Prac­tice Curios­ity and “I” language.

I sup­pose I could find another word than “prac­tice,” but it seems to me that no mat­ter how good I get at inter­act­ing and relat­ing with Dar­bella, I am always prac­tic­ing! The real issue is what hap­pens when I lose focus and “slip.”

Which still hap­pens some­what often. Or I judge that it does. And I also have a real sense of how silly it all is.

My judge­ment face

Let me give you an illus­tra­tion, from ear­lier this week.

If you’ve been read­ing this blog (or our e-zine) for long, you’ll know that I’ve men­tioned my “old” approach to life–I trace my shift of focus to April 1986. Prior to that, I couldn’t trust myself not to get all judge­men­tal and arro­gant with pretty much everyone.

My rela­tion­ship with Dar dates to 1983. We estab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rela­tion­ship guide­lines right from the start–it’s the stuff I’ve been writ­ing about in this series. Early on, we decided that we could han­dle each other’s pecu­liar­i­ties, and com­mit­ted to “not bit­ing” when one or the other of us went off in a weird direction.

In dia­log with Dar and a few other close friends, I’ve learned a fair bit about my “dark/shadow side.” This is the side most of us wish to repress or delete. Last week, I described this as the closet mon­ster stuff. Mostly, I’d describe this side as above–arro­gant and judgemental.

I relate to Linus in Peanuts:
“I love human­ity. It’s peo­ple I can’t stand.”

Any­way, here’s the story, and how it applies:

Drama…drama

(I’ll hide the details, to pro­tect the innocent…wink, wink…)

Dar and I belong to a cer­tain class that meets sev­eral times a week. I don’t par­tic­u­larly like some of the par­tic­i­pants on the night we attend, so this week we shifted to another night. I had a good time, as opposed to my norm of enjoy­ing the class and annoy­ing myself over my judge­ments about the other participants.

After class, I started into a bit of a rant about how I liked the class we’d just attended, and how much I dis­liked the reg­u­lar one.

Dar, when she could get a word in edge­wise, indi­cated the new class was OK, and that she had no trou­ble with our reg­u­lar class, and that I should decide which class I wanted to attend.

I wanted Dar to join me in my drama, so I worked at get­ting her to agree that the old class was bad, weird, etc. and to agree that the new class was much better.

Dar repeated that either class was fine, and that this was my issue, and that I needed to make up my mind.

I wanted her to agree with me. I wanted her to join me in judg­ing the peo­ple in the old class. I tried every­thing. I pulled out what I declared were com­pa­ra­ble expe­ri­ences in Dar’s life.

She refused to bite–she agreed it was a good illus­tra­tion, and that I’d have to decide about the class, as it was my issue.

I pouted and groused all the way home.

Dar lis­tened to my grous­ing and com­plain­ing, and did not try to extract me from my own mess. (Hint: she can’t, as it’s my issue. If she was silly enough to try, then I could judge that she’d not done that right.)

I cre­ated feel­ings of aban­don­ment, annoy­ance, went to “No one loves me” (a per­sonal favourite,) and just barely avoided “I always sup­port you, and you never sup­port me.” (I thought it, but didn’t say it.)

Dar just sat there, repeat­ing the mantra, “Your issue, you decide.”

I got over myself, and calmed myself down.

Let me unpack this, as a way of describ­ing ele­gant relating.

The super­fi­cial issue is which class to attend. I mean, really, I could just get over myself and pick one or the other. It’s a super­fi­cial issue that Dar was wise not to bite on.

The real issue is that I can be judge­men­tal and arro­gant, and in this case I wanted Dar to agree that my arro­gant judge­ments were right. Dar also did not bite on this one, but did keep remind­ing me to get over myself.

Now, what’s the down­side of her join­ing me in a “right/wrong” event?

1. If she agreed with my judge­ments, the like­li­hood is that all that would hap­pen is a bitch-fest of mon­u­men­tal pro­por­tions. I trust you have noticed that grip­ing about how awful oth­ers are changes noth­ing, right? We could have agreed to do this, and had fun being sanc­ti­mo­nious, but it, again, accom­plishes nothing.
2. If she dis­agreed, we could have ended up fight­ing about who was right–and the fight would have been about some­thing out of our control–the behav­iour of others.

Dar chose the path of curios­ity and “I” lan­guage. She sep­a­rated my stuff from her stuff, and refused to shift focus
from the drama I was creating.

“I” Lan­guage: She clearly stated that she had no issues with the old class, was OK with the new class, and that she had no judge­ments about the participants.

Curios­ity: She indi­cated that the drama and energy was all mine, and encour­aged me to deal with the crap I was cre­at­ing (my words, not hers… she just asked me to decide.)

I decided to take around 45 min­utes to get over myself. Dur­ing that time, I tried all kinds of clever strate­gies to draw Dar into my game. She sim­ply did not go there. Part of me was proud of her, and the other part was annoyed that she was so good at avoid­ing my games.

Rather than beat this one to death,
let me make some suggestions.

1. Your job is to notice how, when and what you are cre­at­ing emo­tions over. The only way to learn ele­gant relat­ing is to take respon­si­bil­ity for yourself.

2. Your other job is to be open and curi­ous about your part­ner. This is sim­ple when there is no drama.

3. If your part­ner has an emo­tion arise, bit­ing on their drama is never help­ful. Your job is to be curi­ous and neu­tral. Keep remind­ing your part­ner to notice what is up for them, to own their drama, and to decide.

Now, clearly, all of this needs to be agreed upon in advance.

Sure, this is dif­fi­cult. If it wasn’t, every­one would do it. Our ten­dency, when con­fronted with drama, is to get defen­sive, fight back, argue, do the “silent treat­ment,’ what­ever. Or, to change the sub­ject, so as to get away from the discomfort.

Nonethe­less, what is required is to lis­ten, and to meta-comment:

• “I notice you are upset­ting your­self, and and I won­der if you might want to work through what you are set­ting up.”
• In Wayne and Dar’s world, it’s, “You might want to get over yourself.”

Now, occa­sion­ally, you’re going to slip, and both you and your part­ner are going to bite on an issue.

You’ll notice, only if you pay atten­tion to your own reac­tions. Tight­ness, anger, want­ing dis­tance, all are clues you’re wind­ing your­self up. As is notic­ing the argu­ment you’re in. When this hap­pens, take own­er­ship, and stop the fight.

Don’t wait for your part­ner to do something.

Although, since this is an agree­ment, your part­ner has agreed to all of this. Own your side of the fight, just as soon as you rec­og­nize you are caught in your drama.

And remem­ber, what goes on inside of you is never caused by some­thing out­side of you.

Dar and I are look­ing at the same group of class­mates. I am cre­at­ing judge­ments and drama, she is not. Same peo­ple, dif­fer­ent reac­tion. The drama is mine. I am cre­at­ing it, feed­ing the flames, and mak­ing myself mis­er­able. I will stop as soon as I choose to own this, and stop.

He says with a grin!

Next week, we’ll shift themes a bit, and con­tinue our explo­ration of self-responsibility.