AND FEAR

Love Is Big & Cool Like An Industrial Freezer

I could have predicted it from the beginning. Strength and stubbornness can only get stronger and more stubborn with time.

It was Summer, 1996. I tried to convince him to call for help. He refused. Didn’t want to hear of it. He could move our new, industrial-sized freezer down those narrow, curvy steps and deliver it safely in our low ceiling, basement warehouse all by his Italian self.

Even then, I knew better than to insist.

Whatever you resist, persists. Especially an Italian, male ego.

So I watched as he struggled with the size and massiveness of the box, grunts and sweat lashing out of him. I allowed him to do it his way. He showed me all his unsteadiness as he swaggered right and then left, back and then forth, until…

Until he, along with our ‘soon-to-be-ruined’ freezer, crashed straight into the cement siding. He was cool and unaffected. I laughed. I was 25. He was 26.

I already knew. Too deep in love to worry about all the grunting and sweating and crashing our future would hold.

I refused to see the cracks that were already there. Instead I was drawn towards the light shining through.

I just continued to laugh as I helped him up and brushed him off.

Surviving Marriage: Humility, Compassion & Faith

From the very beginning he amazed me with his sensitivity, saving worms from a busy street, bees drowning in a pool, never killing even a single ant. Such humility and compassion.

I remember how on his first trip to Brooklyn, he offered to help a worker at a gas station move a car as we walked by. 

And I thought: WHO IS THIS GUY?

From the start, he startled me with his enthusiasm – not even let down when he realized that Ocean Avenue did in fact lead to the ocean as he had imagined when he first saw my address in writing, but that coming fresh from his tropical paradise it left little to desire. Particularly in the middle of winter and one of the worst snowstorms those Brooklyn streets had seen in years.

He challenged me with his fearless approach to life; a challenge that has more than once seemed too unbearable for ordinary me to bear.

Andrea has always been so sure, so spontaneously passionate about change.

It doesn’t matter if the idea is good or bad. He has always had these crazy, super big thoughts popping up. Little, huge fantasies of greatness and freedom in his mind. 

At first, it made me nervous. He was a bird in constant flight. 

Through the years I have learned. In the end, once I open the gates he has nowhere he has to go. 

So he stayed, we stayed.

We learned to fly together from that tiny, Sheepshead Bay apartment and dirty streets to places across foreign oceans and crystal clear seas. 

We travelled before kids, we travelled during kids.

And we travel even when we are still.

Humility, compassion, and faith are all destinations we are constantly flying ourselves back to. When we misunderstand one another we can be pretty sure that one of us, if not both, has yet to arrive.

Observing, Reorganizing & Surviving Marriage

I watch him from across the room while I am cooking or organizing something and I can see his mind racing like the fast forwarding of a movie. It overwhelms me from the distance and it leaves me with this uneasy, dizzy-like feeling. I don’t know how he is able to keep it up all the time.

I often feel the confusion and wish that I could organize his thoughts, clear some out, add spaciousness like I do when sorting the scraps of paper he leaves around. 

I used to think that I was too simple. He was too intense. We were both too much of who we are to make it work. Too much and never enough for one another.

Now I know that these two qualities can fuse.

We just gotta be careful of the spark.

It just takes work. Lots of it. Yes. Observing and reorganizing.

But, how we define the pain or pleasure of the effort we put in anything really depends on the value we give to it in our life. Remember this.

Learning The Language Of Your Love

When I was little I used to love to flip through the pages of comic books so that they would magically come alive like when seeing them on the big screen. I was in control of how fast or how slow the images would move and pass me by. 

With Andrea this type of control is impossible, not even for him. There is no pause button, no slow motion. He is a no govern me zone. And this is how he lives his life.

We start talking about our life in Costa Rica and he is already fantasizing about a trip to India in a RV, we are visiting the Canary Islands and he is looking for stores to rent in the Bahamas.

We have just moved to Alto Adige near the border of Austria and he Is searching the web for houses in Sicily. 

This is his language.

Surviving my husband often means learning this language fluently knowing that we will probably never arrive.

After 28 years, it sometimes feels like I am still learning how to say, Where is the bathroom?

