Get­ting Past the “Long Wait”

One of the things we really need to rec­og­nize is the utter futil­ity of think­ing that any­thing, and espe­cially hap­pi­ness, comes to us from the out­side. The rea­son this belief seems so real is that we come by this belief hon­estly, as it is the real­ity of infancy and childhood.

When we are lit­tle, every­thing is given to us. We are hun­gry, some­one feeds us, wet, we are changed, cold, and we are cov­ered. Mom and dad seem to be god-like fig­ures that appear and dis­ap­pear mag­i­cally from our lim­ited, almost autis­tic real­ity. As we have no expe­ri­ence, no per­sonal his­tory, what we per­ceive indeed seems to be: I have a need, and ‘god’ mag­i­cally appears and ful­fills it.

Most moms and dads want us to be con­tent, to be happy. When infants cry, all the adults rush in to make it all bet­ter. Now, remem­ber, the infant has no way of know­ing that this is because (s)he is an infant. In other words, the kid is not think­ing, “OK, I’d bet­ter enjoy this while I can, because soon I’ll be expected to look after myself.”

What is impressed on our child-mind is that res­cue comes from out­side. Then adult­hood comes along, and it is abun­dantly clear that there is no exter­nal res­cue. Yet for many, this is com­pletely unacceptable.

Vir­tu­ally all sex-relationship issues are the result of this fun­da­men­tal misunderstanding.

As I have writ­ten else­where, the hor­mones kick in, and you are drawn to a par­tic­u­lar per­son. On one level, there is the whole ‘pro­cre­ate’ energy. The cues are sub­tle and below the level of obser­va­tion, and involve sight, sound and smell. Let us not forget—we are mammals.

We are also think­ing mam­mals. And part of our thought process is a “just under the sur­face” long­ing to be loved as we were as infants—to be taken care of. As this thought bub­bles up, we come up with all kinds of “rea­son­able” sto­ries about why this would be emi­nently fair. No mat­ter how this idea is described, how­ever, it is always a one-way street. Let’s look at how this might be acted out.

Some peo­ple are bar­gain­ers. They think, “I’ll treat my part­ner as a king or queen, and then they will treat me the same.” Oth­ers are roman­tics. They think, “Finally, I have found some­one who rec­og­nizes how spe­cial and pre­cious I am. (S)he will always be at my beck and call, feed­ing me, chang­ing me, burp­ing me…”

Oops. I tipped my hand…

The root of this kind of imma­ture think­ing is, to repeat, our child­hood expe­ri­ence of being cared for. None of us would be alive if our par­ents had not cared for us (no mat­ter how poorly or basi­cally) as infants. Despite being unable to remem­ber any or the details of this time, at our core is a cel­lu­lar mem­ory of being looked after.

Let’s get real here:
It’s just kind of dumb to expect to be taken care of after we can care for ourselves.

Oh, I know. Hol­ly­wood has been feed­ing you bilge about true love being all about being treated “spe­cial.” You do know, don’t you, that movies aren’t real, right?

As we look at the above approaches, we see that the com­mon idea is either enti­tle­ment or bar­gain­ing. Enti­tle­ment is the idea that “I am spe­cial, and the world owes me, and must treat me kindly.” Bar­gain­ing, “I am going to have to bribe some­one to treat me as spe­cial, to give me what I deserve.”

Now, many rela­tion­ships do start exactly this way: each part­ner goes out of their way to be kind, giv­ing, help­ful, gen­tle, and car­ing. And as we all know, the nov­elty begins to wear off around year three.

That’s because both of the ‘kids’ get tired of the inces­sant, whiny demands of their part­ner. Inter­est­ingly, this is also the point where, when one whines, “You need to do this for me, if you love me!” that the cor­rect reply becomes, “For god’s sake, grow up!”

Indeed. Grow­ing up requires, as St. Paul wrote, “…giv­ing up child­ish things.” Being an adult requires giv­ing up both bar­gain­ing and entitlement.

The rela­tion­ship I have with Dar­bella is based upon the joy I cre­ate for myself as I observe Dar liv­ing her life. I have some­one to talk to who ‘gets me,’ and who chooses to live with me with­out judge­ment or demand. She’s with me because she want to be with me. She is not try­ing to make me into who she wants me to be. And I see her, and respect and love her for exactly who she is, in this moment.

She can­not make me happy. There is no way for her to get into my head and sort out how I am view­ing my real­ity. Only I can do that. There is no way for her to antic­i­pate what I want, nor can she meet my unex­pressed expec­ta­tions. (I can­not tell you how many times I’ve heard clients say, “We’ve been together for three years! He should know what I want by now!” Yikes!)

Adults ask for what they want, and are will­ing to take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity to get what they want. I’ve always said that if I want some­thing badly enough, I can get it. I just might not be able to get it from the first per­son I ask. It is not Darbella’s ‘job’ to meet my every need. My mommy did that, until I was 2 or so. I am not mar­ried to my mommy. Dar’s only ’job’ is to show up and be hon­estly her­self. My ‘job’ is to show up and be me. Period.

Hap­pi­ness is an inside job. It is not a fac­tor of our loca­tion, our employ­ment, whether or not we are get­ting what we want, or who we are in rela­tion­ship with.

It is always and only about how I choose to view my life and my reality.

Hap­pi­ness comes when I declare myself to be happy.

Every time you notice your­self judg­ing another for ‘not mak­ing you happy,’ give your­self a shake. Ask your­self why you are choos­ing unhap­pi­ness, and what you could do, right now, to shift that, for your­self. Take full, per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for who you are, where you are, and how you are.

You are an adult now. You are totally and com­pletely respon­si­ble for your life. If you are in rela­tion­ship, remem­ber that rela­tion­ships are places where we learn about our­selves—where we receive feed­back and share curiosi­ties about ‘how life is on our planet.’

Be with your part­ner because you are inter­ested and ‘’turned on’ by their life-walk. And vice versa.

Embrace hap­pi­ness as a life-choice. It is not some­thing that hap­pens to you. It is how you view what is hap­pen­ing to you. It is an inter­nal sense, rather than an exter­nal gift. Lat those around you off the hook, and do what you need to do to be happy.

In other words, it is time to grow up.