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

The Importance of Intimacy in a Relationship

"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

For most of us, the word intimate conjures up romantic images of candlelit dinners, slow dancing, and long passionate kisses. Romantic gestures are certainly a dominant theme of intimacy, but there is more. Intimacy in the real world is the result of expressing our feelings, our personal secrets, and our deepest truths to each other. It arises when we feel cared about, accepted, and loved for our own sake, warts and all.

The word intimacy originates from the Latin word intima, which means “inner” or “innermost.” Thomas Patrick Malone writes in The Art of Intimacy, “The outstanding quality of the intimate experience is the sense of being in touch with our real selves. It allows us a fresh awareness of who, what, and how we are.”

Ideally, intimacy is a blend of emotional closeness, spiritual connectedness, and an open heart and mind. Its origin lies in intellectual collaboration and familiarity, especially with one another’s culture and interests. It may also involve shared religious or philosophical beliefs. Finally, intimacy can be an emotional response to knowing someone well by virtue of shared experiences. When we think of the word intimate we see both the word in and the word mate. That is kind of how it works: being inside another person in a way that feels as though we psychologically mate with him or her and in that way become intimate.

 

When we share details about our life that usually remain hidden, we are connecting in an intimate way. The extent to which we can disclose deeply private personal feelings and experiences is proportionate to how safe we feel, so safety is a requirement for intimacy as well. Of course, intimacy means different things to different people, and its meaning for us may even change over time. It can be linked with sexual closeness, but not necessarily; intimate feelings arise from shared moments of emotional connection as well as from sexual encounters. Whatever its particular nature, intimacy is the product of relationship work and the result of feeling emotionally connected to our loved one. It’s the operating principle for creating love.

As Thomas Patrick Malone eloquently makes clear, intimacy is not only about the other, it is about who we are. And the most powerful and profound awareness of who we are comes when we open our hearts to others, allowing them to touch our deepest sensitivity. In the act of risking our tender inner world, we become more of who we are because we feel touched in an untouched place.

Intimacy takes courage because we must risk expressing our deepest sense of self to create it. We may be apprehensive about opening our hearts and minds to another for fear of being judged or rejected. But the reward is immense. It is the antidote to painful loneliness. It reaches into our hearts, providing love that satisfies our need for emotional food. Our ability to establish and maintain nurturing intimate relationships is not only gratifying, it nourishes us and ultimately helps keep us sane. Our survival as a species requires that we seek connections with others and open our own inner world to them. Intimacy breaks into our isolation and intertwines our souls and, if done with tenderness and care, creates safe and secure attachments. This ability to intimately connect with others is the backbone of civilization. Intimacy is what makes us human.

 

Dr. Bill Cloke has been a successful family and marriage therapist for over 30 years helping both individuals and couples lead more fulfilling lives and relationships. To learn more, please visit Dr. Bill Cloke Psychotherapy

Some Reflection

"Only connect,” wrote E. M. Forster in Howards End,“and human love will be seen at its height.” Love depends on a couple’s ability to forge and then maintain the precious bond between them. We want to look more closely at ways of creating connection, preserving it through challenging times, and healing breaks when they occur.

One way to think about marriage or relationships that are important, whether in the work place or at home, is to think of them like relations between two foreighn countries with different cultures, desires, states of mind, wants, and needs. If the countries are to get along, they must use proper protocol, proper greetings, good manners, cordiality, and consideration. From this standpoint, we can think of ourselves as goodwill ambassadors. Being diplomatic especially when we are expressing a complaint helps us to accept the bitter pill. When we are expressing emotionally charged feelings about what we want and don’t want, like or don’t like, we are much more likely to be heard and understood if we say it in a way that is respectful and kind.

Considering important relationships in terms of relating to a neighboring county and each one wants to live in peace is a good way to think about what it means to create a loving environment. We have freedom in relationships, but not license to do whatever we want without repercussion or consequence. If we believe that love and respect are earned through our behavior, then we will be much more likely to think about what we say and do. Being civil, diplomatic, and thoughtful goes a long way toward being understood and accepted. The best way to get through to our

COMPASSIONATE COMMUNICATION

As we know, relationships do not always run smoothly. There are many factors that influence our thinking, feelings, and attitudes in ways that may conflict with our partner’s—among them gender, race, religious background, temperament, sexual desire, stress, career pressures, education level, personal sensitivities, and values. If we take these differences into account in our communication style, we can tailor how we say what we think and feel to our partner. For example, if we know that our partner is biased or has particularly tender feelings about a particular subject, we can take that into consideration in the way we speak to him or her and learn how to steer around their internal land mine.

