Real Relating — Finding YourSELF

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Real Relat­ing — Find­ing Your­SELF — Most peo­ple enter rela­tion­ships either for what the oth­er per­son will (end­less­ly) give them, or to ‘help.’ Nei­ther approach works.

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Just a note: I’m pulling quotes from Pas­sion­ate Mar­riage, by David Schnarch.

Relationships are funny things. Or, at least the reasons people enter them seem funny.

Our opin­ion is that rela­tion­ships are the per­fect learn­ing and prov­ing ground for fig­ur­ing your­self out. Yes, you read that right. YourSELF. 

Because like it or not, you are the only per­son on the plan­et who can fig­ure you out.

This flies in the face of the tra­di­tion­al belief. Which has always struck me as weird. Many peo­ple get mar­ried either to have some­one to look after them, or to have some­one to blame for who they are and how they are screw­ing up.

It’s a hard thing to give up on blam­ing oth­ers for what isn’t work­ing in your life — our soci­ety loves vic­tims and encour­ages them to keep being vic­tims. Peo­ple love vic­tim-mode; it’s a way to avoid con­fronting them­selves. David Schnarch describes one mode of this as “ther­a­pist shopping.”

It often goes like this:

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• Client comes in and lists off a tale of woe. Said woe is emphat­i­cal­ly exter­nal.
  • They were par­ent­ed wrong (who wasn’t?)
  • Their part­ner dis­agrees with them (whose doesn’t?)
  • They’ve had ther­a­py and done a pile of work­shops, but their cir­cum­stances won’t change (why would they?)
  • They’re phys­i­cal­ly or men­tal­ly anx­ious (part of life)

Now, you’d think that a person in therapy would be there for the long haul, and be would willing to deal with their issues by changing how s/he is acting.

This is often not the case. For many, no mat­ter what brought them to ther­a­py — rela­tion­ship break­down, phys­i­cal symp­toms, men­tal dis­tress — what­ev­er — what many clients are look­ing for is jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to stay the same.

The goal for them is not self-regulation through discipline. Their goal is symptom removal.

As Schnarch puts it in Pas­sion­ate Marriage,

…we nev­er doubt that ther­a­pists have clever tricks to get us around our prob­lems with­out going through them. Few of us enter ther­a­py to change our­selves — we are usu­al­ly seek­ing ways to change our sit­u­a­tion or our spouse, while we remain the same. We seek out sim­ple tips, tech­niques, and bene­dic­tions that tell us how to com­mu­ni­cate and be com­pas­sion­ate (read: easy ways to feel under­stood and receive com­pas­sion.) pg. 322

Many peo­ple get mar­ried either to have some­one to look after them, or to have some­one to blame for who they are and how they are screw­ing up.

I remem­ber hav­ing one ses­sion with a cou­ple. They were sep­a­rat­ed. He described him­self as “con­trol­ling,” and as the ses­sion went on, all he would talk about was what he need­ed from his wife.

He was lone­ly, he was unhap­py; he need­ed his wife to end the sep­a­ra­tion, come home and look after him. He told me that he had done 2 ses­sions of anger man­age­ment… and now he had been to cou­ples ther­a­py. He fig­ured he had done his part

He concluded with how badly he needed her to look after him, to affirm him, and to tell him he was a good and worthwhile person. Oh. And how she needed to let him be as he was; angry, unstable and controlling.

I was pleased to note that she was not bit­ing on his need­i­ness, and was not rush­ing home. She was hold­ing her ground.

He had pushed her a few months ear­li­er, and she want­ed to talk about her fear of him.

He laughed it off. Said she was paint­ing him as being vio­lent. That nor­mal­ly he only yelled and threat­ened — the push was a fluke. He remind­ed her that he had done “2… 2! anger man­age­ment sessions!”

She went inside, calmed her­self, and said, “I hear that you’re hurt­ing, and I’m not com­ing home until I feel safe.”

Boy, did he piss him­self off over that one. (I guess those 2 whole ses­sions of anger man­age­ment had­n’t “tak­en,” eh?) He yelled, he cajoled, he paced.

Then, he decid­ed to come after me. He told me in no uncer­tain terms that he was angry with me because (it had been 30 min­utes, after all…) I would­n’t help him get his wife to come home… to under­stand that she should have noth­ing bet­ter to do than end­less­ly try to make him happy.

