Dr. Bill's Blog: Insight on maintaining healthy relationships and living a more fulfilled life

A Code for Creating Love

For couples, the development of moral processes and belief systems helps relationships run more smoothly and provides an important steadying influence. To develop our moral code we must question, scrutinize, evaluate, and enunciate those values we hold to be important. These earnest efforts to create shared values are the bulwark of relationship stability. Establishing values we agree upon is like reaching level ground where a relationship can find its balance and keep moving forward.

Lasting love is supported best by principles, opinions, feelings, ethics, and morals that represent what is important to both people—and that both people are willing to make a priority. As I sit with couples who are fighting about an issue that seems so crucial at the time, I often say, “What’s more important, your relationship or being right?” They usually stop fighting, because what I am saying rings true. They see that they’ve gotten lost in their own hurt, in being self-righteous, in trying to win. When writing a code for a relationship, we can set rules of engagement, like how to show respect and concern during discussions and how to include different points of view, that help keep our viewpoints from diverging into conflict.

AT PEACE WITH OURSELVES

Love over time grows from understanding two things: how we have been shaped by our life experience, and how we interact with our partner in regard to his or her feelings and needs. To put it another way, lasting love arises from a deep knowledge and acceptance of who we are and who we are with. Only when we come to this knowledge—and accept, even forgive, the wrongs of our past—can we take responsibility for the outcome of our own lives. We cease blaming others for our misfortunes and clear a space where love can thrive.

Melanie Klein, who worked closely with Sigmund Freud and contributed many classic works to the field of psychology, wrote:

A good relation to ourselves is a condition for love, tolerance and wisdom towards others. This good relation to ourselves has . . . developed in part from a friendly, loving and understanding attitude towards other people, namely, those who meant much to us in the past, and our relationship to whom has become part of our minds and personalities. If we have become able, deep in our unconscious minds, to clear our feelings to some extent towards our parents of grievances, and have forgiven them for the frustrations we had to bear, then we can be at peace with ourselves and are able to love others in the true sense of the word.

The words of Melanie Klein ring as true now as when she wrote them so many decades ago. She goes on to say that:

Part of the process of loving someone is to make peace with ourselves, our history, and our upbringing. To find those inevitable similarities and differences is the beginning stage of relating to another person without losing who we are and what is truly essential about us. How love is made not only involves how we behave towards our partner but how we are towards ourselves. How can we love someone else when we have no love to give?

When we can weave together what we need to do for ourselves with what we need to give to and get from our partner, we create a richer, more satisfying, and ultimately more contented life. What we need to do for ourselves is to create our own self-esteem, advance in our work or career, and take care of our health and our personal issues. What we need to give to and get from our partner is love, affection, comfort, support, sex, and companionship. When successfully married couples are asked the secret of their success, invariably they answer, “It takes work.” It does take work, but we must remember that it is love’s work, and when we give ourselves to it we are rewarded with sweet serenity and a sense that love will last because we make it so. We make love last when we create a vision for our relationship that we live by and we do the work of sticking to our promises. Then we know we can reach out to each other in difficult times and help each other and be good to each other, happy together as the years go by.

Falling in love is a mystery, but loving that same person over a lifetime is the ultimate personal challenge. For love to last, vital elements need to come together: an ongoing sex life, a satisfying lifestyle, the ability to connect deeply through compassionate honesty, even just working out a way to get through daily life. Lasting love requires that each person be fully committed and willing to do the work that produces an emotional connection. Both partners must feel safe and secure, so that they can express themselves without judgment or criticism. Their daily conversation must contain active compassion, empathy, understanding, and kindness.

For Your Inter-Reflection

How Love Is Made

1. What do you like about your relationship? When you are the most happy with your partner, what is he or she doing?

2. What would you like to change about your relationship? When you are the least happy with your partner, what is he or she doing?

3. Can you identify the confluence of pain in your relationship?

4. What about your relationship would you like to be different from the way you grew up?

5. Try writing an ethical code for your relationship. Ask your partner to do the same, then share your thoughts. Work toward agreeing on the principles that you feel are essential to maintain peace and harmony in your relationship.

