As The Matrix Resurrections is currently gracing our cinema screens, I decided that, before I watched it, it was time that I re-watch the original Trilogy to remind myself of what had gone before. And I wondered? Could The Matrix actually provide answers to having a long & happy Marriage?
Marriage & The Matrix:
Full disclosure I do like to watch the original Matrix film fairly often but I was never as fond of the 2nd and 3rd films so I have not seen them since they came out. No matter which way you cut it though, the original Matrix film is a powerful metaphor for our lives. It poses more questions than it ever answers; and in the words of The Oracle: it messes with your noodle. However, as much as I enjoyed The Matrix back at the closing of the last Millennium, it took my own personal awakening, many years later, to realise how profound it really was.
In fact, I finally really ‘understood’ The Matrix when I was learning how to rebuild my Marriage.
You see, at some point on my journey of Relationship repair, I had an Aha! moment; a Eureka experience; the clouds parted for me; I reached a new level of understanding.
Relationship issues cropped up sure, but like Neo stopping bullets or deflecting punches, suddenly I could SEE the code! I knew what to do to change my reality; to get a new, different outcome. I had the power of choice and it was limitless!
And I understood that the light dawning for me wasn’t going to stop the metaphorical bullets coming at me BUT! It would mean I could pause, deflect or otherwise reroute them.
In fact it felt like both my husband and I had developed some sort of Superpowers.
But it was nothing superhuman at all – it was just us reaching a new level of understanding; of consciousness. We finally realised that a relationship is a wonderfully diverse thing in which different possibilities and realities can exist simultaneously. Where the bad and the good can happily co-exist, but only with your knowledge and co-operation.
Now, I don’t say this out of largess or a desire to seem more ‘advanced’ or enlightened than the next person; totally to the contrary, I say it because I want you to know that it is also possible FOR YOU. I am just the same as any person on the planet – my potential is just the same. Nowadays I see that everybody has the same potential – it’s Unlimited. And you are no different.
Now I don’t mind admitting that for the first 4 decades of my life I was sleepwalking.
Feeling like Neo did that “something was wrong with the World. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
I always felt like there was ‘more’ to life; that there had to be ‘more’, but I was lacking direction or any sort of sense of what that was. Without somewhere to direct my energies I was just bobbing along like a ship without a rudder on the vast ocean of life.
It was only when my marriage hit crisis that my eyes were finally opened; it was then that I was introduced to a set of concepts that were like Morpheus’s Red Pill.
The most life-changing of these concepts is that we are wholly responsible for the state of our own lives and we have total choice and control over what happens to us. And whilst, initially that can seem like a depressing concept – particularly if your life is nowhere near being in the state you’d like it to be – it is actually massively empowering when you realise that the power to change anything rests with you.
You can Change your Life.
Although Neo was Hailed as ‘The One’; I believe his unlimited potential exists in all of us – it’s not the exclusive reserve of one person. We can all choose to change our lives. The real issue is understanding that this choice actually exists in the first place, and then, acting upon it.
When you reach this critical, tipping-point moment though, you will experience the ‘bullet stopping’ incident. This occurs when you see familiar scenarios playing out but, instead of playing the same old character in the same old story, you actively pause the moment and choose another path; another action; another outcome. You KNOW that you can do something different from that which you have always done.
It’s entirely within your power.
Now, when this happens for you – because of course each of us can have this particular epiphany – I know you’ll feel the same as I did. I felt like Neo. I felt like I could shift the very fabric of reality. Because this is what getting unstuck feels like. Because deep down you know that it’s always been in you – you just didn’t see it before!
You didn’t believe it either.
When Neo visits The Oracle and she tells him that he’s not the one, she is only mirroring his own belief – telling him not so much what he wants to hear, but what he believes deep down. And why is this significant? Because someone else’s belief in you is largely irrelevant. It wouldn’t have mattered if she told him he was ‘The One’. Because he HAD to get to that point of belief in himself.
Even Morpheus’s unwavering belief (which, in it’s more pure form is like that of a parent’s belief in their child) was not enough for Neo. The bottom line is that what others think does not matter; You must believe yourself.
You must believe in yourself.
Just as Neo discovers in The Matrix, the journey I took to heal my Marriage led me to some massive realisations about what was possible for me; what I was capable of; what I was responsible for. These revelations gave me, perhaps for the first time, that belief in myself. So my Marriage problems turned into the greatest epiphany of my life; my very own Matrix moment!
