Curiosity, Integrity and Balance

Curiosity, Integrity and Balance — 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.”

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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,” falling out of integri­ty and balance.

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

Let me give you an illustration, from a while back. 

I liked this illus­tra­tion so much I used it in my book, The. Best. Rela­tion­ship. Ever.

If you’ve been read­ing this blog for long, you’ll know that I’ve men­tioned my “old” approach to life–I trace my shift of focus to Octo­ber 1983. 

Before that, I could­n’t trust myself not to get all judge­men­tal and arro­gant with pret­ty much everyone.

My rela­tion­ship with Dar also 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 Dar­bel­la 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. 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:

(I’ll hide the details, to pro­tect the innocent-😉😉)

Dar­bel­la and I belong to a class that meets sev­er­al times a week. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like some of the par­tic­i­pants on the night we nor­mal­ly attend, so this par­tic­u­lar 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, stat­ed 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 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.

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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 to 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 stat­ed 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.

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

1. Your job is to notice how, when and over what you are cre­at­ing emo­tions. 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, to get away from the discomfort.

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

• “I notice you are upset­ting your­self, 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 will 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 were look­ing at the same group of class­mates. I was cre­at­ing judge­ments and dra­ma, she was not. Same peo­ple, dif­fer­ent reaction. 

The dra­ma was mine. I was cre­at­ing it, feed­ing the flames, and mak­ing myself mis­er­able. I stopped as soon as I chose to own my “stuff” and stop myself.

He says with a grin!

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