Other elements that influence our communication style are the demands associated with things like the cost of living, work, family, friends, personal interests, and health issues. We cannot help but bring these pressures to bear in our relationships. Couples who fashion their communicative style in a way that reflects this complexity create a healthier partnership and ultimately a more loving relationship. This is the goal of healthy couple interaction—to respond to our partner with tenderness and tolerance, amidst feelings of fairness, concern, and a willingness to listen with an open mind and share ideas that include finding common ground.

There are two levels of emotional content in conflicts with our partner,manifest and latent—both what appears to us when we observe our own and our partner’s behavior and what lies below the surface that may be influencing our behavior. Understanding and addressing the latent concerns is often the best way to resolve our differences and difficulties together. For example, if a couple are in conflict because one of them wants to get married and the other doesn’t, the manifest content might be a sense of reluctance on the part of one person, but the latent content could very well be fear of failure. If they frame their discussion differently What kind of marriage do we want to have and what are we most afraid of? they can include in that conversation both manifest and latent content. Bringing the latent content into our communications helps draw us closer because it allows us access to the entire personality and thus makes it possible to end the conflict. When couples do not address or resolve the latent content their conflict will not be resoled and is most commonly the reason for conflict cycles to continue culminating in stalemate or hopelessness. Understanding latent content helps us stay in a position of support to nurture both ourselves and our partner.

Good conflict resolution skills require focus and time. With all the pressure we encounter in our daily lives, time for this kind of reflection and discussion can be elusive, so we need to deliberately create opportunities to talk about the dimensions of our concerns. The first step is to understand what our basic concerns are, and the second step is to present them diplomatically. The third step is to find some solutions that might work well for both people. For the couple who were arguing about whether to marry, it might work best to set a time and date for a decision then make an agreement to talk about what kind of marriage they want and work through their fears. Love is a complicated act and requires not only understanding of the other but knowledge of one's self. If we understand what we are bringing to the table in any conflict we are half way toward resolution. When relataionships fail it is because one or both people are not willing to look at what they might be contributing to the problem. The critical element then is generosity in a conflict. If we are generous we will take a look and what we are being told and try to connect it to ourselves. At the very least and most importantly we can acknowledge our partner even if we don't agree. Being heard and understood is in the end is the way we connect. If our relationship is primary and connection is key, then we always know where we are going and what it takes to create love.

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.

How Knowing Gets in The Way

The old Bob Dylan song goes something like "I was so much older then, I am younger than that now." I guess that dates me a bit, but there is a kernel of truth in Bob's timeless lyric. I think what he meant was that when we are young we are so sure of what we believe in and we are so wise in our own mind. But as we mature, we discover that our sense of truth doesn't hold up to ambiguity, nuance and shades of grey. We become less sure of what seemed to be so true at one time. This not knowing makes us feel not as old as we once felt. As a society we are enamored with knowing. From pundits to know-it-alls, we admire those people who seem to have a handle on what appears to be the truth. In relationships knowing just gets in the way.

When we know something, when we believe we are right, we are walled off. Openness comes from not knowing, being available to new ideas, especially from our partner. Openness to their truth creates a relationship that is a living thing, and entity that is constantly changing. The most unreachable people I have met in life are the ones who are so sure they know what they are thinking. There is simply no way in. Ignorance is bliss in relationships, because it allows us to take in the thinking of our partner, because we are looking for the truth. Knowing is the end of the search.

This does not mean that we must abandon all knowledge, especially when we can use it to gain more knowledge. It is the attitude of knowing, the closed thinking that creates the blocks to loving. Knowing that we need to be open is knowing something important. So how do we distinguish between knowing something and remaining open? Interestingly, they are not really at odds with each other. What we need to know is how to suspend knowing so we can let the other person influence us. Letting someone's impressions, perceptions and intuitive responses come out and be seen and understood allows us to take a step back so we can look and understand.