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, it goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. 

nelson mandela

Nowadays, he thinks too much and sleeps too little as worries about responsibility, the future, and the thought of total disasters disturb his dreams. 

In the pitch black of the night he scribbles them down, along with his to do lists – between the phone calls he needs to make and his reminders to love us better and stay calm – he writes his plans: A, B and C.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Robert frost

Surviving Marriage: High Curiosity & No Expectations

He has always had a rare curiosity for all that is new and different. Years ago he met a guy who went barefoot everywhere. He approached him and after a 10 minute conversation he just had to try it for himself. 

So now he walks the Earth feeling absolutely everything under his feet, his soles as worn as his overly sensitive heart, this too feels absolutely everything.

This is who he is. A feeler, a sufferer, a wanderer. And still a dreamer even when he forgets.

This comes natural to him. 

For me, it is more complicated. It is work and this is why keeping up with him seems sometimes like labor – full time, overtime, weekends and holidays, once in a while I am even called on to do a nightshift.

Being a spouse is hard. Being a parent is hard. Being both at the same time feels impossible at times. We do the best we can. I truly believe this. Maybe our expectations in these roles are set too high. Do you agree darling friend?

I mean the stories in our head are way more brutal than anyone else’s truth about us:

I should do more. I should change more. Be more flexible. I should fix more. I should sleep less. Overcome those stupid fears. I should be more interested and interesting.

I should have said the right thing. Honey, this is why I so often feel like I am falling you short.

Reminder: Should is an asshole.

Jen Pastiloff, on being human

And still with all the work, sacrifice and suffering -yeah, suffering – I believe in the sacredness of this love and of our family and trying harder.

And doing everything possible to glue it, patch it, accept the irreparable parts, and hold it all together with rubber bands if necessary. This is us. It matters to me this much.

Surviving Marriage: Extra Loving Care

Keeping up with this intelligent, perceptive, never stopping mind isn’t an easy chore for a live-the-moment, peaceful sleeping single-tasker like me.

Some items require extra care and if you want to ever have the chance of wearing them (or your life) again you are going to have to do the job.

Karen Maezen Miller, author of the book Hand Wash Cold

So I handle him delicately, test the waters, avoid abrasive detergents, and when I am calm and balanced, I know just the right words, exactly what to do, how to respond instead of react. 

The sun shines on us and our problems can be hung out to dry.

When I am not, all the wrong stuff always seems to find its way in like a mistaken splash of bleach; it seems to ooze out like the damaging color of a brand new, red sock hiding in a mistaken load. 

Our life together is stained and no longer decent enough to be seen in public. The blacks are faded, the whites disappear and the colors are washed away with the Tide forever –

or at least until some courageous person is willing to put on a rose-colored shirt.

When Perfection Dims Embrace It

Much of the time I feel like I am still in paradise, I still see the colors screaming all around us. And then there are the other times – when I feel as if this paradise has dried up and left only a way too heavy for me to handle sandbag permanently plopped over the length of my spine. 

When I see him I still feel that feeling when you just know that you are walking alongside greatness. 

Early on, I jumped in perfect hair, manicured nails, Prada shoes and all. After all these years the greatness is still there, but then there is also this great big mess that comes along with it. Constant chaos.

And of course me, less fresh and fiesty to hold it all up. I am learning to embrace this one day at a time.

We haven’t gone off the map, but he has guided us towards an existence less followed – full of freedom, adventure, spirituality, pleasant surprises, wonderful people.

Our life is simple and real, but not trouble-free.

Did I believe any life could be?

Personal Note: August 2, 2023

This year has been one of the toughest so far and yet, the greatness. It is here.

And I am even beginning to acknowledge the greatness of me.

He told me a few weeks ago that our love is a curse.

Well, maybe.

But, thank goodness for curses like this one. Because I’m praying for keeps.

Surviving Marriage – Get Your Dreams Clear

Most may think that Andrea’s ideas are extreme.

Learning to live with even less. Learning to survive with our own hands, on our own feet, off the grid, and with a sense of respect and gratitude that is difficult to find whenever money is involved. Abandon everything.

