A Question of Intent

Knowing one’s intent is key for letting go of game playing and getting on with the core of relating. Learn how to let go of hiding your intent, as you question your motivations deeply.

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A Question of Intent

Good com­mu­ni­ca­tors will ask their part­ner, “What was your inten­tion in say­ing (or ask­ing me) that?” It’s also a legit­i­mate ques­tion for you to ask your­self. Just don’t stop too soon. Because intent is often not what you first think it is.

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about.

A cou­ple was in my office … young folk, togeth­er two years, and the pas­sion, sex­u­al play and fun had escaped from their marriage. 

The woman said: 

“He lied to me. When we start­ed dat­ing, he hugged me and kissed me and want­ed sex all the time. Now, he nev­er tells me he loves me, won’t hug or kiss me, and most of the time he’s not inter­est­ed in sex.”

I asked her how she felt. She indi­cat­ed that she felt angry, think­ing she was cheat­ed and unloved. She told me that her response to these feel­ings was to refuse sex when he did get around to ask­ing, an inter­est­ing form of pun­ish­ment quaint­ly known as “Cut­ting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.”

I then asked the man for his ver­sion of all of this. He replied: 

“I grew up in a home where you didn’t touch or tell peo­ple you love them. I come home every night. I bring her my pay-cheques. I don’t gam­ble or fool around. That should be enough for her to know that I love her. I don’t mind if she hugs me or kiss­es me, but I for­get to do it to her. I’d real­ly rather watch the Blue Jays.”

I asked him about her rec­ol­lec­tions about their ear­ly dat­ing days. “She’s right,” he replied. “I did do all of those things in the begin­ning. I want­ed her to like me. Once I got her, I fig­ured I could go back to being who I real­ly am.”

Now, as far as intent goes, the guy knew what his game was from square one. He thought she was cute and sexy and fun, he did what he had to do to get her into rela­tion­ship—AND his intent was to have a cute, sexy wife bring him cheezies and beer while he watched hock­ey, prefer­ably for the rest of his life, prefer­ably with­out complaint.

Not being a fool, he didn’t tell her of his intent.

He then said that his cur­rent intent is for her to love him for being a good provider, com­ing home, not screw­ing around, being a good boy.
He’s open about this intent.

She, on the oth­er hand, had, at the time of her mar­riage, a clear and revealed intent, for then, and for the future. 

She want­ed to get mar­ried to a cute, sexy guy who would love to make love all day long. She thought she had met her intent in him. She hadn’t.

Now, she has a new intent.

On the sur­face, it’s “I just want him to acknowl­edge that he’s hurt me.” (Of course we all know she’s hurt­ing her­self, but this arti­cle is about intent …)

When I asked her to dig deep­er into her intent, she said, “I want him to know what it’s like to be home alone all day and then be ignored all night.”

When I asked a third time, she yelled, “I want him to pay! He deceived me! I’m going to get even. I’m never having sex with him again.”

Response Num­ber 3 was the actu­al intent. The oth­er two were polite descrip­tions for pub­lic consumption.

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There used to be a great set of videos of Ben & Jock doing a Relationships workshop. Who knows if they still exist …

I remem­ber one cou­ple fea­tured in the videos. He said that his approach to con­flict was to lock him­self in his room for a long, long time. Even­tu­al­ly, his wife would talk through the door, won­der­ing if he’d died of starvation.

When first asked what his inten­tion was for hid­ing in his room, he said he want­ed his wife to ask him, “What’s wrong?”

She said, “I do that, and he always replies, ‘Noth­ing’.”

Asked to dig a bit deep­er, he then said that his intent was to see how long he could hole up in his room. “I want to make her feel guilty.”

Final­ly, after much back-and-forth, he stat­ed his true intent. He want­ed her to come to him and say, “I’m sor­ry. You are com­plete­ly right, and I am entire­ly wrong.” 

As she quick­ly indi­cat­ed, and as he knew, that was nev­er going to happen.

With the real intent out in the open, he could choose to give up a behav­iour that has no chance of suc­ceed­ing. With­out clar­i­ty of inten­tion, he might con­tin­ue to go through the “hide in the room” game, think­ing, “If she real­ly loved me, she’d know what to do!”

Often, parents whose children are now adults have a need, an intent, to remind their kids that they are the parents.

