Many Heroes, Many Healers

This post is Part 5 of an article on 10 ways to respect the reality of relating.

Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.
Read Part 4.

1) Differences will be magnified.
2) Primary wounds will recur until healed.
3) Emotions will come up and feelings will get hurt.
4) Agreements will get broken & dis-agreements will occur.
5) Minds will fail to be read.
6) Your partner’s true feelings about you will come out eventually.
7) People and priorities will change over time.
8 ) Intimacy will require conscious effort.

9) Fear will come up.

First, a quick disclaimer:  the intention here is not to focus on the negatives or downsides of relationships. The overall intention here is aligned with “loving what is” as a means of mastering and transcending it, and that implies respecting the basic reality of relating. Having acquired that respect and the information that accompanies it, you’re then at choice about how to respond to that reality if and when you encounter it. Greater freedom results as a consequence, and that includes the freedom to move beyond the circumstances of a present reality like fear. So let’s look freely, and without fear, at fear.

Fear naturally accompanies threat to self. Thus, anytime you reach beyond your self, fear is likely to come up. That’s true merely of reaching outside your comfort zone to grow, as well as reaching out to God and letting go. Relationships, especially intimate partnerships, provide unlimited opportunities to open in love by going beyond self. Hence, you might quickly discover that…

Real intimacy will scare the pants off you!!

Now, hey… sometimes that can be a nice little relationship bonus!

But it really depends on how it’s held in mind and how you choose to respond. If you aren’t aware of the tendency for fear to come up when love and intimacy increase, your freedom of choice is somewhat limited, and you’ll probably respond… ‘irresponsibily’.

In fact, if you unconsciously panic and react to that rising fear, you may well respond like a complete idiot. (Uh-oh, can you hear the rumble of the Humble Express, thundering down the tracks? Respect this reality if you want to avoid getting steamrolled! )

We tend to be comfortable with certain levels of intimacy, but we have a limit or ceiling on what we can comfortably experience. For some folks, even eye contact is too much intimacy! Have you ever ‘hit your head on your intimacy ceiling’? Ever found yourself uncomfortable in the midst of the very things you had hoped for? Ever found yourself doing or saying crazy and insane things because a relationship seemed to be going too well? Maybe you thought it was simply too good to be true? Fear not! That’s a common response to fear!

Relationships, especially intimate partnerships, lead us beyond our selves. Consider the union of two bodies moving as one; two bodies breathing as one; two bodies joined as one — open hearts and open minds, postures of complete physical, emotional and spiritual vulnerability; boundaries dissolving in love. We yearn for such openness, communion and intimacy with another but, frankly, when it starts happening it can be downright terrifying!

The flowering of the heart.

To help, it can be useful to remember that love is both the means and the end of flowering mastery. Love is the power that dissolves the blocks to a greater awareness of love’s presence. In other words, love dissolves the limitations of self. When sacred space is created in relationship and love is invited into that space, it threatens to further dissolve the self.

Faced with its own possible dissolution, the self/ego/mind generally responds with a kind of primordial love-terror. What does your love-terror look like? Do you know how to recognize it in your relationship? If you don’t, you’re in train-trouble again! And chances are you’ll also fail to recognize and respect reality #10, which so often severs even the strongest bonds of partnership…

10) The ego will try to sabotage your relationship.

Love-terror will motivate some pretty incredible unconscious responses as the ego scrambles to shore up its defenses and secure itself against a greater immersion in love’s infinite presence.

In short, it pulls out everything in its bag of control-tricks, which includes cleverly manipulating all the realities we’ve discussed so far. Take heed!

• It will seize upon even minuscule differences (#1) and amplify them as ammunition for creating conflict.
• It will activate every primary wound available (#2), often all at once, in overwhelming intensity.
• It’ll manufacture high levels of volatile emotion based on the tiniest ‘justifiable’ evidence and then feel hurt (#3) so it can manufacture enough resentment to be justified and ‘right’ in its position.
• It will purposefully violate agreements (#4) and flaunt its flagrant disrespect of authority and other people, plus jump defensively all over the tiniest dis-agreement with its behavior as a way to incite further argument.
• It’ll play the King Baby card and refuse to share honestly about what’s really going on, expecting others to read its mind (#5), and punishing them when they fail to do so correctly… or even if they do so correctly!
• It will hide its own true feelings (#6) and viciously roadblock every attempt others make to express their own.
• It will invent stories to shift priorities (#7) as a distraction and diversion from staying aligned with the principles that are threatening its own dominion.
• It’ll create feelings of exhaustion, tiredness, frustration, overwhelm, and hopelessness to justify throwing in the towel and failing to make one’s best, conscious effort (#8), and it’ll create a sense of aloneness and isolation to prevent seeking help from a Higher Power (and often turn around and blame that Higher Power for its current predicament!)
• And, oh, will it drum up fear (#9). It will convince you your life and your very freedom is threatened… by your partner, by your relationship, by your silly agreements, and by everything that actually threatens its reign as the Inner Infantile Majesty of your mind.

