No More Pretending…

My husband and I work hard to say no and hear no from one another. This is not how we started marriage. The first eight to ten years, we kept trying to guess what would make the other person happy and do that. It created a lot of suboptimal situations and resentment.

We would decide to go out to eat and hem and haw about where we wanted to go. I'd try to pick a place I thought he loved and later I found out he was doing the same. Often we ended up at a place neither one of us really wanted to go. When we went out to play tennis, in an effort to make me feel better, he would return a ball I hit out without calling it out. This infuriated me. It felt patronizing and besides, if I saw the ball go out I was never in any position to return the shot he sent back over the net. Finally, we got sick and tired of this little game of guessing and decided to get honest - even when it caused conflict.

It has taken quite a while for us to get on track with this, but it is a much more fun way to live. We have more initial conflict over burgers versus sushi, but ultimately if we end up with a third but equally satisfying option to both of us, it's ultimately a big win.

In what ways have you tried to create intimacy in a relationship by pretending? It really does not work well, does it? Today, I am extremely secure in my marriage because I have empirical evidence that my husband loves me for who I am, not who I pretend to be in a vain attempt to keep us happy.

Estrangement

For decades I was afraid of anger. I didn't mind a little righteous indignation on behalf of another person now and again, but I would go to great lengths to not get angry with the people I loved. I excused, ignored, justified and rationalized bad behavior so long as the naughty person was someone I loved. It was exhausting.

I did not know that love and anger are companions; I had rarely witnessed anger as a normal response to loving one another. When we were first married Pete would sometimes express normal and appropriate anger. It would totally freak me out. He learned over the years to deal with his anger in ways that did not scare me, which basically meant trying to figure out how to handle conflict in ways I could tolerate - which was really unfair to him. We're lucky, I suppose, that we survived my anger-phobia. Getting angry is part and parcel of intimacy and love. Paul certainly knew that when he wrote in the book of Ephesians, "Be angry but do not sin...Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ as forgiven you." (Ephesians 4 and 5 is a good read.)

Anger is an emotion that is beneficial so long as we learn how to use it for good and not evil. It serves as a signal that we need to pay attention to something. Maybe there is a threat - or perhaps, a perceived threat that is actually no threat at all. Maybe anger is trying to teach us something we need to learn about ourselves - like, hypothetically speaking, we need a good therapist to help us sort through why anger freaks us out. Anger gets our body ready for a response. Often anger is just a good cover for fear. Whatever. They are both trying to get our attention.

Denying anger is the way I tried to cope; I can tell you, it is a short term solution if you're uncertain how to proceed but a lousy long term strategy for caring about yourself and others. Virtuous living is a beautiful thing - but no where is it considered a virtue to numb yourself from feeling your feelings.

As I said yesterday, Jesus is not trying to break people up but he does offer us ways to see and be in the world that allows for authentic human expressions of all kinds. Are there any emotional barriers between you ad your own authentic living?

Faux Intimacy vs. True Connection

“When someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often - because I am paying attention.’”

Glennon Doyle

Fixation is different from attentiveness. Fixation is getting stuck; attentiveness opens us up to new ways of thinking, seeing, doing and feeling. Fixation leads to compulsivity, certainty, restlessness, agitation and discontent. Fixation isolates us from others because our fixations never align perfectly with the world or the way others experience life. Fixation creates barriers.

If fixation has so many downsides, why lean into it? It also has benefits. It gives us a feeling of certainty. It allows us to find people who share our fixations and instantly we feel connected. And this is the biggest problem for me with fixation. It’s a shortcut to relational intimacy and it’s a losing proposition.

Brené Brown speaks, and I have quoted her a million times, about this faux intimacy created when we share a common enemy or a common fan crush. I smile at strangers who have on a University of Virginia sweatshirt - I feel connected. But they do not know me and I do not know them. There is no shared experience of true “knowing”. How do I even know that this sweatshirt clad human is a Virginia fan? I do not. My Virginia Tech educated son has often worn Virginia gear. (It’s easy to find at our house and he prefers to get it sweaty over his good Tech swag.)