Through the lens of my problems, I suddenly realised my potential, I realised that I was ‘The One’; that I could do all the things that other people had seen in me all along but which I was utterly blind to. I had to have faith in myself though, I had to realise that taking total responsibility for your life is not depressing – it is the ultimate in personal empowerment!
And when you have that power, you can indeed stop the metaphorical bullets in mid air.
This is a major part of the reason I chose to spend over half a decade studying Relationship Theory and ultimately to change careers and help people who are just like YOU; just like I was only a few short years ago. The thing is though, that rather like Morpheus, I know that I can’t MAKE you have this realisation. It’s something that you have to discover for yourself. Just like Neo.
Sure, I can help you in the right direction. Hell! I can even GIVE you a map and all the signposts but it’s still a matter of you experiencing that breakthrough moment. Of having your own personal lightning bolt.
One day we may well develop the technology to upgrade humans like we’re installing an app – like Neo learning Kung Fu. We may be able to teach you how to build an extraordinary Marriage just like they could in The Matrix. For now though, we have to do it the traditional way, so this will require your action & input.
Plus, I can give you all the information in the World but you still need that one, singular moment of realisation which only You can unlock through the power of self-reflection.
Marriage, The Matrix and The Mirror
Not all of us want to look deeply within; not all of us are comfortable holding up the metaphorical mirror because we don’t always like, or are afraid of, what we might see…
If you have the Courage though, then like Neo, you can become completely free!
But which Pill will you choose?
Famously, Neo is offered the choice to take 1 of 2 possible pills. The scene culminates in Morpheus saying:
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back.
You take the blue pill and the story ends; You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Remember that all I am offering is the Truth. Nothing more.”
Similarly, learning the truth of your life is both confronting and utterly liberating.
If you want to change, if you want things to be different in your life and you are working towards that, then you are already well on the way to your lightbulb moment however, in the words of Morpheus:
“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”
I can’t tell you how exciting that moment is. And I am so excited for you to have this same experience.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as We are” Anais Nin
The Matrix is like a blank canvas upon which anything can be printed – including Marriage advice! Over the past couple of decades no doubt 1000s of people have written millions of words about what it means. And in many cases, what they see is entirely personal. Ultimately for me though, The Matrix has always been a Love Story.
And actually I used to find that very jarring…
In the midst of a bleak tale of machines, control and a depressing reality, was the most schmaltzy scene I think I’d ever seen. At the core of it’s hard, metallic, robotic, science fiction-y body was indeed a bleeding heart! It was almost jarring to me to have that moment where Trinity declares her love for Neo, the moment that is the catalyst for him coming back to life and defeating the Agents. It seemed to me so out of place at the time, in the midst of emotionless computers and compassionless machines to have something so, well, human…
That scene still feels somewhat out of place to me,
but the significance of that moment is absolutely central to the ongoing story behind it. It’s Love that gives Neo his powers and the Union of Trinity and The One is the unifying concept in the Matrix. In fact, in the newest addition to the Franchise, Resurrections, their love story is the most important element that carries the plot forward.
The overriding message in the Franchise is that Love is the reason; the catalyst; it’s why people make it through life and how they overcome adversity. It’s what motivates them and enables them to keep on fighting.
And that’s definitely a message I can get behind!
If you want to save, heal or just radically improve your Marriage, you don’t need to have Superpowers, you simply just need, like Neo & Trinity, to have Love. Love is the thing that will give you the ability to bend time and space; to make impossible, possible; to defeat the badness and overcome whatever challenges are dished out to you.
Love gives you both choices AND second chances.
In the end, The Matrix teaches us two core truths required to have a great Marriage:
1: Be prepared to really open yourself up to the Truth; no matter what that looks like or where it takes you. If you chose to stay oblivious the cost of that is great; even though Awakening is unpleasant.
2: Know that real Love is the greatest power you can possess.
And these 2 things cannot work in isolation, they must go hand in hand. As much as it pains me to say it, a true Love is simply not enough to last the distance, you must consciously build a great relationship and in order to do that, you must actively seek the Truth in all things. Especially within & about yourself.
You must be prepared to take the Red Pill and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes…
And if you’re ready to do that, then I am ready to help you my friend!
Holly Skey is a Relationship Repair Expert and founder of Happily Ever After. She runs an 8 week Relationship Training programme designed to save, heal and radically improve your Marriage.
She encourages people who are ready to take the Red Pill and set themselves free to get in touch: hello@hea-rt.com