The Relationship Tango

The relationship tango — the purpose of a relationship is the personal growth of both of the people in the relationship. This flies in the face of the romantic notion that relationships are there to get my needs met. Often, people think that what they see in movies or on the soaps is “real.”

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Let’s take a look at how our rela­tion­ships are indi­ca­tors of our per­son­al development. 

You’ll know that Dar­bel­la and I think that relat­ing is not about rela­tion­ships. (There is no such thing as ‘a rela­tion­ship.’ There’s just two indi­vid­u­als who choose how they are going to relate.)

The purpose of a relationship: the best place to encourage personal growth for both of the people in the relationship.

This flies in the face of the roman­tic notion that rela­tion­ships are there to get my needs met. 

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Often, peo­ple think that what they see in movies or on the soaps is “real.”

That you find your ‘one true love’ through kismet or kar­ma, that you fall deeply and roman­ti­cal­ly in love, and ride off into the sun­set on the gon­do­la of bliss.

Real­i­ty is often much harsh­er, as is evinced by this “much men­tioned but slight­ly inac­cu­rate” sta­tis­tic: there’s a 50% divorce rate – and that’s just for first mar­riages. Sec­ond mar­riages actu­al­ly fare much worse – near­ing 75% failure.

Why?

Because peo­ple who get divorced the first time do not learn the les­son – do not under­stand the pur­pose of a rela­tion­ship. They think they picked the wrong part­ner, and that next time they’ll pick bet­ter.

So, typ­i­cal­ly, they mar­ry the oppo­site of the first schmo (Yid­dish – schmuck) and think, “Great! Right part­ner this time! Now I can real­ly get what I want!”

All they do is end up miserable faster. 

They already know a divorce lawyer, so the 2nd one typ­i­cal­ly ends quick­er. Unless they are stubborn.

All relationships start with romance… the hormone driven start of a pairing.

In my book, This End­less Moment, I wrote that hor­mones are there to get us to breed, and noth­ing more. 

The endor­phin rush felt at the first blush of love is noth­ing more than a drugged state designed to get the two peo­ple to ignore each oth­er’s true nature long enough to cause them to procreate.

This is the real­i­ty of all of our rela­tion­ships, assum­ing that we start­ed them only on the basis of “love, lust, and hormones.” 

Oh sure, we’ll deny that this is what we are doing, but how else to account for the star­tling real­iza­tion, some months in, that my part­ner is not who I thought she or he was?

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All of a sudden, I’m noticing flaws. Flaws!!!

We then enter the Con­flict stage, and that one we all know. It’s when we try to change our part­ner, first through wheedling (‘If you loved me, you’d change!”) then bar­ter­ing (‘I’ll do this for you when you do that for me…’) then black­mail, threats, fights, separations.

All of this is a result of feeling gypped – I didn’t get what I thought I was getting.

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I saw a quote that I wish I’d writ­ten down. It was some­thing to the effect that:

My part­ner is who (s)he is in his or her total­i­ty – every­thing from start to fin­ish.
My part­ner is not just the last thing he or she did.

This is an inter­est­ing thought – and like most things, is para­dox­i­cal in nature.

• First, fights start because of what is hap­pen­ing right now.
• Sec­ond, it is unusu­al, when we fight, not to drag in the kitchen sink – all of the oth­er sup­posed sins of the past. And…
• Third, my part­ner may be exhibit­ing new behav­iour. This does not negate the past behav­iours. It is added to the past behav­iours, cre­at­ing a rich­er picture.

Without belabouring the obvious, the fighting stage is a crucial one. 

Some peo­ple fight forever. 

I remem­ber coun­selling one 60-year-old who had been mar­ried 40 years. In Octo­ber, she stat­ed: “My Christ­mas will be ruined again this year. He won’t hang the lights right.”

I found out:

a) he’d nev­er hung them right
b) she always took that as a sign he didn’t love her
c) she’d berate him and he’d stop talk­ing
d) this had been going on for 40 years AND
e) she’d nev­er once told him how she want­ed the lights hung, because “He knows, and hangs them wrong to spite me!”

They went to the grave fighting.

Oth­ers, like many of our par­ents, (before divorce became social­ly accept­able,) do not fight. They sim­ply live sep­a­rate lives, shar­ing the house and the kids, and act­ing like room­mates with priv­i­leges. This is the stage of apathy.

Or, you get a divorce, learn noth­ing, and do it all over again.

The way out, which we’ll look at in detail next week, is drop­ping the need to be right, let­ting go of the fight­ing, and sim­ply get­ting curious.

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So, back to the thread of this article.

The pur­pose of relat­ing is to deep­en your self-under­stand­ing. That’s it. 

All the rest, includ­ing hav­ing kids, is secondary. 

All the ‘sta­bil­i­ty of the nuclear fam­i­ly’ is so much pro­pa­gan­da – remem­ber the 50% divorce rate? And most of the remain­ing cou­ples, per­haps 45% are stay­ing out of guilt, fear of fail­ure, or just plain fear. The kids sur­vive anyway.

The pur­pose of life is not sim­ply to breed and to die. If there is a pur­pose, it is to deep­en our know­ing. Relat­ing is a per­fect place (ther­a­pist David Schnarch, author of The Pas­sion­ate Mar­riage, calls this a cru­cible) to learn to see myself.

Back before I retired, my clients told me that I was the only per­son who tru­ly saw and accept­ed them. 

This is both true, and sad. 

I see peo­ple as they are because I have no wish for them to be oth­er than they are. 

And, I encour­age every­one to be all that they are – to drag out the scary, juicy, stuck, char­gy, dark, horny, hap­py, depressed parts, and to try them on for size.

I con­tin­ue to do this with­out judge­ment, because I am curi­ous and inter­est­ed in the total­i­ty of their being – not just the polit­i­cal­ly accept­able parts.

My dance with Dar­bel­la is the same. I can­not ever remem­ber wish­ing to change her, nor have I ever judged her. We have fought a few times in our 4 decades years togeth­er, when both of us got stu­pid at the same time, but we turned each fight into an explo­ration, not a battle.

In a sense, we chose to leave conflict behind for co-creativity.

You need to look at your prin­ci­pal rela­tion­ship, or look at how you are keep­ing your­self out of one if you don’t have one. 

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Note: If you are not in a rela­tion­ship, and want to do a much bet­ter job find­ing a part­ner that suits you, have a look at my book, Find Your Per­fect Part­ner. You’ll find the tools you need to engage your brain!

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I’m not advo­cat­ing for mar­riage. Many of my friends have prin­ci­pal rela­tion­ships at a dis­tance, or with friends. The point is, each per­son need to be in con­stant con­tact with at least one per­son – a dance and dia­log where I get called when I get off track.

In my view, it is not sen­si­ble to be in a rela­tion­ship that I am not at least neu­tral about. If I am angry and judge­men­tal most of the time, why am I there? I need to move on.

If I am at neu­tral, and my part­ner and I have (mutu­al­ly) made a pact of self-explo­ration (usu­al­ly with the help of a ther­a­pist) I must let go of con­flict and choose curiosity. 

The rea­son for drop­ping con­flict and choos­ing curios­i­ty is sim­ple – con­flict steals my ener­gy. I end up rail­ing against my part­ner, blam­ing him or her for every­thing lame and weak, and stu­pid in my life.

This is alto­geth­er too convenient.

Mon­i­tor your­self and your gut sense of your prin­ci­pal rela­tion­ship. You do not have for­ev­er, and apa­thy and lame accep­tance is sim­ply that – lame.

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