Relationships of all kinds are tricky. Romantic love relationships especially can really boggle the mind. Just when things are going along smoothly, inevitably something happens to challenge the bliss. After all, especially in the male/female variety, Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus (Youtube summary) and the two genders have very different ways of processing and reacting to the events of our lives based on our ancestral conditioning.
Terrance Real, psychotherapist and best-selling author claims that "Nothing is more important in our lives than our relationships. A great relationship boosts your immune system, opens your heart, and keeps you vital and creative.” We are a priori social animals who have a basic need to belong and to live in connection with others. So from a health and wellness standpoint, it makes sense to attend to and invest time and energy into understanding how we can make our relationships the best they can be.
I've broached the subject of love before in terms of cosmic balance, the yin and the yang (The Tension Of The Opposites). Inevitably, embedded in every love relationship is the potential for conflict, and how we respond to the challenge of these occasions is crucial for sustaining and deepening our love connections over time. I also wrote about understanding the distinction between loving unconditionally and sustaining relationships that have boundaries (How Do I Love Thee?).
Sure, our first instinct when there is a misunderstanding or breach of trust is to get our back up and either shut down or walk out the door. We're all about personal freedom and autonomy and being right about our perceptions and points of view. After all, this is how we have been conditioned to think in the modern world. And this confidence may serve us well in the workplace where equivocating is a sign of weakness. But in our primary relationships it seems we hold our collective breaths and hope for enduring harmony. As long as we happen to agree about things, it's smooth sailing.
But we're human living in a complex world and nothing stays the same. Plus the bar has been permanently raised. More than any other generation, we yearn for our mates to be lifelong friends and lovers in addition to being partners in the business of life and parenthood. No longer is it enough to manage a conflict-free connection, with women remaining silent to keep the peace as in previous generations. According to Terrance Real in The New Rules of Marriage, we're still using 20th century skills to negotiate 21st century relationships.
The traditional roles of men as breadwinners and women as caretaker/homemakers shifted in the later decades of the last century with the Women's Liberation Movement. Beginning in the 1970's, women became the largest addition to the workforce. Whereas boys were raised to be strong, goal-oriented and competitive and girls to be caring, emotional and cooperative, women suddenly gained economic freedom and political power and a whole new psychology emerged. And even for the young among us who were raised by enlightened parents, our institutions and collective psyche has not come up to speed.
Whereas the women's movement changed our society forever and along with it the expectations of women including/especially in their relationships, according to Real most men still don't get that their relationship job description has changed. While many men would be delighted if women kept their traditional caretaker role, most women need men to be more than providers. Sure, there's still the goal of "building a life together", but now there are "expectations of a lifelong romance-- deep talks, exciting times and great sex". There is a need for true connection with our partner and we're lacking the skill-set to create this together.
If men have perhaps lagged behind in their relationship development, women in recovering their voices have tended to focus more on personal empowerment than on relationship empowerment. They've been busy standing their ground stubbornly so as not to revert back to the old order. But doing this can be at the expense of finding strategies to build a lasting connection based on mutual understanding. And we need only look at the divorce rate and how often couples are opting to dissolve their relationship and look for something better to see the consequences of this disconnect.
So how do we avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Shouldn't there be a way for both partners to have their needs met? And isn't the accomplishment of this ultimately the most satisfaction we could imagine from a love relationship-- an aspiration worth fighting for?
When relationship conflict arises,we often lose sight of the good things about us; the things we really love about each other and why we really work when things are good. The first thing to do is to get a little responsible distance-- not to be confused with withdrawal or passive/aggressive retaliation. So as not to be interpreted as abandonment, this "time out" requires an explanation and a promise of return. Getting some space and taking aware breaths to connect with your intuition will allow the rigidity to be replaced by an openness to your loving instincts towards each other.
Next is the realization that the only thing we can control in our relationship is our self. So it is vital to assess our own part in the disconnect rather than playing the blame game. Look at the patterns that have emerged over time -- chances are this isn't the first mishap-- and how these relate to patterns from our childhood; we tend to play out unresolved childhood issues in our primary love relationships.
Once you have identified your own "losing strategy profile", you can then think about the relationship and how you might begin to change the vicious cycle of unresolvable repetitions and work together towards a truly satisfying love union. Like any skill set, we have to learn how to be successful rather than defaulting to knee-jerk reactions and triggered responses that erode the good aspects and ultimately lead to relationship demise.
Creating a healthy partnership with our significant other is primary to our overall wellbeing and happiness. A toxic relationship can not only be emotionally taxing, but ultimately can become physically debilitating. There are many resources to develop the tools necessary to break the cycle of despair and frustration for couples including the books of Terrence Real, Harville and Helen Hendrix and many others. Couples therapy also provides a trained, unbiased professional to guide the process of reconciliation and provide valuable tools for forging a new and satisfying love intimacy.
Check back in for my Quick Read on Sunday for more helpful hints on how to jump-start a more satisfying love experience. As you Mind Your Body in all ways in your life, consider the all-important primary relationship you have invested yourself in and how you can work together to support each other in being your best selves. Let's shift the He Said, She Said loop to a love that empowers each other towards "full-respect living".
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