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Just a note: I’ve shifted the “rules” for post­ing com­ments on this blog. You will now see your com­ment appear directly, with­out a delay for approval. I really want to hear from all of you, so click on the post title, above, and leave a comment!

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So, you might argue that, because I’m a ther­a­pist, of course I see a lot of dys­func­tional rela­tion­ships. But I’m not swayed. I also live in and see the “nor­mal world,” and it seems to me that things are not much bet­ter, relationship-wise, any­where. Thus, the 50% divorce rate, and the gen­eral dis­sat­is­fac­tion we end­less hear about.

I sus­pect that most folk do not exam­ine their rela­tion­ship—except when things are off the rails.

As I said last week, regard­ing mag­i­cal think­ing—there’s a ten­dency to think that rela­tion­ships are
1) sup­posed to “just work,” and
2) that the pur­pose of find­ing a part­ner is to have some­one there to mag­i­cally meet your needs.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

To quote David Schnarch, in “Pas­sion­ate Mar­riage,” a pri­mary rela­tion­ship is a cru­cible. In other words, the heat of the rela­tion­ship is the “thing” that makes the crucible’s con­tents pure. Thus, in the heat of dia­log and pas­sion, the cou­ple enters into a prov­ing and refin­ing ground that makes each per­son more “him or herself.”

This is decid­edly dif­fer­ent from the norm. The norm is all about a bat­tle for supe­ri­or­ity and “right­ness.” Peo­ple in stuck rela­tion­ships tend to believe that there is only one way to see things, only one view of the world, one view of how to relate, etc.

And coin­ci­den­tally, that cor­rect view is held by the per­son espous­ing it.

In other words, almost no one in a dys­func­tional rela­tion­ship is say­ing, “Your way is the right way.” No, emphat­i­cally they are say­ing, “My way is the right way.”

We do not believe in “right” ways. We believe in per­sonal growth, and this is best fos­tered in the cru­cible, the heated con­tainer, of inti­mate relationship.

The thing I love best about my rela­tion­ship is that Dar­bella sees right through me and my games, and chooses to hang around with me any­way. And vice versa. I can’t remem­ber the last time some­thing I said or did sur­prised her, and vice versa. She knows me. And she calls me on my stuff. And vice versa. This is the basis of our relationship.

1. In good rela­tion­ships, there is redi­rec­tion to what’s really going on—we describe this as “call­ing each other out.”

Call­ing out is not crit­i­ciz­ing or “mak­ing wrong.”

“Call­ing each other on our stuff” is help­ing each other to snap out of dream­land, so that each of us pays atten­tion to the story we are spinning.

A client, the other day, said, “My husband’s par­ents really make me angry.” I replied (call­ing her out), “Why do you choose to anger your­self over your husband’s par­ents?” Now, this shifts every­thing. It brings the hearer, if she chooses, into a place of becom­ing respon­si­ble for her feelings.

The ini­tial state­ment, on the other hand, can only open a dis­cus­sion about the flaws of the par­ents, as per­ceived by the daughter-in-law. This can have only a cou­ple of pur­poses:
1) to get agree­ment that the par­ents are jerks, or
2) to get sympathy.

Nei­ther are par­tic­u­larly helpful.

Decid­ing that another per­son is “mak­ing you angry” is silly, and changes noth­ing either about the other per­son or the sit­u­a­tion. Most stuff we anger our­selves over is the same stuff we always anger our­selves over. The par­ents do “x” and this dis­agrees with my fan­tasy about what they ought to be doing. So, I blame them for not coop­er­at­ing with my fan­tasy, and make myself angry.

Call­ing one out of non-responsible lan­guage, (for exam­ple) involves not bit­ing on provoca­tive state­ments, not join­ing in on blam­ing, but sim­ply invit­ing one’s part­ner to cor­rect the lan­gu­nage. Once I remem­ber I am anger­ing myself over some­thing that is out of my con­trol (the behav­iour of another,) I might be moved to let it go, or to select a behav­iour that I can take, as opposed to sim­ply blaming.

2. In good rela­tion­ships, there are no secrets.

Who I am, how I am, and what I am feel­ing and think­ing must be made avail­able to my part­ner. And I mean the direct expe­ri­ence.

Another client described get­ting angry with her hus­band. She then said, “So I spent the next sev­eral hours telling him how angry I was.” I asked her if she actu­ally got angry, as in yelling, stomp­ing about. She crossed her arms over her chest, and crossed her legs tightly, and said, “I’m not inter­ested in going there.” Need­less to say, she has a mass of body pain and stress issues.

Now, express­ing anger directly fol­lows the pat­tern of # 1, above.

“I am anger­ing myself,” not “you make me angry.” So, the anger is enacted in a clear state­ment of, “This is what I saw (heard) from you, and I am anger­ing myself, and I want to yell a bit before I process it.”

Another client talks about how, when he gets angry (or expe­ri­ences other strong feel­ings,) “I leave the room, and think about it. When I have an expla­na­tion for what I was feel­ing, I tell my part­ner about it.”

We express our emo­tions appro­pri­ately, directly, and safely. We are then able to move on. Repressed emo­tions always come back to haunt you.

After all, talk­ing about anger with­out learn­ing to safely express anger (or any other emo­tion, of course) is like the dif­fer­ence between describ­ing an orgasm and hav­ing one.

In good rela­tion­ships, the fil­ters and the eva­sions are set to “off.” At the same time, and this is essen­tial, I am com­pletely self-responsible. I admit to cre­at­ing my expe­ri­ence, my inter­pre­ta­tions and my feel­ings, and I don’t attempt to hide any of it. The cru­cible is a place to be fully alive, and part of being alive is enact­ing all of our feelings—not just the “fun” ones—safely and directly .