It was clear by then that I was head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion — I’d sug­gest­ed a 3‑month tri­al sep­a­ra­tion, with each of them doing indi­vid­ual ther­a­py. I’d said that I thought that both would ben­e­fit from grow­ing up, get­ting over them­selves (she was­n’t off the hook — she was an enabler and need­ed to look deeply at her enabling behav­iours) and stand­ing on their own two feet.

The man paced the office: out to the wait­ing room, back and forth. He shout­ed that all of his friends thought that his wife had an “imbal­ance of pow­er.” (He meant: “I’m sup­posed to be in charge here. How dare she assert her­self and not look after me?”)

I said that I got it that he did­n’t like the sit­u­a­tion: that his wife was learn­ing to look after her­self. I then said that it was not her job to look after him… it was his job to look after himself.

He said, “This is not how ther­a­py is sup­posed to be going! She’s sup­posed to see that I did what she asked (2 anger man­age­ment ses­sions, 1 ses­sion of ther­a­py…) and come home.” (Read: “Wayne, if you were doing your job, you’d tell her to come home.”)

He knew I was a for­mer min­is­ter, so he trot­ted out, “Show me in the Bible where it says that I should stand on my own feet, and that my wife should­n’t look after me!” I just smiled and repeat­ed myself. He kept shak­ing his head and mut­ter­ing, “You’re not doing this right!”

They booked another session. Quoth the woman, “This has been great!!!” Husband glowered.

Sev­er­al days lat­er he called and can­celled the next ses­sion. He had decid­ed that they would get coun­selling at their church, where, I am sure, he hoped to find a Min­is­ter who had read the same Bible he had invented.

My only regret was that she went along with him. I would guess that his manip­u­la­tions final­ly caused her to give up on her self and return to “doing it his way.”

Prob­lem is, as long as one part­ner tries to con­trol the oth­er, the rela­tion­ship is doomed. Or as Schnarch puts it,

Long-term inti­ma­cy with­in mar­riage hinges on val­i­dat­ing your­self rather than “trust­ing” your part­ner to make you feel safe. Pg. 113

To repeat what I said above, my life is not about me under­stand­ing oth­er peo­ple. Nor is my life about demand­ing that oth­er peo­ple under­stand me. My job is to fig­ure myself out.

I can lis­ten as oth­ers choose to self-reveal. I can even attempt to help oth­ers cut through the bull­shit they tell themselves. 

One of the biggest is, “I just got­ta be me!” Noth­ing holds you back more that “being your­self.” Being your­self is code for “I refuse to do the hard work of shift­ing what isn’t work­ing. Being your­self has led you to where you are right now. 

We all need to get over “being me,” and decide to grow up.

Grow­ing up means hear­ing hard truths about our­selves (which our part­ners def­i­nite­ly will point out to us — this is the real rea­son for being in a rela­tion­ship in the first place — for the feedback!) 

• Rather than get defen­sive and run around whin­ing about being ill-treat­ed, I go inside, and self-soothe.
• Once I’m calm, I choose to look at the crit­i­cism and decide if my behav­iour needs changing. 
• I then choose to change, not for the oth­er per­son, but for myself.

Schnarch: My point is: com­mu­ni­ca­tion is no assur­ance of inti­ma­cy if you can’t stand the mes­sage. “Good com­mu­ni­ca­tion” is often mis­tak­en for your part­ner per­ceiv­ing you the way you want to be seen or under­stood. “We don’t com­mu­ni­cate” is code for “I refuse to accept that mes­sage — send me a dif­fer­ent one! How dare you see me [or the issue] that way!” pg. 102

In my book, This End­less Moment 2nd. edi­tion, I wrote:

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In my lit­tle boat, I am alone, and self-respon­si­ble. No one is “sup­posed” to make it all bet­ter for me. That’s my job.

Given that, what of relationships?

Dar­bel­la is in her boat, too. I can’t do any­thing for her. We can, how­ev­er, choose to pad­dle along togeth­er, and keep each oth­er com­pa­ny. I reveal to her what I know about myself, and espe­cial­ly the embar­rass­ing, stu­pid, messy parts.

She may choose to do the same, although it’s not a requirement.

Here’s the impor­tant part: I choose who I pad­dle with… and I choose to be with some­one who is choos­ing to self-reveal to me.

It is impos­si­ble to live life free of anx­i­ety. There is the anx­i­ety of relat­ing — which requires change, and pain. There is the anx­i­ety of try­ing to stay the same, in denial, pretending.

The fire of true relat­ing, to me, seems the bet­ter choice.

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Series Nav­i­ga­tion

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