The third window of experience is innocence or naturalness. Innocence does not mean naivete. I means the delight of the person with his or her experience of belonging to the connected mosaic of the world he or she lives in. It is childlike but not childish. An openness to experiencing permeates innocence. It renders us free and creative, risking and curious, sensual and sexual without contrivance or need to manipulate or exploit. We are joyful and continually learning from the other. Without constructing a world of our own, one that we so often mistakenly believe will better allow us to be who we are, we share ourselves. When we do not rejoice in the energy of the surrounding real world, we become a world unto ourselves, and, sterile and stagnant, we become mired in it.
Taken from The Windows of Experience by Malone and Malone
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The second window of experience is responsibility for self. No one else can be for us. We are in the world as we want to be. We may despise it, decry it, or complain mightily about it, but we are responsible for our living, for our self-being. We have to accept the fact that we live as we choose, however we lament that living. We are responsible for what e have become or have not become. This window clears when we accept the terrible but beautifully freeing realization that we must take the initiative for what we want and who we are. That acknowledgment frees us to experience and enables being. The opposite of self-responsibility is dependence and blame, in which our lives are turned over to others. Unhealthy dependency and blaming of others for who we are guarantees a lack of wholeness. If we are not responsible for our own selves, how can we ever envision being fully who we are?
Taken from, The Windows of Experience by Malone and Malone. The first window of experience is acceptance. It is a wide and beautiful window to experience, with impressive precedents. Jesus said to accept and love the sinner while you condemn the sin. The is acceptance. Buddha said we must accept and love the sinner and know that sinning is simply a part of life. That is acceptance. If we realize that neither Jesus nor Buddha were passive beings, that they were in fact passionately confrontative beings, then we begin to sense the vitality of acceptance. It is not simply a matter of being resigned or forgiving. It is instead an active part of love and nature. Unable to accept, we are unable to know ourselves.
We accept so that we may go on to experience with the other without the estrangement of judgment. Blaming others for being who they are ends meaningful relationships. Criminals should be judged, not lovers or friends. Judgment separates us from further experience. Judgmentalism is clearly the polar opposite of acceptance and ultimately engenders self-diminishment. Taken from: The Windows of Experience by Malone and Malone. I’ve spent most of my professional life with couples who feel like the just aren’t moving forward. I suppose that makes sense. Most people don’t seek help when things are going well. They wait until their relationship has come to a grinding halt, frustrations have escalated, tempers have flared and life begins to feel unbearable. The up side to this is that I get to witness a whole lot of frustration along with responses to it. I’ve become something of a frustration expert. Recently I’ve noticed that what is often labeled, “stuck,” is actually not stuck. It’s something else. Stuck is when you can’t move forward for some reason. It happens when your car is on ice…wheels spin, there’s no traction to be had. You are stuck. For me, it happens when I’m confronted with a math problem. (I’m really bad at math.) I can turn the problem every way I know but I can’t find a route to the solution. I’m stuck. Stuck happens with couples when both of them genuinely want a solution and they’ve tried everything they know to try without creating movement. They are stuck. Often, however, couples think they are stuck but they really aren’t. They aren’t stuck because, in fact, one or both of them is parked. Being parked and being stuck share some features. The most obvious shared feature is the absence of movement. No one is going anywhere. Nothing is moving. Another shared feature is the presence of frustration. Whether a couple is stuck or parked, they usually feel a lot of frustration. The major difference between being stuck and being parked is that when you are stuck you can’t move forward. When you are parked you won’t move forward. It can be really difficult to tell the difference between “stuck” and “parked.” It’s the difference between “can’t” and “won’t.” I’ve come to believe that we often think of ourselves as stuck when we don’t have the courage to move forward. It’s not that we can’t move. It’s that we lack courage so we put ourselves in park and label what’s happened as “stuck.” When we lack courage we tend to look outside ourselves to find an explanation for our situation. We aren’t usually eager to admit our own contribution to the problem. So, I feel stuck because my partner won’t listen to me. Or, I feel stuck because my boss won’t give me a raise. I can’t move because you won’t do what I need you to do. It’s like the car on ice. It’s stuck because the surface is slick. It’s not the car’s fault. The car is doing everything it can. If you’re feeling stuck in your marriage, look at the situation closely.…Look at yourself closely. Notice if you are frightened. Ask yourself if your fear has led you to park your life. It might be that you are genuinely stuck. That certainly happens. But, it might be that you’ve chosen to put yourself in park because moving forward is just too scary. Often, the least glamorous, most accessible experiences are the most important and life altering. It's easy to be drawn to the exotic when a life change is desired. Vacations are a good example. Many of us need to have the experience of something completely different from our day-to-day lives in order to feel like we've had a genuine vacation. We are drawn to cruises and far away places. We want to be transported to a world as different from the one we left as possible. We want to get away from it all.
