Marriage And The Mirror Of Relationship
With Kash Badami
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Kash and I met when we were 3 and 4 years old, and always remembered one another as each other’s “first friend” in life. In this interview Kash and I talk about how both our individual childhood traumas and adverse experiences impacted our marriage, what our recovery process has been like, with all it’s highs and lows, and an honest look at where we are today. Spoiler – it’s not perfect, and the good news is that we can look at the hard stuff and just be with it without attachment to what it will look like in some distant future.
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About Kash Badami
A software engineer by training, Kash has had a career in the federal, defense and healthcare space for over 25 years. After a successful career in Washington DC, Kash now lives in California with his wife and three daughters and is passionate about bringing solutions to people with chronic health conditions. Always open to learning more about personal development, self-help and growth, he reads an average of a book per week and loves to swim in the ocean.
Thank you both for your vulnerability and sharing parts of your recovery together as a married couple and individual recovery. Great take away for me personally and will be sharing with my husband. Recovery takes awareness and work. Remembering how far we have come.
Dear Sonia, thank you so much for your comment and reflection here. While it has not been easy (yes, we discussed the use of the word, quite a bit in the interview, lol), I have admittedly learned more than I ever would about who I am by virtue of being married to Kash…:-)
Hi Sonia, thank you for watching the interview and I am so glad you got real value from our experience. I am grateful to have helped you and your husband on your journey.
I came in to this conversation without knowing anything about your relationship. Frankly, I just felt like listening to a man. WoW what a conversation it turned out to be. Very powerful. To become aware of how our past traumas can enter in to the relationship with our significant other is so revealing. Very brave of both of you to put this out in the world. Thank you.
Thank you Anuradha! Yes, like you, I too need to every now and again just listen to the male perspective, get out of my own way, ego and mind games!!! No one to show me the mirror better than Kash, whether I like it or not!! He keeps going…:-) Thank you for leaving us your comment, it means a lot.
Hi Anuradha, really glad you enjoyed the interview and got a few meaningful ideas from our experience. Relationship is an interesting word. We tend to think that the person we are relating with is different from us, and logically this is true. I often remind myself of a much deeper idea and that is we don’t truly know anyone. This rabbit whole is very deep if you think about it. Every time you hear someone say something to you, or you see someone, your mind is constructing the image of that person. Your mind is interpreting that person based on your sensors: eyes, nose, ears, touch etc. So the question is, is it really the other person or is it you? If your mind is creating that person in terms of their sound, attitude, color etc are you not now in relationship with yourself? So every time I think: I don’t like X about Richa. I have to then look so much deeper to see if there is something about myself I don’t like that I am actually projecting on to her. Same goes the other way. Instead of getting angry at something she says to me, I have to think, is it really me? Or is she projecting something about herself onto me?
This kind of thinking cannot be maintained for long periods of time, at least I can’t do it. But it is worth the thought experiment in order to create new ways of thinking.
Yes Kash. If we were only aware about the process of projection and that if we just stop ourselves to examine we learn a lot about ourselves! My husband and i have been partners professionally since the day we met. We worked together in the same organization for about 10 years. Then though we both are consultants in our own right we do a lot of learning together the latest being training in psychotherapy. And believe me we have been through our own struggles in our partnership of 34 years. Every argument , conflict has only made me richer because of the openness with which we are able to confront the other and thereby myself!
First of all you two are adorable! Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your stories and wisdom and experience with us. It’s funny, I never looked at any of your comments between each other to be a disagreement or a correction. I looked at it more as a fine-tuning. Like each of you were adding detail to enhance our understanding and make it more relatable. I think sometimes men and women hear things differently even though the same words are being heard. And where Richa said the work was easy, my female brain interpreted that the same as if she would have spoken the words the “investment” in the marriage is “natural”. So even though it is work I think we see it as a natural investment and longing for connection and proper meaningful connection that goes back as far as Genesis where God says your desire will be for your husband.💞
Ohhhhh Jessica, thank you!!! That’s such a welcome reflection….Childhood PTSD X 2 = 1000% more PTSD!!! LOL!!!! There can be so much going on that we ourselves are not aware of. We both (in our own way) are working on the same tools and practices we talked about, learning how to calm the nervous system, understand and heal our own childhood traumas and feel safe to show up for ourselves and each other. It is work in progress – one day at a time for sure. Thank you for your wise words and blessings.
Hi Jessica, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and the kind words. I enjoyed doing this interview and I am glad you got some value out of it. I alluded to your statement that men and women hear things differently in my above comment. I firmly believe that we have over 7 billion people in the world and each and every one of us hears things slightly differently no matter what. I believe each of us lives in entirely different worlds constructed in our minds. These worlds then come in contact with each other and we now have this explosion of energy in the form of activity, noise, love, war, violence, forgiveness, healing and the list goes on. It is a massively complicated system much like the universe.