6. Make a wish list for your future together.

Exerpted from Happy Together by Bill Cloke

 

 

Peeling Back the Layers

So, I'm in session with a man who is recounting a story about how angry he was with his wife because she told him that she would call him after her meeting and then didn't call until 11:30 pm. They are currently separated because he decided at one point that he was in love with someone else and told her about it. After he actually moved out and in the moment where he was about to remove his wedding ring, it hit him like a thunder bolt that he had made a gigantic mistake. He rushed back to her begging for forgiveness. He began a campaign to win her back.

How then do we understand how his process of thinking he was in love with a woman he didn't really know and how he was not in love with his wife whom he knew or at least thought he did, only to discover that he actually didn't know how he really felt about her? If this sounds convoluted, well it is. This is the Rubik's Cube of psychological dilemmas. To unravel all the components to the mystery of his behavior we needed to dig down into the layers of his personality.

As he recounted his story about why he was angry with her he described getting in his car and driving by her apartment. I asked why and he told me that he wanted to make sure she was alright. As we pursued this driving expedition it turned out that he didn't drive over to see if she was OK but to see if she was home and just didn't call him. This tip off inevitably lead us to his core issues. He didn't feel important, he never did growing up. Ah ha! Now we could proceed upward.

Layers: First hurt, then anger, then a paranoid response, "she's messing with my mind," we move downward to the grandiose response, I am the good one, I will go by and check on her, to abandonment terror and ultimately to the feeling of being unimportant and unlovable. Quite a mix.

We talk some more. It comes out that he felt unimportant during their marriage because of her devotion to her career. She had talked about relocating if some of the offers she was getting came through. His work made it very difficult for him to relocate. This feeling he had that her career was more important to her than he was started an emotional chain reaction to the point where he became enveloped in a fantasy about another woman who he believed would love him and only him. Breaking down the fantasy lead us again to the same core issue, albeit many layers down.

Doing psychological archaeology is the act of sifting through our reactions to significant others in a way that not only let's us know who we are and what has affected us but how to use this material to connect. Making intimate connections is the goal of all healthy interactions. Understanding the layers that lie beneath our first reaction allows us to uncover our own yearning for love and intimacy. Obviously, we should not try to do this at home. We ultimately will know when we cannot sort out the conflicts and dilemmas and chances are it is more complex than you know. Understanding our own unique set of layers enables us to know who we are and who we are with.

Should We Blame The Parents?

The problem of blaming the parents remains a very difficult one for psychotherapists and patients because our need to be loyal to our parents naturally leads us to lay the responsibility for our problems on some essential flaw within us. But the fact is that though parents try to do their best, they may not provide the necessary emotional connections, support, or nurturing we need and as a result may unintentionally harm us. Most parents are doing what they know and what they learned from their own parents, who might have been very limited in their emotional resources and even abusive. When we can understand that a series of negative experiences is what has created our negative self-image, we can eventually build a true sense of who we are. Not that we must reject or even confront our parents, but in accepting them as human beings we humanize them and ourselves.

To develop emotional health we need to understand that self-blaming and the shame it causes can be toxic to us and to our relationships. The key point in looking at the role our caretakers played in our identity formation, or the lack of it, is not to blame them or use them to excuse our behavior, but simply to see clearly how they affected us. Understanding our history not only helps us alleviate self-blame, criticism, depression, anxiety, and violence, but also provides important insights into the workings of our present intimate relationships.

Whatever we do not understand about ourselves and our past will be transported into our present. If we deny our essential wounds, they will surface without our knowledge and drive a wedge into our relationships with others. Our understanding of what has shaped us allows us to make contact with the love that lies just beneath. Understanding what we feel, want, and need makes it more possible to be intimate with our mate. This awareness allows us to distinguish between ourselves and our mate so when disputes do arise we can understand what our contribution to the problem actually is.

When psychologists ponder the psyche, they are most interested in studying the causes of sychological conflicts and what promotes healing. Their main focus is on what it means to be healthy, and specifically what may be preventing people from actualizing their potential or their true selves. The
reason we look to family and childhood as a basis for psychological health is that children spend so much time with their parents and siblings when they are the most sensitive, dependent, and vulnerable. If we can take the negative out of blame and connect the cause with the effect, then we shift from self-blaming to a cause-and-effect reality that’s based on the experiences that have made us the way we are.

