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Just a note: gifts for being a subscriber!

There’s a link on the e-mail ver­sion of this post. You can use it to down­load my most pop­u­lar book, This End­less Moment.

Rea­sons for Hope is a great col­lec­tion of “hope­ful sto­ries,” col­lected by my buddy Boo­gie Jack Gaskill. I con­tributed one of the sto­ries. Right click on the link and save the pdf file.

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Hol­i­day Sched­ule
There will be three more arti­cles in December—this one, the con­clud­ing sec­tion next week, and a “year end” post on Decem­ber 21.
We’ll resume pub­lish­ing Jan­u­ary 4^th.

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The fol­low­ing two arti­cles are the “Read­ers’ Digest Ver­sion” of a longer piece I just wrote. I think the final prod­uct will become an e-book in the New Year!
I’m also writ­ing from a male, het­ero­sex­ual per­spec­tive, to sim­plify lan­guage. All of this is equally true for females, and for peo­ple of any sex­ual orientation!

Most things in life (at least at first glance) fol­low a lin­ear, devel­op­men­tal pat­tern. It should come as no sur­prise, then, that rela­tion­ships typ­i­cally fol­low a lin­ear model.

Now, remem­ber, lin­ear is real, but is not the only choice!

It is typ­i­cal for the “first time through” — each stage is a part of grow­ing up. That peo­ple con­tinue to fol­low this model into adult­hood is a seri­ous problem!

Learn­ing fol­lows a Lin­ear Pattern

It’s the norm. Let’s use Math­e­mat­ics as our illustration.

In school, there is a lin­ear learn­ing curve—a step-by-step plan, some­thing like this:

addi­tion > sub­trac­tion > mul­ti­pli­ca­tion > divi­sion > alge­bra > cal­cu­lus, > etc.

Each builds on what came before and mas­tery or each is nec­es­sary to get to the next level.

HOWEVER!

An excel­lent math­e­mati­cian at some point shifts from lin­ear to dynamic learn­ing, which involves intu­itively “know­ing” what to do next. There is an easy flow to this, and there is no appar­ent step-by-step linearity.

Lin­ear Rela­tion­ships

As I just wrote, the “first time through,” we tend to learn every­thing lin­early. It’s all steps and stages. For most peo­ple, areas of per­sonal devel­op­ment stay this way— rigid, boxed off, oper­at­ing under rules and rights and wrongs.

Per­haps 5% of the pop­u­la­tion actu­ally breaks free from lin­ear­ity to dynamic relat­ing. Reason?

Drop­ping the props, rules, reg­u­la­tions and blam­ing is dif­fi­cult.
Bet­ter to hope for magic, for every­thing to work out, with no effort, like Uncle Walt Dis­ney told us it would.

Check out the chart, above. I’ve sug­gested some steps in the lin­ear devel­op­ment of most people’s relat­ing. (It’s an adverb, as relat­ing is a process, not a thing.)

Let me walk you through this. I’m not say­ing this is true, the only way to look at things, etc. It’s just a story I want to tell you.

F — Friend­ship — once we old enough to “play,” we form friend­ships. We hang out. We do stuff. We goof around. We talk, imag­ine, tell sto­ries, play games. We learn to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between relat­ing to mem­bers of our own sex, and the oppo­site sex.

“Just friends” is a stage and a state, as is “best friends, or “BFFs”.” You have expe­ri­enced all lev­els of this basic, friend­ship state. There is trust, secu­rity, and an ease about the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and it doesn’t seem to be “about” any­thing, yet con­cerns everything.

FWB — Friend with Ben­e­fits — this is the next stage in sex­ual devel­op­ment, of course, and is often also the next stage in relat­ing as adults. You meet some­one, become friends, and some­times this “blos­soms” into sex­ual attrac­tion. Of course, this coin­cides with the teen years, and so the “friend­ship” part might get the short shrift, as hor­mones take over, lead­ing to the push for the “ben­e­fits” part.

Now, here is some­thing you need to “get.” Sex­ual attrac­tion is a mile wide and an inch deep. It does not mean any­thing, other than that my hor­mones are aroused. It seems impor­tant because our soci­eties have such a love/hate rela­tion­ship with sex. Sex sells every­thing, and yet we try not to talk about it.

Off to the bed­room we go, to have sex. Many refuse to say. “We’re bonk­ing!” So, a sim­ple act becomes the breath­less cry. “We must be in love!”

If we are hon­est, and can sep­a­rate our lust from our desire to be “in love,” we will notice the FWB stage. FWBs are peo­ple they like hang­ing out with, and with whom they have sex. This is alto­gether too threat­en­ing and chargy for most peo­ple, so they leap to the “love” stage, often way, way too early.

In other words, 75% of the peo­ple I know who are in rela­tional dif­fi­culty got there by “set­tling.” Instead of enjoy­ing being “in lust,” they leaped to the next stage, and formed a Com­mit­ted Rela­tion­ship (CR) for no rea­son other than that they were bonk­ing someone.

If you can get your head around hav­ing FWBs, it’s amaz­ing how the drama dials back. Decid­ing to move to the next stage becomes about some­thing sig­nif­i­cant, like mutu­al­ity, respect, integrity, and curiosity.

Most, how­ever, “reli­giously” fol­low the lin­ear approach.

You meet some­one. You become friends. You decide to have sex. You freak out—and pre­tend that hav­ing sex equals “being in love.” You leap from fun and friend­ship to the infa­mous “Com­mit­ted Relationship.”

