Cameron Shayne
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Melayne Weber {
Love
is the
Greatest Teacher
{
This Yoga Couple Shares on Balancing Strong Personalities,
Previous Mistakes Around Love, Staying Together When it Gets Difficult, and Letting Go of the Need to be Right.
Mantra: How do you stay together when things are difficult?
So do I love his creative chaos and radical honesty, which can make me crazy!
Cameron Shayne: Our relationship is built on love, which is a fierce commitment within expanding circumstances. It’s more than romantic chemistry because it requires mental endurance. You have to adapt as circumstances change. Long-term love requires emotional intelligence because there’s always disappointment and unmet expectation. When we disagree, I have to speculate how I would feel if it were me in her shoes. If you want love to work, you have to let things come and go, see the bigger picture, and understand and relate to each other’s way of being. You simply don’t need a relationship for survival or social acceptance these days, so staying in one would suggest you want one. So I believe it takes old-school strength of purpose to stay when you have so many other options. If couples last in this day and age, it is more than likely true love or a binding product endorsement deal!
Mantra: Since you’re both so fiery, how do you fight and still keep the love?
Melayne Weber: We are both fiery people, but underneath our fire there’s sincere love. In moments of disruption and distress, some people grow distant—but we always try to move closer together. I love Cameron for how he shows up for me. We’re painfully honest with each other, but we get to work with the truth rather than a story. I love his sharp intellect, his tender heart, his artistic mind, his fierceness. budokonuniversity.com
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CS: My father said to me once, “Son, you either want to be right, or you want to be happy.” So I get that being right is buying into my story. If you don’t realize that your mind is making up your reality, then you will be at the mercy of what your mind makes up. So when we fight, we check in to see if we are trying to be right, or if there is a legitimate blind spot in the other person’s behavior. I also desire to understand her reasoning and perspectives as I believe her intuitive process, as a woman, to be more powerful than mine. After all, she speaks five languages, runs our whole organization, and manages me. So, basically, she’s always right! MW: He’s correct, I am always right. But he’s amazing at helping me see when my right just might not be the only right! Respect, compassion, honest communication, and deep love keep us from ever really getting too angry. In the end, it’s all love. Mantra: What past mistakes have you made around love? CS: I have sent mixed signals to women I have dated in the past. I am naturally very affectionate,
so I treated lovers like committed partners. I now see that I wanted to enjoy the feeling of love and commitment while having the personal freedom of non-commitment. This created confusion and in some cases painful endings. This was a massive blind spot for me that Melayne actually helped me see. MW: I picked partners who were unable to handle my fire. The result was me feeling frustrated with them because they weren’t inspiring me or growing with me. I was choosing men that I could dominate because I’m my father’s daughter! He’s so strong and clear in his actions—which really influenced me. Cameron was the first man that didn’t try and please me but rather inspired me to work. Now I make him work! Mantra: You guys work together, travel together, and live together. How do you make that work? CS: People often say you shouldn’t live and work together, but I think that’s counterintuitive. I believe humans need more time together loving each other, not more time apart working. Everyone is busy killing themselves to get more shit to maintain at the cost of love. Maybe I’m just an old-school romantic, but fuck that. I choose love. And I choose Melayne because she’s inspiring and a complement to my life. One minute we’re discussing moral philosophy or contemporary art, and the next ›