I remember a couple who came to me for therapy and the husband was a very well educated man and his wife was not as well trained. His attitude was clear, she was inferior to him. He was the one who knew and she was the one with the problem. She would say to him, "you are always so sure you know what is right and wrong and you are so perfect, but that makes me the one with the problem." He was so sure he knew better and saw her frustration as evidence of her rage and depression. In his universe her feelings were were entirely unfounded. He didn't believe for a second that she had a point of view that was reasonable or valid. Trying to get through to him was like talking to a wall. Underneath his knowing, righteous and superior position was a very scared and angry child who didn't believe he could be loved. His only method of keeping his wife from leaving him was to tear her down so she couldn't leave. This process was killing who they were.

Suspending what we know long enough to listen and let go of our truth allows us to stand as equals. When we are sharing our inner experience with one another in an atmosphere of acceptance it creates a shared knowledge that is far more powerful than our personal knowing. It is with this kind of caring that we can let go and see what is true. The truth will set us free as long as we know that it comes from both people looking together into the complexity of their own experience. 

About Our Blind Spots

Working with couples over the years there are two central themes that emerge over and over again. The first is our inability to see what our partner is saying to us about our behavior and the second is that we may not be able to see what we are doing at all and instead see ourselves in an entirely different way than we actually are. Both are some form of blindness.

There can be many reasons why we are blind. First off we have natural defenses to feeling pain. We have endured experiences that wounded us. If anyone gets near that pain then our system will invent a way to make sure we don't get near it. Let's take the need to be right as an example of blindness. What is that? Why do we need be right at the expense of our relationship. The overwhelming statistic is that 80% of failed marriages are based on not accepting the influence of the other. Accepting the influence of the other means that we set aside our need to be right in order to listen to what our partner is saying to us. Listening and acknowledging does not mean agreement, but simply that we hear what is being said. Being right precludes listening, it is a defense. Against what we may ask? Well, if we need to be right so badly then we must be defending against what it means to us to be wrong. Being wrong means we are weak, stupid, even unlovable. So, how can we fathom being wrong when we think that it's a confirmation or our inadequacy. To that end we will die in the effort to not touch that wound.

So how in the world are supposed to find out how to accept our partners sense of what is happening, then understand who we are and apply that to a problem solving process that involves compassion, understanding, respect and empathy? Not so easy when we have those painful memories. It's the same with being good, proud, busy, distracted, compulsive or addicted. They all involve blindness. How do we then come out of this state of disconnection to see what it is that we cannot? It takes courage, perseverance, passion and determination. We must be willing to entertain what it is that our partner is trying to tell us. That also may include a competent therapist as an objective observer.

There are no easy answers to this very difficult state of being other than taking the first step. That step is to allow ourselves to take a leap of faith to acknowledge that we may have blind spots. That we need feedback from others so we can see more clearly. We need to trust those people who love us to tell us the truth, then we have to take it on the chin and learn something about ourselves. In the end it only creates more love. Seeing clearly is the most important skill we can learn as adults. To do that we must find out what it was that made us blind in the first place, then we can come to a better understanding and pull the curtain back. Opening up our mind to our past and how it affects our present provides an opportunity to be fully present. And what could be a better present than presence.

Is Criticism Ever Constructive?

Is there such a thing as constructive criticism? Not really? Criticism seems more like a punch in the stomach than a helpful hint. Complaints are a different animal altogether. The major difference between a criticism and a complaint is that a criticism is a personal attack and a complaint is about who we are. Criticism creates defensiveness. How could it be otherwise? Defensiveness is a knee jerk response to criticism; it’s payback. A complaint on the other hand aspires to loftier goals; it’s about your inner world.

In my work I have to say things to people that are really hard to hear. I must provide insights without judgment or criticism. Otherwise, they are up and out the door, never to be seen again. Criticism is always about the past but complaints can be about the future. You did the wrong thing as opposed to this is what I want moving forward. Whenever you express your complaint as a wish, need or a want, you are creating the possibility of a positive outcome. Criticism is always negative whereas a complaint can be quite positive. Complaints give your partner something to do whereas a criticism paints them into a corner. They are bad and there is no way out. A proper complaint is an exit strategy.