Not so extreme in this friable world. Go first before you are forced.

Who was it that said that it is impossible to find everything until nothing is standing in your way?

I think about the potential for true inner peace; the type I only experienced once in my life when immersed by the Costa Rican jungle.

This is when the words Right now? come to mind to confuse me.

Maybe tomorrow.

Lists of reasons, excuses. Fear getting in our way. Mine. His even. We continue to dream.

And time passes.

I see him uncertain sometimes. The sense of responsibility so huge that it gets in the way of the dream. So, for the moment, maybe tomorrow is as clear as it gets.

We need to learn to embrace this too.

Surviving Marriage & Life – Trans-surf

For a family man, with the burning soul of a primitive being scrapping by on lost traditions and ideals in an age where nothing makes sense, in a moment of time when we all could use some extra special care, it is impossible to know which direction to take. 

However, better to be stuck in this mist, those transparent clouds of tiny droplets suspended in the atmosphere and limiting the visibility than stuck in freezing, hard ice which precludes your mobility completely.

Hold onto the maybes.

I believe this applies to both life and lasting relationships.

When you live as lightly as the mist, when you know how to ‘trans-surf’ through life without too many needs or attachments to things, when you know how to pick up and go with hope and determination, there is the possibility to question and adapt. There is more possibility to survive.

andrea bizzocchi, Public speaker, author, my hubby

Surviving Marriage & The Responsibility of Fatherhood

For a father of two growing little women who feels more comfortable among a party of wolves than at a dinner party, who struggles to feel whole among plastic and smartphones and automobiles, who loves his family above all else – determining whether to lead your family out of the woods or straight back in is a monumental task.

People often see me as the victim, the follower, the little wifey. Poor Danni.

Like a prey living with it’s predator and saying, What can I make you for breakfast?

But I most definitely choose. I choose to stay with him for all the extraordinary things he does and for how much he loves us. And not back away for the many moments of distress that he causes me. 

Even during our darkest hours, I thank him silently everyday for stimulating my mind, heart and soul.

It is my decision to love this incredible human being and, it is my decision to question right alongside him:  

SHOULD WE GO OR SHOULD WE STAY?

Journal Entry, July 15, 2015, Ecovillage at Ithaca, Frog Mat Room, Ithaca, New York

I sit and I pray for answers. Another tiring day of decisions. None of which were actually made.

I remind myself that in nothing there is everything.

I remind myself this every time our family is tense, tired and troubled.

I remind myself this every time my daughters ask for a house, a bedroom with curtains, a dog.

And when I too long for a fixed address, a bookshelf, the sound of something delicious frying in a favorite pan, the scent of homemade bread escaping from my open window, a luminous kitchen overlooking a lake or mountain view, freshly cut flowers placed on a table.

Neighbors.

I remind myself that in our nothing there is everything else. 

The security of friends around the globe. The strength of adaptability. Life experience that continues to teach us through sheer necessity the value of communication, honesty, love and utter respect for one another.

I remember to remind myself this in between my bouts of muddled up grievance.

‘If the grass isn’t always greener then why does it seem so dry and demanding on this side when I have consistently and faithfully been watering mine?

and

Why do I feel the need to sleep 18 hours straight?

And I remember my reflections about our relentless faith:

We fight, he roars, the girls plead, I weep.

And even when it seems so impossible to go on, we always find a way to find our way back. 

Even on the worst of days.

So, I sit here and I try to pray as the tune of a Taylor Swift song that my daughters listen to a zillion times over races through my mind:

Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods?
Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet?
In the clear yet, good.

Life Isn’t About Survival – Married or Not

Life isn’t about getting over with one challenge and on to the next. It shouldn’t be about survival. If we want to enjoy our lives no matter where we live or how, no matter if we share a bed or a home with someone or not, whether we have others depending on us or we just have ourselves, life is about all the delicious details between each difficulty.

It is about noticing the wonderfulness of it all along the way. There are no woods to get out of. No clearing to hope for. Although it is about remembering to enjoy when one does arrive.