So what can you do??

Watch it. Just observe it and enjoy the show, even as you choose otherwise. You can choose to see it as free entertainment. Sometimes, it’s so laughably obvious and predictable in its attempts. Other times, it’s incredibly subtle. You learn to keep an eye out for it, to recognize it for what it is, and to laugh about it.

Still, it’s a reality worth respecting until it’s transcended. So just be aware:  What does it look like? What are its tricks? Do you know? Do you know what they look like in you?

Finally, don’t fight with it. The ego needn’t be an adversary. It is actually an endless source of entertainment — much like a pet. If you have a puppy that pees on the floor and chews up the furniture, you don’t hate the puppy — it’s actually quite cute. You just lovingly correct its behavior. By the same token, if the ego bites your partner and pisses all over your relationship, you can choose to lovingly correct it’s behavior. Recognize that the consequences of the ego’s sabotaging antics are still yours, but that it’s not you.

You are the love that inspired this journey to relationship mastery in the first place! Through your heroic and healing relationship adventures, you will come to know your true Self. Until then, be sure to respect the reality of relating as it is. That’s an act of great love — one which will help you to master and move beyond your present reality, to a greater awareness of love’s presence. (Oh, it will also help you to avoid getting run over by the relationship freight train! )

Now it’s your turn! What other aspects of “the reality of relationships” have you experienced? I’ve only listed ten, albeit ten big ones. What have I missed? What lessons in loving the reality of relating have you learned?

Post a comment and let me know!

This post is Part 4 of an article on 10 ways to respect the reality of relating.

Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.
Read Part 3.

1) Differences will be magnified.
2) Primary wounds will recur until healed.
3) Emotions will come up and feelings will get hurt.
4) Agreements will get broken & dis-agreements will occur.
5) Minds will fail to be read.
6) Your partner’s true feelings about you will come out eventually.

7) People and priorities will change over time.

This simple irony of relating helps account for why relationships are so unbelievably challenging and so incredibly rewarding. Relationships are alive — they’re constantly changing — and that can be a source of great frustration, or of great joy!

For example, certain differences (#1) tend to get exaggerated at different times. Alternating primary wounds (#2) will surface for healing depending on what’s currently happening. Dominant attitudes, emotions, and feelings (#3) tend to change over time. Agreements (#4) that once were serviceable get outgrown or outdated, and new disagreements (#4) arise as values and circumstances change. There’s also always something new (to you!) going on in the heart and mind of your partner (#5), and the true feelings (#6) you just invested in hearing last week may have already changed significantly by now.

Whew! Dealing with the reality of relating described so far would be challenging enough if relationships were forever static and unchanging! But the truth is, people and their priorities will change over time. Therefore, so do relationships.

Actually, it’s funny. Just when you think you’ve figured things out — and especially if you’re feeling particularly smug about it — the relationship landscape has a way of shifting quietly under your feet. If you’re too wrapped up in your own mind, you’ll never notice the change until it’s too late. In that case, Super Genius, you’re flirting with a relationship fate that packs a ton of freight:

The upside of this constant evolution in relationships is that they can be an unending source of meaningful and exciting developments, both personally and spiritually. As you learn to embrace intimacy in a way that makes the experience perpetually fresh and exciting, the joy of sharing new discoveries about yourself, your partner and your love begins to grow and multiply in marvelous ways! That’s when the commitment to love — through healing, heroism and mastery — really begins to transform your life.

But not if you deny the inevitability of change. So ask yourself:  how are you going you deal with change? How will you respect that reality in your relationship?

For me personally, the only workable answer to that question was to develop a continuous practice of conscious relating. It meant routinely leaving my own biased world of distorted (and explosive!) perceptions and entering fully into my partner’s world as a peaceful observer so I could really see how things were, and how they were changing.

