Learning by Letting Go — Set Yourself Free Series

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Learn­ing by Let­ting Go — we need to work through our issues, and come to a place of under­stand­ing and ele­gance. Some­times, when we reach that place, some let­ting go is required.

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This week’s question:

“So could I please ask you to talk about divorce, talk about heal­ing and recov­ery from a bro­ken dream, how it could be a chance of growth and development…”

I was check­ing out my book­case, and redis­cov­ered a series of books on Mori­ta ther­a­py — a style devel­oped in Japan. The style embraces both West­ern approach­es and Zen Bud­dhism. The book I picked up is one of sev­er­al by David K. Reynolds, titled, Play­ing Ball on Run­ning Water.

In Morita Therapy, clients are like Zen students; as students, they are provided with exercises and descriptions we might call “functional understandings.” It’s a truthful way of looking at therapy — the person is in therapy to gain a better understanding and a different approach to how life works.

Any­way, I was brows­ing the book, read­ing sec­tions I had high­light­ed, and came upon a sec­tion rel­e­vant to “manip­u­la­tion.” There was a sto­ry about a woman was angry over her hus­band’s drink­ing and smok­ing — and had learned through Mori­ta ther­a­py that we can­not con­trol oth­er people.

– So, when she began to refuse to buy beer for her hus­band on her shop­ping trips, he said noth­ing, but she felt guilty about her efforts to influ­ence his drink­ing.

Her mis­un­der­stand­ing was in con­fus­ing effort with results. There is noth­ing wrong with try­ing to influ­ence oth­ers. We do it all the time. This book is my attempt to influ­ence the way you think about cer­tain things, and to influ­ence what you do. Almost every­thing we say is an effort to influ­ence oth­ers, at the very least to influ­ence them to lis­ten to us. Try­ing to affect oth­er peo­ple is a nat­ur­al, every­day aspect of human life. There is noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with it, how­ev­er con­ceal­ing these efforts, using phys­i­cal force, or using our influ­ence to obtain cer­tain goals may be wrong in many cir­cum­stances. On the oth­er hand, to be attached to or to be obsessed with the effects of our actions to influ­ence oth­ers is a mis­take. Like any behav­ior, actions to change anoth­er per­son should be under­tak­en with full atten­tion and whole­heart­ed­ly. But then we must leave it up to the per­son to decide whether to change or not.

I am indif­fer­ent to whether you under­stand and accept the life prin­ci­ples in this book. Some of you will find them intrigu­ing and imme­di­ate­ly ben­e­fi­cial. Oth­ers will reject them out of hand. That is your busi­ness. My suc­cess or fail­ure lies not in whether I have con­vinced you of the wis­dom of Mori­ta’s method, but in the qual­i­ty of my pre­sen­ta­tion. If I have writ­ten with full atten­tion, as well as I can, then the out­come is of inter­est to me but not cru­cial­ly impor­tant.

It is the same thing for the young house­wife. She is quite appro­pri­ate­ly con­cerned with her hus­band’s prob­lem. Smok­ing and exces­sive drink­ing are very like­ly to short­en his life. She has every right to attempt to influ­ence his habits. She has been quite clear with him about her pur­pos­es. But there her attach­ment must stop. Whether he stops drink­ing and smok­ing is his con­cern. She is per­son­al­ly inter­est­ed in the out­come of her efforts, but she must not judge them in terms of the out­come. She does need to know if he stops in order to know whether she needs to con­tin­ue try­ing to influ­ence him to quit. But she must leave up to her hus­band, and him alone, the deci­sion about how to respond to her behav­ior.

She can­not con­trol him; she must not com­mit her­self to con­trol­ling him. But, for her part, she is respon­si­ble for doing what she can to achieve her pur­pose. Again, her pur­pose is not to con­trol him; her pur­pose is influ­enc­ing, not the resul­tant effect.
David K Reynolds, Play­ing Ball on Run­ning Water, Pgs. 30–32″

Everything I write is about influence — it’s about me encouraging you to begin and continue a most interesting walk. 

My respon­si­bil­i­ty stops with my writ­ing. I influ­ence through what I say and do, and you choose to respond or not.

As to mar­riage, relat­ing and divorce, the un-learn­ing is: we must not, as adults, spend our lives try­ing to “make” oth­er adults under­stand, change, behave, love us, whatever.

I can’t stress this enough: You must not treat adults like kids.

You have a right to your opinions, and you have a right to express your needs and wants (to influence.) You have no right to demand that others do your bidding. And vice versa.

Mar­riages fail because the par­tic­i­pants can­not solve the “manip­u­la­tion pow­er strug­gle.” Both par­ties want the oth­er to cave in, and nei­ther par­ty is will­ing to budge. 

The fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences become increas­ing­ly appar­ent, and are not seen as “inter­est­ing,” but threat­en­ing. This pro­gres­sion from fan­ta­sy to real­i­ty hap­pens in every long-term rela­tion­ship, as the part­ners move from falling in love (romance) to con­flict.

Once we’re in “conflict,” we begin to see what Reynolds is describing, above: the confusion of effort with results. 

Let’s look at mar­i­tal con­flict. And, let’s agree on one oth­er thing: no one on this plan­et, repeat, no one, was brought up like you. Not your sib­lings, not your neigh­bours, and def­i­nite­ly not your partner.

Despite this, I know you des­per­ate­ly want to believe that every­one sees the world just like you do. You assume when you spout some gem of “wis­dom,” oth­ers are dis­agree­ing or resist­ing out of spite:

“Why can’t I wear a skirt that starts 3 inch­es below my navel, with a hem up to my crotch? All my friends are doing it!“
And dad replies, “Not in my house, son!”