Intimacy and attentiveness are required for real life connection. When our Virginia Cavaliers won the NCAA title Pete and I took time off work (gasp!) and drove up to Charlottesville to welcome them home. We waited outside the JPJ arena with hundreds of strangers for the buses bringing the team home from the airport. It was convivial. It was fun. We felt the zing of faux intimacy.

Then we saw a couple we actually knew and decided to share a burger and bask in the glory of the coveted championship title before returning home. We talked about our jobs and kids and memories. THIS is true connection.

True connection takes time. It’s inefficient and requires more than a shared passion for a team. We discover points of agreement and disagreement, experiences we share and others we do not. These differences are enriching AND can reduce our certainty and fixations. It’s as simple as trying a new burger place (for Pete and I) that is an old standby for our friends. True connection requires that we pay attention and it will require us to let go of certainty in deference to curiosity. It will require us to open up to new ways of seeing as we share the lens of another human by listening to their worldview.

What good is fake connection? It’s all a mirage.

What does intimacy look like?

It is easy to get confused about who is an intimate and who is not.  Is a parent ALWAYS a person who can speak into our lives?  Actually, no, they are not.  How about a spouse?  Nope.  What about a best friend?  Again, no. (Sometimes we are given the gift of answering one or more of these questions yes - but we cannot assume that this is true.)

A decent rule of thumb that helps us maintain safety in relationships, acknowledge boundaries and maintains a respectful distance from the living of life is this:  realize that is it NOT our place to suggest/ask/tell people what to think, feel or do.  That is an inside job - we are each responsible for our own thinking, feeling and doing.  

Why is this important?  Because when we over-step our influence, we create an unsafe relationship dynamic.  Why does that matter?  We don’t do our best listening, accepting and changing when safety is at risk.

Each of us defines relationship safety in different ways.  It requires a lot of hard work to get to know other people’s safety parameters.  But this is part of our work.  We need to be part of a relational dynamic that values and works toward conversational safety.  What helps us feel safe?  Respect.  Dignity.  Humility.  Curiosity.  What hurts?  Judgment.  Condescension.  Fighting dirty. Contempt.

Let’s give our relationships a chance to be as awesome and intimate and life-giving as they were intended to be by working toward mindful restraint when it comes to commenting on the life of others!

Marital Mayhem

In a previous blog entry, I concluded it with the following statement:  When we do not appropriately match up our needs and wants within the appropriate context for addressing them, we have issues.

I provided a couple of examples to illustrate my point: we need to become more self-aware and attentive to the love arena we are in at any moment AND manage our expectations accordingly.  One example was of a woman who acted as if a social relationship was the place to meet her needs for intimacy; a second was of a widower whose loss of a key intimate relationship cost him vital feedback that his spouse once provided.  In both examples, these folks suffered in all their relationships because of an imbalance in the area of intimacy.

Another example that might help us understand the need for balance involves a gentleman with the opposite problem from those two folks.  He is a quiet introverted sort married to a sociable wife. Their imbalance was not obvious while the children were at home. His wife was busy with the commitments involving her children - she was active in the PTA, they had sporting events to attend, one of their children was active in a local theatre group.  But once those kids flew the nest and before grandchildren arrived on the scene, a previously contented marriage began to fall apart at the seams.

What went wrong?  Can this marriage be saved?

The wife grew increasingly restless and discontent in the marriage.  The more she complained about her situation, the more withdrawn her husband became - exacerbating the problem.  How did they move through this rough patch?

They figured out that they were out of kilter in a rather simple and fixable arena of love.  They had TOO MUCH intimacy and NOT ENOUGH tribe. This required the contented husband - who was living his dream of a quiet and peaceful home with his beloved - to acknowledge that too much of a good thing was too much.  And his irritable wife had to come to grips with her changed circumstances (reduced social interaction) and take responsibility for herself. She needed to figure out how to re-introduce more tribe back into her weekly schedule.  

Kind of neat, right?  Both had some responsibility in the situation.  All of this came about because each accepted the premise that every human needs three love arenas:  ME, YOU and ME, and WE. He preferred the “you and me” place; she really loved the “we”. Both were a bit off kilter.  

Tomorrow, we will explore a couple of very practical ways these two got back on track. For today, notice these things:  1. They were looking for answers not just blaming their life stage OR each other for their marital woes and 2. Both were willing to take responsibility for their part (they both were fairly health in the “ME” arena).