That commitment to intimacy is now an ongoing and daily practice. It first required falling in love with the means of successful relating, and then living that means every day, as the surest path to relationship mastery. Now, don’t be discouraged if that feels like an impossible task. It’s not, for many reasons (e.g. see Everything’s Easy with Mastery).

That said, however, I have also developed a deep respect for reality #8…

8 ) Intimacy will require conscious effort.

Most of us aren’t willing to pay the price for a great relationship. We tend to think love should “just happen”. Even and especially when we truly feel we love someone, we often get confused about the true nature of love and we wonder: Why isn’t love enough? Why doesn’t this work?!

Let me be the first to confidently say that to grow in love and intimacy demands our very best, which means our best effort. And the very best efforts are highly conscious, highly inspired, and highly motivated by love. They stem from the alignment with love, in its many virtuous expressions.

Now, make no mistake:  you’ll still need to Do Your Work! Of that, there is no question. That’s the price to be paid. However, the forceful efforting of mental willpower is usually insufficient for transcending all the realities of intimacy we’ve described. By contrast, the Power of the Will, through alignment with principle and by Divine Grace, can invite whatever is required to sustain the effort until it becomes joyful and effortless.

It’s a reality worth respecting that embracing intimacy will demand your very best in the name of love, and then more. Where will you find the strength that exceeds your own?

When your best effort is not enough, it’s only because it’s your effort. When your deepest love is not enough, it’s only because it’s your notion of love. So cry out. Cry out and be lifted up. Invoke a Higher Power for which the burdens you cannot lift with all your might are as light as a feather:

And as your reach beyond your self
To embrace a Love Divine
It will help to be aware
Of reality number nine…

#9) Fear will come up.

Read Part 5…

This post is Part 3 of an article on 10 ways to respect the reality of relating.

Read Part 1.
Read Part 2.

1) Differences will be magnified.
2) Primary wounds will recur until healed.
3) Emotions will come up and feelings will get hurt.
4) Agreements will get broken & dis-agreements will occur.

5) Minds will fail to be read.

Telepathy, being almost as rare as successful relationships, isn’t a particularly reliable means of communication. But that doesn’t stop most of us from relying on it repeatedly (and foolishly!), especially in intimacy. Why, O why do we cling blindly to the false hope that mind-reading is a workable strategy for relating?! Well, actually, there’s a lot of reasons…

Maybe one of your differences (#1) is that you’re naturally introverted and a little bit reserved, or you hold a belief that honesty is a dangerous policy. Maybe one of your primary wounds (#2) taught you it’s not okay to speak up because when you did you were shamed or punished. Maybe you avoid sharing what’s really on your mind because you’re afraid you’ll get emotional and end up causing or feeling hurt (#3) since painful dis-agreements (#4) seem almost inevitable. Or perhaps you and your partner secretly feel the relationship is already dead and the situation is hopeless, so you’ve made an unspoken agreement (#4) not to talk about it — at least, not until all the kids move out. So, for now, mum’s the word! Or rather, mime’s the word — pass the the face paint, please.

Now listen, I’m not clowning around here — relationship charades is a deadly game! But it’s understandable why people play it. Any of the above reasons could make communicating consciously seem a tad scary and make mind-reading an attractive alternative (even if it’s hopelessly ineffective).

But actually, there’s an even bigger reason yet:  infantilism.

That’s right. Most of us are, to some extent, babies in adult bodies. We secretly believe the world is all about us. The motivation for this King Baby mentality is well-summarized by the Hazelden Foundation pamphlet of the same name:

“Infancy encourages our King Baby attitudes. Our loud demands for food, attention and care are answered immediately… our wishes are all-important. Through the natural maturing process… most of the King Baby mentality is discarded and replaced by more appropriate coping skills. Some of us, however, never forget the warm security of prenatal and infant life and will try again and again to experience it. King Baby tries to capture total contentment of every need being met.” (Read excerpts here. Buy it here.)

The crucial point is this:  as King Baby, we want our needs to be met, but we don’t want to have to express them responsibly! Fussing, crying and screaming should be enough if they really loved us. Secretly, we want our needs met without communicating them verbally because that would recreate the state of infantile bliss we unconsciously seek. Hence… mum’s the word! (Has anyone seen my black & white striped shirt?)

Another aspect of this dangerous game is that the adult-version of King Baby has enough developed egocentricity to also deeply resent those who thwart our wants and fail to meet our needs, even when we haven’t expressed them clearly. In short, we tend to unconsciously set our loved ones up to fail by failing to communicate our needs, and then we juice all the resulting and ‘justified’ hurt into a deadly and addictive resentment cocktail. (Hey, let’s make a toast… to the imminent arrival of the relationship freight train! )

You again?!