Leon Wurmser writes in his classic study The Mask of Shame that the child is an “omnipotent masochist” because he feels responsible for causing his own pain. If his parents were cold and withholding, he experiences this as “I am inadequate and unlovable.” If his parents were angry and rejecting, he believes that he is bad and useless. If his parents punished him for being angry or left him alone, he will be forced to hold in his anger and direct it at himself in a quest for perfection and redemption in his parents’ eyes. If his parents were fragile and he happens to be angry, this fragility might cause him to withhold his anger or deny it altogether.

In an article in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Gershen Kaufman writes, “Even though the aftermath of shame can be severe, the way to a self-affirming identity yet lies in the deeply human capacity to be fully restored, in the knowledge that one individual can restore the interpersonal bridge with another however late it may be and in the awareness that human relationships are reparable. Through such restoring of the bridge, shame is transcended.” These wise lines express the central theme of what it means to be human. When we experience concern, interest, and caring, we’re affected positively, and this is what restores our true nature. If it’s uncaring people who inflict wounds, then we need loving people to heal them. In this process we see what love and care from others means to our lives and for our very soul.

This is an excerpt from the book Happy Together by Dr. Bill Cloke.

Happiness is An Inside Job

The idea of “happiness,” like the concept of “love,” turns up all over the place in literature, in media of all shapes and sizes, even in scripture. It’s as elusive as it is ubiquitous; it seems impossible to pin down exactly what it is to be happy, and yet we know it unmistakably when we are. And if we look closely, some patterns emerge. Skiing down a slope after the first snow, looking into a lover’s eyes after a night of lovemaking, inventing something that will help others, completing a task that has been long and hard—in all these moments, we know we are part of something that engages our deepest being, in harmony with others, with our environment, and with ourselves.

We also know that we can’t sustain happiness by effort; it is capricious and sensitive and by definition exists moment to moment. We don’t get there by trying to. In a sense, we don’t get there at all: as the journalist Sydney Harris wisely observed, “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” Eleanor Roosevelt put it another way: “Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.” We stumble upon it, or it steals up on us, while we’re doing other things—such as the work of creating and sustaining love.

In my work with couples, I have found that love and happiness are one and the same when we feel deeply understood and accepted by the ones we love. This does not mean that our partners are somehow responsible for making us happy; just the opposite. Before we can be happy together, we need to be happy within ourselves. My colleague and friend Lisa Cypers Kamen, who is a happiness expert, likes to say that happiness is an inside job, and so, we will see, is love.

Conscious Connection

Susan Johnson writes in her book The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Creating Connection that adult love is “an emotional tie with an irreplaceable other who provides a secure base from which to confront the world and a safe haven, a source of comfort, care, and protection.” Building that bond is a complex task—though, ironically, the trick is to do the work it takes to make it simple. It asks us to come to a deep understanding of who we are and who we are with—to look not just at each other but within ourselves to see the true source of our differences, our longings, and our gifts to each other. In doing this, we’re not only building a connection with our own inner life but also communicating this knowledge to those we love, which inevitably leads us toward a deeper and more lasting connection.

An important facet of long-term relationships is the commitment couples make to maintain that connection with each other. Part of what it means to love another person is to accept that we are intimately bound to each other, not only because we have a basic need to be loved and feel connected, but because we have made a commitment to persevere. The deeper our commitment, the greater the likelihood that love will remain alive and vital. Lasting love is made from the concerted effort of two people crafting their own unique relationship from the sweat and toil of daily life and from all the difficulties, conflicts, and hardships that arise in sharing a life together.

Being truly happy together is no simple matter. It requires that we be free from guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, depression and emotional blocks. Can we love in a state of terror or sadness? Can we be happy if we are in conflict with our mate? The obvious answer is “no.” To love is to free ourselves, to know something of ourselves, to experience true acceptance—not so easy to produce on demand.

To make love that lasts, we must forge a high-energy emotional bond with the strength to withstand the inevitable storms, then cultivate methods to keep it strong. Knowing how to reprocess a lost connection is an essential skill for keeping love alive. Creating and maintaining an enduring connection takes energy and focus, but the miracle is that love can last and become even more satisfying over time.