John Gottman, the author of The Seven Principles for A Happy Marriage interviewed over 12, 000 couples. He describes the “four horsemen” of a failed marriage as criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. Highly critical couples are doomed to failure because criticism is a disconnect and ultimately a shut down.

The difference between a criticism and a complaint might look like:

1. Criticism: “If you could ever think of anyone besides yourself you would know that I needed your help today. You bailed and left me holding the bag.”
2. Complaint: “Next time we have a function in our home could we sit down and plan, so we are on the same team. I need your help.”
3. Criticism: “Are you so selfish that you can’t even remember my birthday. You can’t get anything right?”
4. Complaint: “I know how busy you are, but it really would mean a lot to me if next year on my birthday we worked out a plan so we could celebrate, it would mean the world to me.”

Criticism and complaints have one thing in common, they both relate to differences between people. Differences create conflict which is natural and unavoidable. Differences can be about  life-style, culture, past experiences, morals and values. It’s not that we will never get angry or have conflicts; it’s about how we handle them.

There are steps you can follow that will allow you to steer clear of criticism and develop a positive complaint style.

Step 1. De-escalate. When a conflict erupts your first response is to be angry, critical, righteous and retaliatory. You are convinced that you are right and they are wrong. But maybe you are blind to your part in it. It’s a good idea to cool down and think about what made you mad. Anger is informative and complex, it can be about five or six different things. Anger let’s you know that something is up, some internal land mine has been triggered. Take a beat and consider what made you angry. Is this an old wound? What do you want, need and value moving forward? What were they thinking? When you feel calmer and have a better idea about what pissed you off, then set up a time to talk or wait for an opportune moment.

Step 2. Acknowledgment. Conflict and anger break the emotional connection. The best method for reconnection is to acknowledge what your partner is saying or feeling. Providing feedback that gives the the sense that you understand what they are experiencing is connecting. Do not repeat word for word, but summarize the most important elements in a way that lets them know you understand. When couples are having trouble, it is often because they are not listening to each other and are too busy defending. Attack and defend is a lethal style that loops around and around until there is only stalemate. Acknowledgement breaks the negative cycle.

Step 3. Define the Problem. Once each person feels understood and has made an effort to voice their concerns try to make a statement about what you think the problem is. Something like: "When you ignore me, I turn up the volume and then you get angry with me for getting angry. I think the problem is that we are spending too much time arguing about what happened instead of what we want.” Once you agree on the problem you can start to talk about solutions. This is where your complaints can be heard. “In the future you don’t have to fix it, you just have to let me know what you need and that you hear me.”

Step 4. What Can Each of Us Do in the Future to Make it Better? Each person at this point can make a statement about about what they will do next time. "I promise to listen so you won't have to yell at me to be heard." By placing your concerns in a future context it feels positive rather than blaming and critical. In thirty years of seeing couples I have yet to see two people agree on what happened in the past. What works is to consider what you might do next time. “Next time could you let me know when you are going to be late.”

Step 5. Take Action. Making an effort to do those things you have agreed to do demonstrates commitment and concern for the needs and feelings of your partner. You don’t have to be perfect but when you do make a real effort it creates connection and love.

This road map is just that, a way to resolve problems and communicate in a way that creates love and connection. Like all road maps you need to know when you are off track and then get back on the road. Criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling break connections and compassion, understanding, respect and empathy create them. Complaints allow your partner into your inner world, criticism shuts them out. Love is an active process and sharing your complaints positively creates a more loving connection. This is the way to be happy together.

www.happytogetherbook.com

www.billcloke.com

 

Pulling Back The Curtain

We have all seen the Wizard of Oz and remember the scene when Toto pulled back the curtain revealing instead of the The Great Oz, a man who was pulling levers. This short scene from this classic film is to a greater or lesser extent all of us. We live our lives behind our curtain. It is so often the case with people whom I work with that they do not know who is behind their own curtain either. Marriages, friendships and relationships in general are filled with casual conversation, hidden agendas and the longing to be known and accepted, warts and all. 