Now, just because you aren’t a baby anymore doesn’t mean you don’t still have needs. It simply means there are other strategies available to you now for having those needs met — strategies which don’t require mind-reading by your partner or loved ones.

Yes, authentic needs do exist – that’s a reality worth respecting, especially in intimacy. Even highly independent people still create interdependent and synergistic agreements to serve everyone’s needs better. So how will your needs be met? Who will meet them if you never communicate them clearly? Who will choose to meet them by agreement even if you do communicate them but do so childishly, irresponsibly or disrespectfully? On the flip side, maybe your partner has been expressing their needs quite clearly. Are you listening effectively and hearing what’s being said? Have you made an invitation to hear your partner lately?

You might want to — because if needs aren’t being met, if thoughts and feelings aren’t being expressed but rather repressed because the communication channels aren’t open, then you’ll soon be saying hello to relationship reality #6…

6) Your partner’s true feelings about you will come out… eventually.

Emotional energy naturally wants to rise to the surface. Most people, for various reasons, spend a lot of energy trying to suppress their true feelings.

As Dr. Phil says, suppressing your unfinished emotional business is like trying to keep a beach ball under water. It’s awkward and exhausting, and sooner or later you’ll get tired so it will come shooting up from beneath the surface and knock you over.

Alternatively, you can think of what it’s like trying to hold the lid on a pot of boiling water. Eventually enough emotional pressure builds up that some steam escapes, possibly scalding you and others as it does. In fact, as steam escapes it may even make a shrill whistling sound — just like the warning whistle you hear before getting clobbered by the relationship freight train

One of the biggest reasons feelings are consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed is because we don’t trust it is safe to share them. In other words, sharing one’s true feelings requires creating sacred space, and that’s something which is typically absent in most relationships. Remember #4 about agreements and trust? Honoring agreements also happens to be a great way to create sacred space.

Without sacred space, emotional truth gets denied, but it can’t be denied forever. Your partner’s true feelings about you will come out eventually. How do you want to get the news? Through an emotional explosion? The cold shoulder in bed? Divorce papers in the mail on your anniversary? Or maybe not until after you’re already dead, perhaps during a life review?

As an alternative, you may want  to consider routinely creating sacred space and really listening to your partner so that you can get the news as it’s breaking. When you’re aware of the emotional landscape in a relationship, you can respond appropriately, even as that landscape shifts and evolves. On the other hand, if you aren’t routinely observing your partner’s inner world, you’ll be blind to the fact that shift happens! And that’s what #7 is all about…

7) People and priorities will change over time.

Read Part 4…

This post is Part 2 of an article on 10 ways to respect the reality of relating.

Read Part 1.

1) Differences will be magnified.
2) Primary wounds will recur until healed.

3) Emotions will come up and feelings will get hurt in the process.

Okay, this is a big one. The healing of primary wounds (see #2) is very likely to trigger some emotion — possibly some very strong emotion. Moreover, misunderstanding our exaggerated differences (see #1) is the most significant chronic cause of feelings getting hurt in relationships. Therefore, #3 is pretty much a given. In the reality of relating, facing emotions and dealing with hurt feelings is just part of the (heroic & healing) package. But, realize this…

Whether or not hurt accumulates as resentment is a choice!

You see, emotional hurt in your relationship is a lot like dust & dirt in your home. Somehow, through living your life, it shows up! Yes, there are preventative measures you can take to minimize how dirty your house gets (e.g. everyone agrees to take their shoes off at the door; everyone agrees to put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher), but even so, you’re still going to find some dust bunnies accumulating in the corner. In your home, you probably have some fairly effective strategies for cleaning up this dirt. You vacuum, you sweep, you wash the floor and wipe the counters, etc. Heck, you may even hire professional help to assist with the cleaning process because it can be so demanding! So let me ask you:

What cleaning strategies are in place in your relationship?!

Unless you clean it up, emotional hurt & dirt accumulates in relationships because hurt happens regularly in intimacy. Pretending otherwise is ignorant at best and deliberately careless at worst. Either way, it disrespects the common reality of relating, especially in intimacy.