Right until my moth­er died, my dad would say, “You shouldn’t speak to your moth­er that way.” This was always said when I dis­agreed with my moth­er. In real­i­ty, the lan­guage I used with her was the same as the lan­guage I use when speak­ing with Dar, or with my clients —it’s direct, non-manip­u­la­tive, and clear.

My father’s intent was also clear. He want­ed me to act like “their child,” so, he’d find it nec­es­sary to remind me of “my place.” I would has­ten to add that when my mom died in late 2000, I was a month short of 50.

Another example. I saw one couple twice, the two sessions a year apart.

They told me they had three chil­dren, all boys. The dad says, “I lec­ture my boys all the time, and they nev­er do what they are told. None of the boys is liv­ing up to his poten­tial. They all have dead-end jobs, no rela­tion­ships, live in the base­ment, and yell at their moth­er and me.”

When I asked dad for his intent in lec­tur­ing, I get, “I just want them to be hap­py and get ahead in life.” This begs the ques­tion, “Accord­ing to whom / to what standard?”

I ask again. He replied :“I just want them to get it. I want them to grow up and be considerate.” 

In oth­er words, I want them to be good lit­tle boys and behave “prop­er­ly.”

I press onward, and ask again. He sighed with exasperation.

“I want them to know how tough it is to be their father. They aren’t grate­ful enough for all I did for them.”

One more push.

Final­ly, his real intent. 

“I want them to behave exact­ly as I think they should behave, check with me before they do any­thing, defer to my wish­es, apol­o­gize pro­fuse­ly when I crit­i­cize them and to be ador­ing­ly grate­ful for all my sac­ri­fices.“
He added: “My respon­si­bil­i­ty is to teach them how to be men, accord­ing to what I believe.”

Let me add: the “boys” were 25, 28 and 32 …

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There are many types of hidden intent.

Rage and revenge are often hid­den intents. Like in the first sto­ry, many peo­ple want to get even when they hurt them­selves over the behav­iour of anoth­er. Being “polite,” they may say some­thing like “I just want her to be nicer,” or “I just want him to acknowl­edge me as a person.”

When I hear “just,” I cringe. There’s nothing “just” about it.

Many times, when I ask clients to go deep­er into their intent, they sim­ply present an end­less list of their partner’s sins. Years worth of stuff. I’ll hear, “When my part­ner makes amends for all of this, then I’ll con­sid­er let­ting up. Until then, I’ll just keep complaining.” 

Doesn’t match, at all, with “I just want him to talk to me more.”
It does match with, “I haven’t extract­ed my pound of flesh yet.”

The prob­lem with this is that the inac­cu­rate and mis­per­ceived faults of oth­ers have noth­ing to do with deal­ing with your own stuff. That requires hard work, much delv­ing, let­ting go of decades long habits, and replac­ing dys­func­tion­al behav­iours with ones that work.

People prefer to state shallow intents and pretend they are true.

“I just want my chil­dren to be strong and inde­pen­dent” masks “But I want them always to come home to me so I can tell them what to do.”

“I just want a bet­ter rela­tion­ship” masks “I’m going to make him/her behave by turn­ing him/her into the man/woman s/he ought to be, or else … I’ll threat­en to leave!”

“I just tell her stuff (while blam­ing her for every­thing wrong in his life …) for her own good.” masks “She should know, intu­itive­ly, that I have all the answers regard­ing the way this rela­tion­ship ought to be done. She’d be so much hap­pi­er doing it my way.”

Once we open­ly and hon­est­ly begin to explore and share our inten­tions, we can see how ridicu­lous, manip­u­la­tive and destruc­tive many of the deep ones are. We can then begin to sur­face inten­tions that are sim­ple and direct.

• “My intent is to deep­en my rela­tion­ship with you, by being open and hon­est and vulnerable.”
• “My intent is to own and express my attempts to manip­u­late you.”
• “My intent is to treat you as an equal adult, not as a/an (object, sex object, kid, ene­my, etc.)”

Look, this week, at your inten­tions as you com­mu­ni­cate, as you relate. Go much deep­er than the sur­face intent. See what else might be lurk­ing under the sur­face. Won­der at what penal­ty you’re try­ing to extract. Then, share what you’ve learned. And work toward let­ting go of inten­tions that sep­a­rate and divide.

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