Equally essential is the ability to form strong attachments in the first place, since from them we build relationships that are safe and secure. Safety and security are the cornerstones of lasting love; they allow us to open up about our secrets, our feelings, and our fears. In a safe and secure relationship, we can find the space to know ourselves and each other in the way that lasting love requires.

For more information on happiness check out my book website at www.happytogetherbook.com

Virtual Dating

Let’s face it, internet dating is a bit dicey. Sure it’s the new town hall and it certainly is a place to meet eligible people. But as we pour over the myriad of glowing profiles in our quest to find a suitable person, we soon find these sometimes aggravating patterns. One more profile that touts long walks on the beach and candle lit dinners and I am ready to lose my lunch. What really irks me about online dating is the creep factor. It’s a perfect place for guys to prey on lonely women by saying they want a committed relationship but really just want to hook up and move on. Truth be told, we just don’t really know who we are really getting online because it's a great venue for making stuff up about ourselves and we can still be anonymous. It doesn’t mean we should not try to find someone online, we just have to be careful.

So, how can we sift through all the false information to find the true right person for us? There are some simple rules we can follow to tilt the odds a bit in our favor. First off, don’t believe anything you read, seeing is believing. It's common practice as we all know to lie about our age, fluff up or finer qualities and make like we are the living embodiment of the American dream. Of course we all want to put our best foot forward, but buyer beware, there may be more to the picture than meets the eye.

Some actual ways of knowing someone has everything to do with where they’ve been. Some things to think about might be where and who do they come from? What is their education, career, goals in life? Who do they most respect? What are the events that have shaped them? What are they like when they are angry? Do they talk negatively about their previous relationships?  

Ultimately, none of these factors can compare to who someone really is in the clinches. Conflict resolution, negativity and defenses are the make or break issues over the long haul. We can meet the most fetching or handsome person and the two of you can have everything in common, but if you get into it with them and they go for the jugular, you won’t be with them or you won’t be you if you do. So, really it’s all about whether they can handle a good fight constructively and what their general outlook on life is.

One thing we don't usually read about in a profile is whether they are self critical, depressed, anxious or bipolar. Our relationship with ourselves is the template for how we are with others and it can be well hidden online. If we hate ourselves how in the world are we not going to hate who we are with? If our mother or father were a nightmare and we haven’t come to terms with it, there is going to be hell to pay down the road. Do they have they ability to hang in there when times are tough, will they be there for you when you need them? No matter how a relationship begins it’s what we make it into that really counts.

So, what have we learned from all this meandering here? Relationships are complicated. It takes time for all the personal stuff to rise to the surface. We need to see how they will be during difficult times and how they resolve issues inside and out, or put another way, from within and between. There are certainly many aspects of a person that will make them known to us over time. Time is the key factor for the internet set. Trust is earned, respect is created from who we are and love is an activity. For all these factors to be present in a love relationship we have to be patient.

So, when you are reading the profiles, it is a good to remember that this is someone’s fantasy about themselves and who they truly want to be, but we do need to know where the rubber meets the road. Are they really that way or is it just a shtick that they think will lure us into believing that they really can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Who may actually show up may be quite different than their publicity page or what we refer to as their profile. Not that there are not many people who are totally being true to themselves but we never really know if that dog can hunt.

Here are some tips to good dating.

1. Can they show up on time?
2. Are they respectful?
3. Do they have a decent sense of humor?
4. Are they willing to talk about themselves in ways that are not flattering?
5. Do they have good relationships, friends, family?
6. Do their ex-wives or husbands like them and are they speaking to their children?
7. How do they define themselves, in true terms?
8. Are they educated or employed?
9. How negative or defensive do they seem?
10. Are the plants in their home still alive?

How A Good Fight Can Save Your Relationship

Lannie and Dave were out for breakfast one morning and suddenly wham! Without warning, their mood flipped from light hearted to anger in a split second. They were in a fight. He had picked up his cell phone and answered it. She went ballistic. Why? Because they had an agreement about no cell phones at meal time.  They both had stressful jobs so meals were all about connecting.

Dave: What?