So often when working with couples I experience the terror of being seen. They will employ all manner of defenses and resistance to the process that I am trying to use to help them feel better about themselves and each other. Suddenly, anger, defensiveness, contempt and criticism come my way as a means of keeping the knowledge that they feel deeply inadequate, powerless, helpless and unlovable out of the room. The righteous indignation is a cover for the fear of intimacy, dependency and loss. These folks truly believe that they are right and righteously defend what they are sure is the truth. Meanwhile they are devaluing my years of experience and methods painstakingly learned from the masters. Yet they know more. I truly feel sad and helpless in these situations because I know that if we could work together we would be able to come up with a way of working all these issues through.

I am continually surprised at what little married people know about each other and how many conversations about vulnerable personal struggles and about what is happening deeply and importantly  never happen. Instead the walls go up and the safety of conflict and anger comes flowing out. We all know that anger and conflict are dysfunctional, so why do we allow it? We don't know what else to do and we are too afraid to be truly seen and heard from within our heart of hearts. So, we use entitlement, correctness, indignation, rage and anger to be our protectors. All in service of our safety from humiliation and abandonment, never realizing that being safe is a myth.

So, what is the answer to our essential loneliness? It is courage. The courage to let down our armor, lay down needing to be right, our feelings of betrayal and of our dearest hurt feelings. Allowing ourselves to be revolutionaries of the soul, to give what we need the most. To embrace compassion, understanding, respect and empathy as the essential tools of our self discovery and of knowing one another. A tall order for sure. But if we want to throw off the chains of our personal psychological prison that was fashioned in our own family struggles, we must decide to have the courage to be hurt, to take that risk to open our hearts knowing that we could be.

There are no easy answers on the road into our inner life and our hearts. We must be willing to be seen, to see ourselves, to learn about our own hype, our self deception. As we are defending, criticizing others, being righteous, shutting down and throwing up walls remember that this is just another way to be utterly alone. As Bob Dylan once said, "every form of refuge has its price."  We really can't have a safe relationship, we need to allow our mate to see us if we want to be truly intimate. Intimacy is what feeds our soul, nurtures our heart and allows our spirit to fly.

What's Right About Being Wrong?

From working with couple's for over 25 years some disturbing trends have evolved that appear like a train wreck in the making. When couples go off the rails being right by one or both partner is usually somewhere in the mix. Being right is a road block, it cuts off communication and causes the process to be driven up a dead end with not redemption. Usually I see exasperated people coming in with little hope of coming to terms with the pile of issues that have not been resolved. It gets pretty daunting to dig out from the mess that is stirred up by needing and wanting to be right. I say this as a reformed right person who has found the holy grail of communication. The willingness to be wrong, to see it from the other person's point of view and even be able to let them know that I hear them. What a concept? 

There is plenty to say about being right and how much we love it. No one wants to be wrong, not unless you also like whips and chains applied to your extremities. Being right has deeper origins. The need to be right is about not wanting to have our worst fears about ourselves confirmed by our partner. Being right means we are strong, not weak, adequate not inadequate, smart not dumb and most importantly, lovable. The real culprit is our negative feelings toward ourselves that we cannot allow other people to see let alone ourselves. 

Our psyche does a great job of hiding those dirty little secrets way back in the recesses of our brain for safe keeping. Long long ago we were humiliated when we tried to express ourselves so our brain tucks that information away to protect us from any kind of humiliation by altering reality. It takes quite a bit to change someone's sense of reality. It's the way they see it and that's it. To infer that their perception could be askew usually evokes righteous indignation followed by angry insults or blame. "You made me angry because you did the very thing I told you never to do." That is usually something that is either next to impossible or actually off the charts in terms of unrealistic expectations from others. Being right is the penultimate lack of empathy. It's about saving our butts by not looking at the fact that we are being an ass.  

Being right is the most wrong thing we can do in a relationship because it eliminates the other person, makes them feel invisible and bad. When one person has to be right it means the other one must be wrong. Usually perfectionism goes hand in hand with being right. Underneath wanting to be perfect is an imperfect, self critical, demanding and angry person trying to get out.

Allowing ourselves to be wrong and to apologize if necessary creates connection. After all what is more important than love and connection? If we can suspend our sense of being right in favor of listening and hearing what our partner is trying to tell us and take a look at our part in the issue it is the first step toward resolution. 

I once asked a couple if they would rather be right or loved. Their answer was the latter but how many people never ask that question? That is our choice because being right kills love and being wrong allows us to see what we have done to upset our partner so we can make amends with understanding, compassion and kindness. 