You must believe that everyone thinks the same, because that’s what you keep saying, as you fight, 

• “Every­body knows…”
• “No one else has to put up with…”
• “All the oth­er wives (hus­bands)…”

And all of this “knowl­edge” you think you poss­es is based upon one thing: what you’ve learned to be com­fort­able with.

You were brought up by your parents and “tribes” with a ton of generalizations.

While I seem to be ham­mer­ing the same nail, what I’m try­ing to get across is this: there is no “one way” to see any­thing. I have my way of see­ing and being, and you have yours. We can talk, and you can hear what I say and reflect upon it, and maybe even you’ll choose to agree with me.

Even if you do, however, how you understand and apply what I say will be absolutely unique to you.

Now, if I go into a rela­tion­ship not under­stand­ing any of this, what I’m going to do is to assume that my way of under­stand­ing how to “cou­ple” is not only the “right” way, but the “only” way — the uni­ver­sal way. 

Thus, “Every­body knows…” 

Fun­ny thing, though. My part­ner believes the same thing about his or her world view. “Every­body knows…” The con­flict stage in rela­tion­ship is two peo­ple, each of them think­ing they are “right,” des­per­ate­ly try­ing to get their part­ner (the only per­son on the whole plan­et that’s out of step) to change.

Anger in relationships is directly attributable, every time, to both parties demanding change from their partner, and not getting it, while absolutely refusing to change anything about themselves..

Once you reach the con­flict stage, sev­er­al forks in the road appear. in 95% of the cas­es, there are three options that arise:

• stay­ing and fighting,
• leav­ing and divorc­ing, or
• stay­ing but shift­ing one’s per­spec­tive to apathy.

The 4th option, chosen by maybe 5% of couples, is to stop trying to be right and to simply accept your partner as he or she is. And then, with mutual agreement and humour, to, as Reynolds says, above, exert influence without attachment to the result.

For many of of us, it may take more than one “mar­riage” to “get” this idea. Unre­al expec­ta­tions lead many of us to get mar­ried for all the wrong rea­sons. Those of you that have read my books and free­bies will know that I have been mar­ried 3 times, briefly in Uni­ver­si­ty in the 60s — ah, the life of a hip­pie — and for 9 years in the 70s to ear­ly 80s.

Pri­or to mar­riage # 2,” I remem­ber decid­ing to mar­ry her because she looked good and I’d invest­ed a year of time into the relationship.

This despite my hav­ing end­ed our dat­ing rela­tion­ship 3 times, each time think­ing “We’re not even remote­ly compatible.”

I mar­ried her any­way, think­ing, “There’s some stuff about her that I like, and the rest I can get her to change.”

When we reached the con­flict stage, I took us to ther­a­py, and she said, “There’s noth­ing I would change.” I was angry, she was apa­thet­ic. There, we stalled.

Final­ly, I decid­ed that “stuck” was­n’t cut­ting it for me. Set­tling for an apa­thet­ic rela­tion­ship lost its appeal. I made the deci­sion that stay­ing stuck for 50 years and then dying was not exact­ly the most inter­est­ing way to live my life. So, I end­ed it.

I was in ther­a­pist train­ing when all of this hap­pened, and I decid­ed that I want­ed for myself the kind of rela­tion­ship that I was encour­ag­ing (and teach­ing) my clients to have — one of mutu­al respect, curios­i­ty, non-manip­u­la­tion (but lots of influ­enc­ing!) and inti­mate dialogue.

I decided to find someone who wanted to commit to self-exploration as she related with me (tall order, I know…) and.. I found Darbella!

Dar­bel­la and I have known each oth­er since Sept. of 1982 — (Zowie, 42 years this past Sep­tem­ber!!! An amaz­ing and fun ride, one I’m grate­ful for each day…) and this is her first mar­riage. Hmm. Maybe she should be writ­ing this article… 

We agreed ear­ly on (date one, actu­al­ly) that we would fol­low the 4th option, and work through our issues by learn­ing about, accept­ing, and under­stand­ing our­selves, as opposed to try­ing (and fail­ing) to change each other.

So, in answer to the question of the week, divorce, in and of itself, teaches us nothing other than how to exit a bad relationship.

The learn­ing comes after­wards, and per­haps also in the process of leaving.

The les­son I learned was that attempt­ing to change anoth­er per­son into the per­son I want­ed to be with is the height of arrogance. 

To choose a part­ner who already is who I want to be in rela­tion­ship with (who, as I see it, is walk­ing a sim­i­lar path) is wisdom. 

And as I wrote above, the key to escap­ing con­flict is to work through the pow­er strug­gles and con­flict togeth­er, notic­ing when either of us is try­ing to force the oth­er to change. 

We notice, we talk about it, and we accept, ever again, respon­si­bil­i­ty for our­selves and our­selves alone.

I learned that I could find a part­ner who would accept me as I am, for what I am, and in that rela­tion­ship I found the courage and the strength to sim­ply be that per­son.

When I jam myself up (and, of course, I still do, occa­sion­al­ly ) Dar­bel­la just laughs and waits until I get over myself. And I pro­vide the same non-judg­men­tal sup­port for her.

We influence, without attachment to the result. For me, I have learned patience and I have faith in grace.

And you know what? I wake up each morn­ing and go to bed each night thank­ful, both for the chance, day by day, to meet myself, com­ing and going, and espe­cial­ly, each day I am thank­ful for Dar­bel­la.

For me, she embod­ies the depth of the grace of the uni­verse. That which is fer­vent­ly sought is often found. That which is required appears when one is ready. We walk our soli­tary paths together. 

For me, that’s enough.

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