Lannie: We had an agreement and you broke it.

Dave: Geez, lighten up, big deal, I had to take the call.  

Lannie: If you would keep your promises I wouldn’t have to be this way.

Dave: Hey, most of the time I do and the minute I don’t do it exactly, you have a fit.

Lannie: You're so unbelievably selfish.

Dave: You’re such a nag.

They went downhill from there. Can you guess as to what went wrong in this interchange? Basically everything. They were defensive, critical and stubbornly held on to their positions. Why would they do this at the expense of their relationship? Ah, the paradox? We want to have a good relationship but alas, the forces within will not permit it. Let me explain.

We live in a world within that in many ways was determined when we were very young. Usually the systems we build to cope early on are the culprit later on. In other words what saved us then is killing us now. How so? Well, we can’t see it but our system developed those skills because as children we could not bear the pain, so our psyche came in to help us out. Here it is. All children and that means 100% of all children respond the same way to the same conditions. If they felt too distant from their parents they will try to make up the difference by being perfect to bring them closer. Being perfect does not go unnoticed by the child who feels less than the perfect idealized self in his or her head. He therefore devalues his true self in favor of the self that he feels is more acceptable.

Often when couples fight their early traumas are colliding with each other except they don’t know it. It’s what I call the confluence of pain. When couples have no clue as to what is causing their argument they wind up in emotional cul-de-sacs that spiral round and round with no end in sight.

Cut to breakfast with Dave and Lanni and we see these issues rearing their ugly head in the form of how Dave couldn’t own up to what he had done and defended. Lanni for her part was miffed that he had not kept his promise but was not letting him off the hook. To have acknowledged her would be like confirming his worst fear, that he was inadequate. For her to let him off the hook would mean that she was giving in. Now we’re getting somewhere. Taking this idea forward to what a good fight might look like, we can use another scenario that would not include their deeper issues.

Lannie: We had a deal to not talk on the phone during mealtime.

Dave: You’re right, I’m sorry. I understand and agree that it is important to have this time together. It’s just that sometimes I get compulsive about the phone and can’t help myself.

Lannie: I can see that. How could I remind you without making you feel criticized?

Dave: Just tell me that you love me.

Lannie: You’ve got it, I love you.

End of story. In real life it’s more of a struggle but the bare bones are there. To fight well, we need to feel that at the end of it we are closer than we were before the fight. To clear up misunderstandings, affirm the other person and find solutions are the natural ingredients of good conflict resolution. That something has been cleared up, that some truths were exposed, that we know something more about the person or we have unburdened ourselves of something that was in the way are means to an end toward intimacy.  

Good fights are like professional boxing, there are rules. No hitting below the belt, no rabbit punches, no yelling, taunting, name calling or swearing. These are the basics. Take the time to cool off, make sure you acknowledge the other person, define the problem, find out what each one of you can do to make it better and then push for production. This is what works. So, why can’t we do it? It’s because fighting is complicated. There are many layers and levels of pain and defenses that can easily be a part of the mix. That’s why we need to see anger as informative but not expressive. Anger tells us that something is hurting us or frustrating us. Is it old or new?

A good fight can lead to a stronger connection when we know what we are really fighting about and what is actually at the bottom of our disagreement. If we grew up in a critical environment we will naturally be more sensitive to anything that feels like criticism. If we feel like we are stupid because we were told we were and our partner makes us feel that way, defenses will immediately occur to protect us.

All good fights are fought fairly and after both people have cooled down and reflected about what was bothering them. This does not mean it won’t start out angrily. Anger is normal. It’s what we do with  anger that matters most. It’s not what we say so much as how we say it. If we can deliver the message by taking the other person into consideration we will deliver the meaning differently than from our sense of entitlement to rage. After all they hurt us and they must pay. Not if you want a relationship.

Truth be told all good relationships begin with the one we have with ourselves. If we are self critical we will be critical of our mate. If we are self loathing we will end up loathing our mate. On it goes. Resolving our inner antagonism goes a long way toward building an outer harmony.  