 

Road Blocks To Love

Just as there are methods and means for creating love, there are defensive processes that can obstruct it. Let’s take a look at some of the main love-killers.

Globalization: “Everybody does that.” Globalization essentially obscures the truth. If someone doesn’t want to admit that he or she has some responsibility in the problem, globalization is a perfect distraction.

Blame-shifting: “And you do the same thing but worse.” Another excellent way to shift the blame away from yourself and back onto the other person.

Victimhood: “I’m so good to you, and you treat me so badly.” The victim is always innocent and good. This is an emotional double whammy. “Not only are you picking on me but you should feel guilty because I am so good.”

Gaslighting: “I was just kidding; can’t you take a joke?” “Noise? What noise?” This process is more insidious because it is an effort to make the other person feel crazy in order to gain power and control.

Entitlement: “You’re the one who made me angry. You deserve it.” Entitlement is like a free pass to behave however you want to because you are the aggrieved party. This kind of behavior is a surefire defense because nothing gets through.

Denial: “I’m not angry.” Denial is an emotional way to slam the door on any form of communication about what went wrong.

Displacement: “Just because you had a bad day at work, don’t take it out on me.” Displacement happens more than most people know or understand. It’s important to tell our partner when we think this is going on.

Guilt: “I work my ass off to give you everything and you can’t even make me some tea.” Guilt is often part of playing the victim, but it can also be used as a control mechanism.

Shame/Blame: “You’re a human slug. You never do anything.” This process is essentially infantile because there is no empathy or compassion in it. Infants and children are not expected to be compassionate, but adults are.

Stonewalling: “This is the way I am; take it or leave it.” Stonewalling is exactly that: it shuts down communication. Another form of stonewalling is simply to say nothing.

Projection: “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” This process is very common because most people are not in touch with how insecure they feel, so what they experience feels like it is coming from the other person when it is really coming from within.

Devaluation: “You really could lose some of that extra weight.” Devaluation is a defense against caring and needing anyone. The less others mean to us, the less we need them.

Constructive Communicating

As we look at what it takes to sustain a loving relationship, it may appear to be quite daunting. I try to support couples by explaining that if they can learn effective problem solving, it will only be difficult in the beginning. If we can evaluate and understand what causes negative communication, both from our own assessment and from listening to what our partner is telling us, our reality will, in time, meet our expectations. We may go many months or even years between serious conflicts once we know how to create a loving environment that is rich with humor and loving kindness.

Learning to evaluate the way we’re communicating, and to talk to our partner in constructive new ways, can be a challenge in itself, especially if the old ways are deeply ingrained. So I work with couples to help them change their interactive style and incorporate the elements of effective communication. Effective communication involves our ability to recognize what it is that we are feeling, then what it is we want. In this process, we take time to initially assess what is wrong or what we need to communicate. Next, we make sure that the other person gets the message the way we are intending it. Then we recognize and express what the problem or the need is. Once we have defined the problem or the need, we can then look at possible solutions that both people feel comfortable with. Most important in this process is to listen with empathy, tolerance for differences, and understanding about what is being said, and to provide feedback to show that we recognize each other’s positions. The dialogue below contains most of the elements of effective problem solving. This may look easy, but guess what, it’s not.

He:   When you withdraw, it scares me. My parents withdrew from me when I didn’t behave the way they wanted, and my girlfriends rejected me because I didn’t behave the way they wanted, so when I get angry or upset with you I’m afraid to show it because I’m afraid that you’ll throw me away. So I push you away.

She:  I will never throw you away because you get mad at me, but I will get upset if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you. It always comes out anyway. We have to tell each other how we feel without tearing away our love for each other. When I say something that is insensitive and you shut down, and then I get more angry and critical, we are just repeating our old patterns. How can we make this different?

He:   We could start by understanding what we are doing to alienate each other. Then we could take some time to find out what we are after. Once we know, then we can help each other to give what we need and want.

The key elements here are support, understanding, and a willingness to reflect on one’s own behavior. Using self-knowledge and feelings to resolve conflicts together creates a compassionate and loving outcome. The more a couple can create these kinds of conversations, the better they will be at creating love that lasts.