CR — Com­mit­ted Rela­tion­ship —This is the seri­ous dat­ing, monogamy, mov­ing to engage­ment stage. It’s also the stage where the “prob­lems” start show­ing up. It’s the “I saw you look­ing at that woman/man!” stage. The stage of dis­trust, anger, notic­ing all the lit­tle quirks that were hid­den or not evi­dent ear­lier. “She lied to me! She didn’t tell me that!”

Now, wise souls expect to learn new things about their part­ner, all the time. This is why we stress curios­ity and no judge­ment. But remem­ber, this is the first trip through the lin­ear approach. We tend to freak out, and one thought pops into our heads.

I can change her!

It might be sug­ges­tions, hints, “I’m just ask­ing you to do this for you own good, because you love me…” It’s always based upon feel­ing dis­tance grow­ing. It’s based on think­ing you’ve been lied to. Or more basi­cally, it’s about demand­ing that your part­ner turn into the magic prince(ess) you’re cart­ing around in your head.

Now, the mature thing to do, at this stage, would be to think,

“Hmm. I think I may have picked the wrong per­son to get seri­ous with. She’s noth­ing like the per­son I want to be with. I guess I’ll end this, and move on, and be more dis­cern­ing next time.”

Nope. Most peo­ple think, “Well, this isn’t what I want, but I can change her. Besides, if I let this one go, I may never meet any­one else!”

So, we stiffen our spines, put on a back pack filled with what if’s and should be’s and march res­olutely into a grim, tra­di­tional, expected future. We “get mar­ried.” We com­mit to a “for­ever, ’til death do us part,’ tra­di­tional rela­tion­ship.” Which at some level we hate and resent, and want to be different.

Here, the path diverges.

R/A — Romance / Affair — In France, espe­cially, there is the “mis­tress” tra­di­tion. You have a “wife” to have kids with and to be tra­di­tional with, and a sep­a­rate lover (or lovers) with whom you have pas­sion and sex. Life becomes com­part­men­tal­ized.
Wife = fam­ily, kids, tra­di­tion, “staid­ness.”
Mis­tress = inti­macy and pas­sion.

Now, lest you think this is about looks, sex­i­ness, appear­ance, con­sider Charles, Diana, and Camilla. ‘Nuff said.’

For those with­out the “where­withal” for affairs, romance becomes the out­let. Office spouses, pas­sion­ate engage­ment with career, hob­bies, art, music, all are things that are used to dis­tract the peo­ple from the dis­mal­ness and lack of depth in the relationship.

These things are emo­tional affairs, with sex being the only miss­ing ingredient.

The other path is “spouse-hood.”

S — Spouse-hood — This was the path selected by most cou­ples prior to the late 60s. Peo­ple retreated to their own space in the house, were cour­te­ous to each other, bred kids, and acted tra­di­tional. The movie “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road” describes this approach bet­ter than I ever can.

Now, that’s the “nor­mal learn­ing path” of most rela­tion­ships. Today how­ever, with divorces a dime a dozen (lit­er­ally!) peo­ple do leave dys­func­tional rela­tion­ships. Ser­ial monogamy is com­mon, and peo­ple have taken to call­ing first mar­riages “starter mar­riages” — the place to learn and screw up, so you can “get it right” the sec­ond time.

Here’s a flash. In the USA, the first mar­riage fail­ure rate is 50%. For sec­ond mar­riages, it’s 75%!

The prob­lem is that peo­ple com­ing out of first rela­tion­ships tend to blame their part­ners for the fail­ure. They go into the next one with no thought about their respon­si­bil­ity for the fail­ure of the rela­tion­ship. They fig­ure that if they find the right per­son, things will be easier.

Because they have not con­sid­ered their own behav­iours and ways of relat­ing, back they go, doing the same dumb stuff.

We advo­cate a com­plete change of relat­ing, rig­or­ous self-exploration, and open­ness, hon­esty and curios­ity as the basis for the next relationship.

Let me go back to my math­e­mat­ics exam­ple. I’m not so good at alge­bra. I got through it in High School and Uni­ver­sity, but never really fig­ured it out. So, when Dar­bella (who is great at math) teaches alge­bra, I occa­sion­ally try one of the more com­pli­cated questions.

I end up end­lessly try­ing to “sim­plify,” and then I spend a bit of time mov­ing things from one side of the equals sign to the other. In other words, I do what I always do. I guess, I try a few things I’ve tried before, and I hope that this time, I’ll luck into an answer.

Dar, on the other hand, just looks at it, applies log­i­cal steps, and solves it.

Here’s the sim­i­lar­ity. I don’t “get” alge­bra, and am unwill­ing to expend the effort to learn. This is how most peo­ple deal with relat­ing. They learn a few “rules,” apply them, and think they’ll fig­ure it out. Except, like me and alge­bra prob­lems, if all I do is what I always do, and cross my fin­gers, mostly, I’ll get lousy results.

We’ll con­clude this next week!

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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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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Incom­ing search terms:

• the dance of relationships
• lin­ear rela­tion­ships in dance

Related posts:

1. 6 Ways to Deepen Relationships
2. The Dance of Mind and Body
3. The Dance of Shadow and Light
4. 9 Ways to Screw Up a Relationship
5. The key to love is respect and patience

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Tagged with: Anger • blaming • Communication • Self-responsibility

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