3. In good rela­tion­ships, both peo­ple are respect­ful of the per­son­hood, beliefs, and essence of their partner.

The key here is respect. I’m using the word to mean high regard, or admi­ra­tion. That this is not the norm in most rela­tion­ships is obvious.

No mat­ter how it is described, most rela­tion­ships are about control.

By con­trol, I mean that one or both of the part­ners attempts to force or manip­u­late their part­ner into doing life their way. Force is, “Unless you… I’ll pun­ish you by…” Manip­u­la­tion is, “If you do this… THEN I’ll do that…”

Respect is, “Hmm. You see it this way and I see it that way. Interesting.”

The piece I’ve never under­stood is the arro­gance of think­ing that, just because I’m mar­ried to, or in rela­tion­ship with some­one, that some­how this gives me the right to change that per­son. And at the same time, that the other per­son has absolutely no right to expect me to change. Because I, of course, am right, and (s)he is wrong.

Respect for per­son­hood — this is my way of say­ing that my part­ner is whole and com­plete as she is, and also remains whole and com­plete as she changes with time. In other words, she is as she is, and how she is is some­thing I find delightful.

Respect for beliefs — I still laugh at “dis­cus­sions” Dar and I have had over buzzy top­ics like fam­ily mem­bers, edu­ca­tion, ther­apy, etc. There are wide dif­fer­ences in our per­spec­tives, and nei­ther of us will budge. I know that I want her to think like me, because I argue so hard. How­ever, at the end of the day, what Dar believes is what she believes, and it’s the same for me.

As it’s put in the Haven Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Model -

“No one is right, no one is wrong.
We can only agree or disagree.”

Respect­ful of essence — each of is here, I believe, to ful­fill a per­sonal des­tiny or pur­pose. Our skill set, our way of being, is intrin­sic, and lies just under the sur­face, gen­tly tug­ging us to get on with it. This essence is the truth of us, and again, I’m amazed at how many peo­ple think it is their right to demand that their part­ner change their essence.

Respect is only pos­si­ble if I am will­ing to accept my part­ner as (s)he is. To do this, I have to drop my desire to teach, lec­ture or control.

4. In good rela­tion­ships, there is no right and wrong. There is accep­tance and cucuriosity.

Well, it cer­tainly seems that there is right and wrong. I typ­i­cally add that phys­i­cal vio­lence is never OK, but oth­er­wise, beliefs and behav­iours are just that.

Now, you may bump your nose against an, “I don’t enjoy doing that” sce­nario, and that’s OK. There’s noth­ing wrong about the thing you do not enjoy, and it is your right to not do it. Get­ting into the judg­ment game proves noth­ing, as your belief about right and wrong is only and always about you.

Accep­tance and curios­ity, on the other hand, open doors. You get the oppor­tu­nity to explore and attempt, and even if you decide to only do some­thing once, you’ve grown with the experience.

Most peo­ple I know actu­ally aren’t very adven­ture­some, and really don’t push their bound­aries and lim­its very much at all, and it seems odd to me that, given how lit­tle exper­i­men­ta­tion they do, they have so many opin­ions about stuff they’ve never tried. I tend to say, “If you are afraid of some­thing, do that next.”

Being open to new pos­si­bil­i­ties, while drop­ping the judge­ment is the best way to deepen the basis of a relationship.

5. Good rela­tion­ships are engaged, pas­sion­ate relationships.

Pas­sion­ate engage­ment is the will­ing­ness to stick your neck out so that your part­ner sees the real you. Mostly, I see peo­ple hid­ing. They might tell me, in ther­apy, what they are think­ing and feel­ing, but seem to think that their part­ner, the per­son they are sup­posed to be the most inti­mate with, should never see them “emot­ing.” They stuff their anger, hide their pas­sions and turn ons, and walk around care­fully, lest they ruf­fle any feathers.

We pro­pose active engage­ment. By this I mean let­ting Dar know exactly and com­pletely where I stand, what’s up for me, and what I am feel­ing. All the time. We do this by prac­tic­ing total honesty.

Sure, some­times I make myself uncom­fort­able telling her what’s up for me, but I know the dan­ger of keep­ing that stuff to myself. Now remem­ber, this rev­e­la­tion is being done in the con­text of the above points. I am not being pas­sion­ately hon­est in order to change Dar, or manip­u­late her into doing some­thing. I am being reveal­ing to let her know more about me, and in this way, to deepen our intimacy.

6. In good rela­tion­ships, there is no compromise.

Lastly, for this arti­cle, let me say this. Com­pro­mise never works. If I com­pro­mise, I tend to only think about what I gave up. So, when we dis­agree, we sit down, and we talk, and we stay with it until both of us can agree with our deci­sion, 100%.

In other words, we are not 3-year-olds; we do not stomp our feet and demand that we get our way. We are adults, and we come to consensus.

Not always easy, but I only remem­ber 2 times in 26 years that it’s taken us longer than an hour.

Because we are not play­ing games.

The chief game is, “If you do not do what I want, you do not love me.” Oth­er­wise known as manip­u­la­tion. I know that I love Dar, and I believe she loves me, so where we go on hol­i­day, which car we buy, or other things we might dis­agree about are never about “love.”

We have never played that game, and when we dis­agree, we argue pas­sion­ately for our desire or view­point, and then we have a breath and look for consensus.

Period.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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• deepen rela­tion­ship
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Related posts:

1. 10 Ways to Deepen Your Relationship
2. The Dance of Relationships
3. 9 Ways to Screw Up a Relationship
4. 5 ways to pay attention
5. The Top 5 Ways to Get Your Act Together

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Tagged with: Anger • blaming • Communication • Emotions

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