All good relationships whether internally or in the outside world operate the same way. Compassion, understanding, respect and empathy works and criticism, defensiveness, contempt and shutting down don’t. The struggle is to create a balance between what we need to do for ourselves to make us feel fulfilled and what we need from our loved ones to feel filled up. That we matter, that kindness counts, and if we are to be truly loving with our mate we must first be internally accepting. It’s self acceptance that creates a place for love to come in and go out. The more we are able to release ourselves from what binds us, the more we listen to the feelings, needs and concerns of our mate, the more we will be truly happy together.  

Some tips:

• Adjust our expectations to fit with reality. If it’s not working it’s probably not realistic.
• Be true to your word. Keeping promises makes your life work better.
• Everyone counts including you. Everyone matters.
• Never repress or express anger. Take time to look deeper.
• Never assume. Always check them out.
• Almost nothing is personal.
• Listening is key.
• Acknowledge first, then make your point.
• Don’t hide your feelings, put them on the table, but with compassion.
• Ambivalence and alienation are normal. Talking about it makes it go away.

We all want good relationships but find them to be at times difficult, vexing and unnerving. Yet, we crave closeness and love. In the struggle to find it and maintain it we inevitably become better people and ultimately learn more about ourselves. In the end it is better to get it out then hold it in, what we don’t say is held within and creates distance between couples. So, armed with a healthy process we have the opportunity to create a new intimacy with every fight. Fight on. 

For more insight on creating and maintaining a happy relationship, check out Dr. Bil's new book:
Happy Together: Creating a Lifetime of Connection, Commitment, and Intimacy

 

What Is Intimacy?

There are two major components to feeling intimate. First there
is intimacy with ourselves: the personal intimacy that comes from
being  familiar  with  our  own  inner  truths,  our  dreams,  beliefs,
feelings, thoughts, wishes, and desires. Second, there is intimacy
with our partner: the connection we cultivate when we bring this
personal  process  into  our  primary  relationship. This model  for
relationship  intimacy  includes  emotional  availability,  empathy,
care-taking, tender responsiveness, and bearing ambivalence during
difficult times. How we are with ourselves and how we relate to our
partner is a critical part of the dance between our inner and outer
worlds, an interplay that can either enhance or inhibit our capacity
to be happy together.

Intimate activity can take many forms, from giving each other
the freedom to explore individual interests to developing mutual
values, hopes, and dreams. Intimacy that is created from an open
dialogue about our inner and outer worlds ultimately teaches us
about ourselves and who we are as people. As we develop a language
for our relationship by expressing our feelings and thoughts, we
meld our two separate worlds into one whole.

A loving relationship arises from attending to our own thoughts
and feelings and to those of our partner. From this process we
produce shared values, beliefs, feelings, and interests. To reveal our
true self in the presence of another in this way, if done with care,
can be enlivening, enlightening, and joyful. What could be more
satisfying than understanding with greater compassion because we
know someone better? But to achieve this kind of contentment both
in our relationship and within ourselves involves an evolution of
understanding. It is a process, not a short-term goal. We hear the
adage that it’s not the destination that counts, but the journey. There
is no point where we have “arrived,” but a real sense of moving up a very long stream. Harmony comes from shining insight into places along the way, and with that light removing obstructions
block our ability to love deeply and intimately.

Creating intimacy is a lot like building a house. We start with a solid
foundation of truth, acceptance, and reality; we lay out the rooms
of our desires, fantasies, wants, and needs; we frame the windows to
our soul, wire in our emotional connections, add the hardware of
values, joy, and sexuality, and join them all together to create a home.
The raw materials for our building are drawn from a dialogue about
what we want, need, and value about ourselves and our mate.

The dialogue of intimacy, as we’ve seen, is about knowing who
we are and what we want from life together and making agreements
based  on  realistic  expectations  and  shared  values.  

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy
and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.
— Carolyn Heilbrun

Only Love

Love is what makes the world go around. It brings happiness, hope, possibility and redemption. At the same time it can break our heart, make us angry, even revengful. How can the same emotion turn us in completely opposite emotional directions? In my work I have observed such tenderness and alternately have seen the most ruthless behavior, all in the name of love. Go figure.

