Life With An Impossible Person

By Joan Heiman

Hope isn’t sunny, Pollyanna optimism. It is strength — the strength to carry on, one foot in front of the other. One day after the next. It is the honesty of vulnerability — the willingness to stay with every emotion, not to run, not to avoid, similar to the determination to stay with an impossible man so many years ago. ~Joan Heiman

My friend Joan Heiman, chose early in her life, a deeply unconventional relationship. Which led to a wildly unconventional life. All because of an impossible person who captured her heart. I believe that we all encounter those moments in a committed relationship when we decide the person we’ve chosen is simply impossible, and the relationship can not survive it.

I know I did.

And yet, something supersedes our frustration, our doubt and dismay and anguish, to keep this tethering of the heart in tact. It feels like a choice, but it also feels larger than a choice; like something beyond us supporting us in our commitment to love.

I hope it goes without saying that I am not talking about abusive relationships. I will say it anyway. That is an entirely different subject. To the contrary, in Joan’s book she tells a story of a relationship based on love and mutual respect which, nonetheless, tested their egos and reflected their beings like a fun-house mirror of infinity.

Life With An Impossible Person is Joan’s honest telling of a love story she chose, daily. Initially attracted to a most unique human being, who quoted Rilke and wrote his own poetry, explored the edges of science and his own reality, she early on discovered the shadow side of her romantic partner.

Of her husband Philip, she says,

The problem with idealists is that they tend to crash hard against the unforgiving, adamantine walls of reality. For all his enthusiasm for discovery, Philip was not a good traveler. Fixed and stubborn by nature, he set out knowing what he was looking for, and when he was met with anything else, could neither adapt nor adjust.

They agreed early in the relationship to set traditional roles aside, as Joan ventured out as breadwinner and Philip explored his astrology practice and kept their household running. They dreamed together as I have never seen a couple dream. And they followed their dreams around the world with a courage I have never seen a couple embrace. Philip appeared to lead the way in each adventure, coaxing a reluctant Joan into yet another destination.

One day I stoked up my courage and asked Joan whether she felt she had been in a Pygmalion type relationship, shaped and sculpted by Philip’s strong will and unconventional world view. Because after knowing Joan for awhile, I suspected the same spirit of adventure lived in her. And I was gratified that my suspicions were confirmed.

“No!” she replied with an internal strength that seemed to defy her small stature. “Philip accessed something that was already within me. He simply drew it out. The majority of our decisions were not a matter of Philip manipulating me into his way. We had our differences and arguments but in the end we only moved forward when we agreed.”

She shares a telling story of coming to a fork in the road while on a bike ride. They could not agree on which fork to take. So they turned around and took the same road back.

In this book I was drawn into the many moments Joan and Philip shared of tender dreams and hopeful conversations. Of intense struggles with reality and crushing admissions of defeat. And ultimately, the way this relationship with an impossible man led Joan into a series of impossible decisions. Because late in Philip’s life they found themselves, as most of us do, inadvertently on a trail they could neither map out nor navigate. Their choices narrowed and they struggled daily to love their way into a loss neither of them could have predicted. Joan’s book is a story of not just an impossible person, but of impossible love. Which is, most often, where love leads us. When we commit to the task, it’s very likely we will end up at the place where continuing to love feels impossible, something we cannot endure. And yet, when we take one more step into that love, while we may encounter unspeakable suffering, we are, in the end, left with an immortal love which we can never lose.