There is as much a perfect person for each of us as there is a perfect life. All relationships, like all aspects of life, take work. The heat of it all is what makes it special and great.

Once I thought happiness was the sizzle in the pan. But it’s not. Happiness is the spice, that fragile speck, beholden to the heat, always and forever tempered by our environment. 

Sasha martin, life from scratch

Surviving Marriage: Communication & Respect

Andrea has a loud voice, little patience and sometimes a huge, scary fury. We fight. No. We struggle. But in the end we communicate about EVERYTHING.  

This is one of the most valuable things that he has taught me. 

And we completely, 100% RESPECT ONE ANOTHER no matter what.

I know many couples who don’t fight at all. They are calm and collected. Agreeable. Picture perfect from the outside. Underneath the charade everything is a shamble. Dishonesty. Lack of connection.  

And then one day all their stuff suddenly unravels all over the place. Desperation leads them to cut the cord. 

I aspire to eliminate the loudness and ugly words in our life together, but better to fight and then make up than never to fight at all.

What I Hope Our Daughters Remember About Our Love

I hope my daughters remember this. Both parts. The fight for the love and not just the fight. I know that it often hasn’t been easy for them.

We fight big, we love big, we live big.

May they look back and remember the kisses, the spooning, every sweet embrace, hands entwined and hearts held. My head on his shoulder. I truly believe that we will do all these things til the very end.

Darling girls, I would take back all the fights, but if it meant that I would have to take back all the love as well, well there would be no deal.

So remember the love and the greatness just as much as the mess and use it to do better with the fighing part. Because darlings, I truly don’t believe love can get better than us.

Real Families

Last week, Bianca Jade and Andrea began to fight in the car. After the tempers softened, I looked Bianca Jade straight in the eyes and with loving fierceness I said to her: THIS IS WHAT A REAL FAMILY LOOKS LIKE. THIS.

Face-to-face. On the street, rumbling it out. Never letting one another go.

So we lose our steam. We make mistakes. And we love you more than anything. Anything. I am devoted to this beautiful imperfection. Devoted to our growth.

And with this there is nothing to survive. Love becomes a natural gift from what we nuture daily.

• Patience.
• Acceptance.
• Honesty,
• Forgiveness.
• Support.
• Humility.
• Compassion,
• Faith.
• Curiosity.
• Extra Care.
• Dreams.
• Communication.
• Respect.

And it lasts. No. Love is not enough. And yes love can last despite the differences.

Twenty-eight years later, I don’t have to survive him. I GET TO. This is the difference that truly matters. And ya know what? He gets to survive me right back.

For some this may be nothing, but for me this is love, this is extraordinary, this is nothing less than EVERYTHING.

These words are dedicated to my two beautiful girls and my Durante Darling. I love you more than yesterday always and forever.

Darling friend, to you I say: Thank you for making it to the end of this post and sharing this special day with us! I love you. May we cultivate our relationships as if our dear life on this 3rd rock from the sun was counting on it because it is. My love. Your love. May this world feel our love.

RESOURCES

• HOW TO BECOME A HAPPIER HUMAN BEING – 4 Truths About Arriving At The Happy Life
• PERSONAL GROWTH READING + 6 Of The Best Books To Inspire You To Love Better, Feel More & Live Fully
• HOW TO MAINTAIN DEEP CONNECTION IN A DISCONNECTED, INFORMATION-CRAZED WORLD
• THE DEEP CONNECTION GUIDED MEDITATION
• THE LIGHT IN THE CRACKS GUIDED MEDITATION
• THE BUILD YOUR PATIENCE GUIDED MEDITATION
• TRAILER Of The Movie OFF THE MAP (2005)

Disclosure

This post contains affiliate marketing. This means that when you purchase a product through the link provided, I will receive a small commission with no extra cost to you. This is a small way that you can thank me for my writing. I really appreciate your support. If you want to purchase the books Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller, On Being Human by Jen Pastiloff, or Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin CLICK ON TITLE. All are incredible memoirs about relationships, love and loving life.

This post is a revised, very much updated version of a post I wrote in August, 2015 entitled. The Truth About My Marriage: 20 Years Later And Still Surviving Andrea.