Love takes us all the way down into the deepest darkest regions of our particular forest. Whatever we have suffered with in our past will be stimulated in a love relationship. I can see a patient for years and never get a squeak until their spouse comes in. Suddenly, an invisible switch gets thrown and out pops a never before seen fire breathing godzilla like creature spewing rage and vindictiveness all over the room. As I sit in stunned disbelief I am struck by the power of love. When we are alone we are working on about 500 watts of power but when the loved one enters the room we switch to another system and suddely we are in a 10,000 watt environment. Everything gets touchy and can explode in a nano second.

The other night I am working with a couple and suddenly out pours a slew of criticisms. I'm thinking to myself, well that's not going to produce love and affection from his mate. So why is he acting this way? I dig deeper. I say to him that it feels to me like he is trying to tell his mate that he doesn't feel like she really cares about him. He looks at me with a dazed expression on his face and in a whisper says, "yes, that is how I feel." How did we get there?  The answer is: there is always a reason for behavior, we just have to find it.

So what can we do about this seeming contradiction between loving someone and then behaving like we hate them? Is there truly a fine line between love and hate? I think it is a matter of distinction. The distinction between loving someone and how we have been loved, between how we want to be loved and how we are being loved, between treating some like we have been treated or treating them in a completely different way, like someone we truly care about.

As we all know rage and anger kill love. There's no way around it. If we do it often enough our love will die. So we must conclude that those things don't work. What we really have to do is to get to know ourselves, like what we suffered with and bring that understanding into how we create a love that endures. Sure, everyone gets angry, it's only natural. But we don't have to share it out loud. We can learn how to stop and think about our anger. Anger is informative, If we take the time to understand what our anger is telling us about our deepest wounds or what we want and need, we can then express it in a constructive way.  No argument has ever been resolved when two people were angry at each other.The goal of conflict resolution is to bring us closer not further apart.

So, the next time you feel like wiping the floor with your mate, take a break, think before you speak and make sure you put your finger pointer in you pocket.

Negative Capability

The poet John Keats in a letter to his brother brought up the notion of negative capability. What he said was that in life negative things happen all the time. We don't try to make them happen but we make mistakes, or things just go wrong, not just with life but with friends, family, even strangers. He also concluded that there was no stanchion or pillar that we can lean to save us from negative experiences. From this seemingly dark perspective what are we to do with the existential given of negative experience? How do we develop this capability?

In our culture there are the happiness people, the mindfullness, humanistic, artistic, psychological and cognitive behavioral folk who tout these processess as the cure for what ails us. My colleague used to say that there was no cure of life. Allen Watts, the British Zen master said that we have this quaking mess inside us and the problem was not that it's there, but that we feel bad about having it. Much of our spiritual leadership whether they mean to or not set goals for us like satori, or nirvana, even bliss. These concepts are valuable but they are goals not necessarily destinations. So what can we do to navigate the straights and narrows of our very challenging world? We drive to work and are cut off in traffic, someone takes something we said and turns it around to hurt someone with it. Things like this are common practice. Do we turn a deaf ear, move to a desert island, buy a rubber car?

I do try to be perfect, do things just right, cross my t's, dot my I's but damn it, things go wrong. I make mistakes, not just in what I do but at times my judgement falters. I really don't like that it does, but there it is. What I do is everything I can think of. I meditate, talk to anyone who will listen, reflect, make notes, problem solve. Inevitably, the problem gets solved or it doesn't, people understand or they don't. So we endure, we go through it, we make it to the other side. The question is how difficult or how easy?

One key to being able to endure these inevitable life glitches, mistakes, reconnings, is to not take them personally, don't expect them not to be there and don't think there is any saving us from them. They happen, we learn as much as possible, we try to make it better and then we move forward. The more we "what if" or worry about the future or the past the worse it gets, but in the end we do it anyway. What I have learned is to be kinder to myself and focus more on the problem. If I try making the problem better instead of me better, I am inevitably more successful. Nothing works all the time no matter what. My experience has taught me that most often whatever my worst fear may be, it turns out to not be true. If there is no saving us from the difficulties of life, then we need to think more about enjoying the ride and know that in the end what we have spent so much time worring about doesn't really matter. What matters most is that we have people in our lives that we love, that we work at something that has meaning to us, and we learn how to stay present as much as possible. The rest is just stuff.