Yes, you can certainly start with some simple preventative measures that minimize the accumulation of hurt (e.g. everyone agrees to avoid name-calling; everyone agrees not to swear at each other). Certainly, an ounce of dirt-prevention is worth a pound of cleaning-cure. But what about cleaning strategies equivalent to those routinely used in the home? What about sweeping, dusting, mopping and scrubbing? Heck, what about seeking professional help? How often do we do these things for the sake of our relationships? (Personally, I find it quite sad when I see people spending a fortune to maintain a pristine and spotless mansion of a home, only to fill it with dirty relationships.)

Sadly, as unaddressed and unexpressed hurt accumulates, it slowly turns into resentment, at which point it’s much harder to deal with. And it kinda starts to stink.

Just imagine if you never took the trash out of your house. Would your home start to stink? You bet. Yet I see couples in relationships who avoid taking out their emotional trash… for decades! Do their relationships stink? You bet. Although you might not notice it at first. Why? Well, if you never took out the trash from your house, you’d probably develop some coping mechanism — you’d sweep it under the rug, shove it in a closet, or seal off a room or an entire floor to use as a garbage dump. Relationships are similar. People develop strategies for dealing with accumulated hurt — they lock it away as best they can. But if you look behind closed doors in that relationship, if you peek in the basement or open the wrong closet… watch out! It stinks!

Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness.

Experientially, nowhere is that more true than in relationships. Do you and your partner agree that emotional dhurt sometimes occurs and that emotional cleanliness is important? If so, what preventative and corrective agreements do you have in place to deal with that reality? Are you loving it like it is? (Or are you standing foolishly on the tracks? )

3a) Your partner will piss you off.

This is a simple corollary of #3 because anger tends to be a “first-level” emotion. It’s often the one you’ll run into first. Now, the truth is… I don’t know when. I don’t know where. And I don’t know how. But someday, somewhere in the course of a few weeks or decades, there is a very good chance you’ll choose anger in relation to your partner. Hey, maybe it’s already happened for you? In some relationships, it’s every day. So here’s another question:  what are the acceptable ways of expressing anger and hurt in your relationship? Do you and you partner have any agreements about this?

4) Agreements will get broken & dis-agreements will occur.

Relationships thrive on clear agreements that are honored. Broken agreements strangle relationships. Unstated agreements sabotage them and create dis-agreement. Whew, let’s tackle those in order.

Relationships are built on trust — most people will agree with that. Now, what’s the natural and predictable consequence of making and honoring agreements/commitments in a relationship? Trust! So what are relationships really built on? Yep, you got it!

By contrast, breaking agreements and commitments also has predictable consequences, which include all of #3 above, plus the erosion of trust, and… oh just you wait for #6! These consequences strangle relationships over time. Now, here’s the scary part:  the consequences of you breaking an agreement tend to be the same whether you were clear about the agreement or not, and even if you didn’t know it existed at all!

How can this be? Well, it’s a curious fact that in unconscious partnerships, everyone thinks they know what the agreements are, even if they’ve never been explicitly stated. This is a great recipe for meeting the relationship freight train head-on.

An assumed agreement is really an unstated expectation, which itself is nothing more than a premeditated resentment.

Why? Because unless it’s clearly stated and agreed to, there’s little chance it can be met, so you’re setting yourself up for chronic disappointment and hurt, which will quickly turn into resentment. Effectively, you’re sabotaging the relationship. Hey, check-in! Are you holding any premeditated resentments  in your relationship that are sabotaging intimacy?

The other consequence of unclear agreements is the inevitable dis-agreement that ensues. Remember #1 about differences? Well that includes different ideas about the way life should be, how it should be lived, and what’s important/acceptable/necessary/desired/etc. (See #7 for more on this). If you’ve never consciously discussed with your partner what you want your relationship to look like, what priorities & principles will guide it, and how you plan to handle at least the most common eventualities… well, I’ll wager that you and your partner are going to dis-agree. A LOT! (At this point, do not pass Go. Ride the relationship freight train directly to being jailed in #3).

Having clear agreements and being accountable to them is enormously effective in sustaining healthy relationships and building intimacy.

Yet even if you strive for absolute clarity in agreements and for total impeccability in honoring them, the truth is life can always throw you something unexpected. Some days, you’ll simply fail to meet your agreements. Other days, you’ll discover that you genuinely dis-agree on something. That’s part of the reality of relating. How will you handle it? Do you know how your partner wants you to handle it?

If you don’t, you’re in trouble. And that trouble, which is similar to the trouble that comes from holding unstated expectations, is really symptomatic of the following very frequently disrespected reality…

5) Minds will fail to be read.

Read Part 3…