The Three-Step Relationship Jig

The Phoenix Philosophy - part 9

For the next several weeks, I'm going to pull quotes from Passionate Marriage, and use the quotes as a means of discussing the idea of healthy inter-relationship. As I noted last week, Schnarch uses the concept of differentiation - which might be described as a stance of self responsibility. Emphasis on self.

One of the hardest things to help clients understand is the necessity of moving from blaming to self-responsibility to behaviour change. Each step is as complicated (or easy) as the human mind is capable of making it.

Blaming, as we've noted, is ubiquitous. When you think about it, (which most people don't) even a semi-creative person has a lifetime of experiences to blame for whatever is going on in the here and now. As we've noted endlessly, the stories we tell ourselves aren't "true" - they're just constructs taken from the database that is our memories. In a sense, our memories work exactly like the Google search engine. The results are exact mirrors of what was asked for. When we search Google, however, we never wonder if the results are "true." We may question relevance - and relevance is a question of utility. Relevance answers the question, "Does this "set" accomplish what I had pre-determined I was looking for?"

Self-responsibility, to quote Emeril, "turns it up a notch." I make the leap that the results I am getting are a direct result of the questions I am asking, so to speak. I lose the idea that I am being acted upon by some outside source. I discover that my boundaries are, in this sense, at skin level. What's going on in my "package" is me, doing me.

Where all of this gets difficult, at this level, is that often people use self-responsibility and self-awareness as a tool to avoid true intimacy. It works like this: I explore myself to the point where I begin to see my games, my illusions and my most common "blamings." From this place of increasing clarity, I make the fatal decision to become a guru.

There comes a move to "self-transcendence," to follow Schnarch. This step is meant to be "late" in the cycle - it follows behavioural change. I'm positing that "guru-ship" (not the same thing!!) happens when people figure out their game, and then move to teaching others to find theirs, without first doing the hard work of letting go of their games.

To quote Schnarch: "…many people who seek self-transcendence don't want to give anything up, and they want the path safe and clearly mapped. However, our unwillingness to give up what no longer fits (i.e., self-dissolution) blocks us from self-transcendence." Pg 400

I've seen this game time and time again. It's the cry of, "Don't you see how hard I've worked figuring out myself? I know me and what you see is what you get. Given who I am and what I've been through, I'm doing the best I can. How dare you challenge me to actually change my behaviour!"

To again quote Schnarch, speaking of a client: "She accused anyone who disagreed with her of invalidating her feelings. Cloaked in the guise of weakness, she wielded her claim of invalidation like a club, pressuring people around her to give up their opinions and preferences for fear of injuring her." Pg. 365

I'm still slogging through the latter chapters of the new book I'm writing - the one that includes the section on deconstruction and reconstruction. The deconstruction section is written, and I'm gaining on the reconstruction part. This is the behavioural change I'm talking about. (Again, to read the reconstruction stuff from past issues of Into the Centre, go here, here and here)

The key to differentiation is not simply in the acceptance of my need to stand on my own two feet. It's not enough to understand that Dar is Dar and I am I, and that my stuff is my stuff and hers is hers. Understanding is simply not enough.

Once I "get" the concept - then I want to mitigate any behaviour I engage in that makes holding to this understanding difficult.

Each time I slide back into my entitlement, for example, I want to watch myself go there. If I "suddenly" find myself there, I want to wake up and move on. This is my responsibility. (God spare me from those who think their partner is responsible...)

I learn my entitlement gets me nowhere, I catch myself in my entitlement. (Remember, the stuff that causes us grief does not go away. We just get better and better at identifying it and dealing with it differently.) Then, (here's the hard part), I stop myself from justifying being there. If I choose to do this, I suddenly have the option of making a change in my behaviour.

Dar and I have been caught in major disagreements. I'm remembering 3 or 4 times in 19 years. We've had bumps in the road more often, and slide out of them by owning our own silliness and returning to a place of re-establishing contact. In the major battles, we've had the sense to walk away from each other - to give ourselves time to get ourselves back under control (Schnarch calls this "self-soothing.") We have seemed to know when "one more word" was going to toss us into some abyss.

I certainly remember that abyss from the first "major" we ever had. We were on our first long holiday, camping in Nova Scotia. Neither of us can remember what the fight was about, but we got to the "loud and angry point," went back to the campground, and I declared, "I'm putting you on a plane back to Toronto. I've had enough." I stormed off to the tent, while Dar sat on the picnic table.

I remember being furious, blaming Dar for the fight. I remember thinking, "I've had it. How dare she? Doesn't she know I'm a therapist? Doesn't she know how "put together" I am? I'll show her!"

In the midst of all of that, I somehow recognized the danger lurking "one more word" ahead. I buried my head in my sleeping bag and screamed a hundred or so obscenities. Then, I crawled out of the tent and asked Dar if she wanted to talk. She did, I did, and we worked our way through whatever the issue was. Later, we made a pact to always "return to the scene of the crime" so that we could change course, individually, and from there, collectively.

"Here I go, acting like an idiot. I'll stop myself now." This, both simple and incredibly difficult, is the key to self-responsibility. Self-transcendence comes as I can learn to let that part of me (the ego-driven part) shrink and shrink (through disuse.)

More, next week!