In Barcelona, declaring a new kind of marriage vow

The wedding vows we made 35 years ago today didn't go the distance. This storied city with its exuberant and inventive style seems like a good place to make a new vow: I am married to myself first.

Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona

On a warm summer Barcelona evening, I sit in the stunning Palau de la Música Catalana with my daughter Marielle and her partner Esteban, as pianist Maria Canyigueral plays Bach’s Prelude and fugue I, in C major. The prelude is 35 bars long and consists mostly of broken chords.

With a sharp intake of breath I realize this piece of music is exactly as long as my marriage would have been, had we been able to go the distance, to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary today. But there were too many broken chords.

In music, a chord is a group of two or more notes played simultaneously. They provide the harmonic support and color for the accompanying melodies in a piece of music. Tonight, in this temple to music that shimmers with beauty, Bach’s music become a strange container for our marriage.

Strange containers are unusual vessels for capturing stories, as I am learning in the Strange Containers intensive at

Writing in the Dark with Jeannine Ouellette

.

Jeannine explains:

"There are millions of ways to tell stories, and sometimes, a straight line from start to finish is not the best or most beautiful option. Sometimes, we can tell our stories in pieces.”

And so, on this wedding anniversary that isn’t, the structure of Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier make a strange and beautiful container for a long marriage that was never a single distinctive note but a complex composition.

In his preludes, Bach often starts with a beautiful melody and a textured background, weaving the melody in different keys with the ebb and flow of emotional feelings, in and out of the background.

I close my eyes and I can see our prelude, my ex-husband and I, at twenty-nine. I see our transatlantic courtship, the wedding day in Sweden beside a lake, the two adorable daughters that follow in a few years’ time. We are hand in hand. We are happy. Life feels like an adventure as we move to new countries, travel the world.

And yet. A couple of decades into the marriage, around my 50th birthday, the uneven phrases of music emerge. I have been withholding my truth too long.

Now the marriage is in the fugue stage, with echoing parts no longer in harmony.

I need to put down a burden I’ve been carrying. It has become too heavy. As a busy working mother, the family’s full-time breadwinner, I believed for a long time that this imbalance in our relationship would change. At intervals throughout our 33 years together, I attempted the inner work and initiated the conversations to encourage that change.

But the dissonance in our particular symphony overwhelms the harmony. Compromises come at the price of my dreams. I must let go. It will take another decade before I find the courage to break away and make my own music.

Today on this day, I make a new kind of vow: I am married to myself first.

I have

Deb Blum

, my coach and soul guide, founder of The Whole Soul Way¹ who writes the Substack

Sacred Second Half

, to thank for introducing this concept to me when we began working together in 2022, at the same time that I initiated my divorce. To be married to oneself first is to belong to ourselves in such a way that our soul’s calling can be fully expressed, independent of any connection we may have to another.

Now that I am moving towards the crescendo of my life’s symphony, I am devoted to living as my truest, most authentic self. No longer hiding. No longer withholding. Living in integrity with myself, knowing that my voice matters, my wants and desires matter.

Within a marriage or not, being married to yourself first can only strengthen bonds to self and to a partner. This lesson came to me late in life—too late for my former marriage but not too late for any future relationships I may have. I know now that I need to be my true self in order to have the emotional depth and honesty in a relationship that I long for.

And so, from this day forward, my central bond will be with myself. It is a sacred vow. This is not selfish—it is self-preservation. It is living in wholeness with oneself.

I leave you, cherished readers, with one of Rumi’s poems that speaks to me on this day of how even when a melodic piece of music becomes a clamor of angry and hurt voices, the harmony can return. Today my ex and I are good friends. We support one another’s dreams and vacation together with our daughters. For sure, there’s been pain, sadness, loneliness and a strange sense of dislocation. But I believe we’re now on the other side of it—beyond “ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.”

Let’s meet there.

From “A Great Wagon” by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Enjoying a mocktail in Badalona, a lively Catalan neighborhood just twenty minutes by train (or bike on dedicated bike paths) to central Barcelona where my daughter Marielle and her partner live.

The artist Gaudi’s magnificent Casa Batlló, a UNESCO World Heritage site and an icon in Barcelona

BONUS FILM FOR THE WEEK:

If you can’t get to Barcelona right now, treat yourself to this classic Woody Allen film with the gorgeous Javier Bardem: “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

BONUS SONG FOR THE WEEK

This song makes me want to dance in the streets, swim in the Mediterranean and vive la vida loca! Lucky for me, for the next few weeks, I get to do just that.

Let’s Chat!

Does the concept of “being married to myself first” resonate for you? I would love to hear your thoughts.

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