On the other hand, we all know that the little things count. Often they count more than anything else. Consistently paying attention to how often we touch, how often we express gratitude, how often we say what's really on our mind and how often we acknowledge the importance of those around us can have an amazingly positive effect on how well a relationship goes. In fact, relationship maintenance probably has more to do with relationship success than does the periodic "special" experience. Wonderful as those experiences can be, they rarely sustain. So, the next time you want to improve the quality of your relationship, resist the temptation to do something "special." Instead, set out on a practice of doing a lot of little things consistently over time. Maintenance behaviors can slowly and reliably pull even the most difficult times into a better place. One of the most difficult spots in couple therapy occurs when both partners are convinced they know each other. They say things like, "I knew you were going to say that." Or, "I know how you'll respond if I do that." Or, "I know what she thinks about that." This stance poisons efforts to change. It locks the relationship in repeated, unproductive interactions. Conventional wisdom suggests it's important to know your partner. I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me that it's important to try to get to know your partner. It's important to always help your partner get to know you. But, to arrive at "knowing" is to arrive at a dead end. Doing new things in a relationship (a prerequisite to changing anything) doesn't make sense if I "know" how my partner will respond. So, it seems important to actively cultivate a sense of "not knowing" if improving the relationship is a goal. "Not knowing" may bring with it a degree of uncertainty and anxiety. But, it also brings a real opportunity for change. It creates a space within which new things are allowed to emerge. To arrive at knowing is to arrive at a dead end.Most of us have a soft spot in our hearts for the experience of falling in love. Often, we can look back on the first or deepest time of being passionately drawn to someone whom we were sure would meet most or all of our emotional needs. Sometimes we long for the return of the intensity, drive and passion that came with having fallen in love. A few of us are still looking for our first falling in love experience. We might envy those who have already had their shot and resent those who pass it off as an essentially unimportant event. There are two distinct understandings of falling in love. First, there's the belief that it represents a kind of madness--a temporary loss of sanity. People who take this stance tend to assume that the decision to marry--to commit to spending the rest of one's life with someone--necessarily demands that we be out of our mind. So, falling in love is nature's way of generating the requisite amount of hysteria necessary to take the audacious leap into life long commitment. In other words, no one in their right mind would decide to marry. So, nature contrives to make us lose our minds thus making the decision to marry seem reasonable. On the other hand, there is the belief that the experience of falling in love is one of those rare moments of complete sanity--complete clarity. It is when we fall in love that we feel completely seen for who we are and see our partner for who he/she is. Instead of clouding our vision, falling in love clarifies and validates. It is out of this absolute clarity--absolute sanity--that the reasonable decision to marry comes. How we choose to understand this powerful experience will say a lot about how we "hold" the experience over time. If we choose to think of it as temporary insanity we'll likely devalue it and it's product--the commitment to a life union. If, on the other hand, we think of it as a time of genuine seeing and being seen, we'll likely cherish it and the relationship it fostered. I've been giving my flaws a lot of thought lately. Truth be told, I've been giving everyone's flaws a lot of thought lately. I hear people say, "No one's perfect" on a regular basis. If that isn't said, then the other fall back position is, "Everyone makes mistakes." It seems people will go out of their way to confess to imperfections as long as the confession is generic and doesn't demand too much. It's frustrating to see how much energy goes into avoiding the acknowledgement of deep and abiding imperfection. This is particularly true when a heartfelt acknowledgement of the truth more often than not results in forgiveness and reconciliation. For all of our flaws, most of us are genuinely interested in connection...even if we have no real understanding of how it's to be achieved. I like Leonard Cohen a lot. He's certainly a flawed man. Maybe it's his understanding of that fact that makes his songs so compelling. He has a song called "Anthem" that contains the line, "Everything has a crack in it. That's how the light gets in." The older I get, the more obvious it is to me that our flaws create a path to the deepest connection. Perfection offers no entry point. Whatever effort we make to appear seamless, is just so much avoidance. Genuine relationships are built on the acceptance of our flaws not on their absence. Most of the research on relationship success tells us that compatibility between partners is essential. Living a long and happy life with a partner usually depends on the similarities partners share. If two people have the same definition of "clean," the same definition of "on time," and the same definition of "expensive," they are less likely to experience conflict and therefore more likely to live comfortably together. They will experience compatibility. But what about "hard wired" differences like those that come with being male or female? Or, the "hard wired" differences that come with temperament and personality? What about the apparently natural inclination for opposites to attract? What about the desire to encounter something new and interesting--something different--that adds life and spark to the inevitable boredom that threatens to overtake long term relationships? It seems no matter how much we seek compatibility, we will inevitably find pockets of incompatibility as the relationship develops. Sometimes those pockets of incompatibility generate a gnawing disappointment. But, they can also create interest and curiosity. If allowed, points of incompatibility can be the source of substantial personal and relational growth. It's a cliche, of course, but pain and gain are, indeed, tied to each other. Because people don't ordinarily see a therapist when they are in the throes of major compatibility, the couples I see come with a pointed and painful experience of incompatibility. Listening to people describe their discomfort with differences, it quickly becomes obvious that at an earlier point in their relationship the differences were not experienced as painful. Rather, they were often a source of interest and growth. So, what makes a thing that generated interest turn into a thing that only produces annoyance and frustration? Three things contribute to the movement from interest to annoyance. First, there is an inevitable loss of imagination and curiosity that comes with a long term relationship. Second, the diminished space that comes with accumulated responsibilities like children and mortgages leaves less and less room for differences. And third, there seems to be a natural erosion of respect that accompanies relating over a long period of time. Disappointments and misunderstandings acquire a weight over time that makes carrying them comfortably very difficult. It's hard to maintain respect for someone you begin to see as making your life harder than it needs to be. So, what's the best response to incompatibility? Assuming the incompatibility doesn't create a dangerous situation, the answer seems fairly straightforward. Begin by cultivating imagination and curiosity. Ask yourself, "What makes him do that?" or "How does doing what he does work for him?" or "How does my response to her make her more or less likely to continue doing the thing I find annoying?" Second, look for ways to create constructive emotional space--create room for differences. One way this can be done is to remind yourself that he/she is not doing something to you. For example, my partner's cleaning something after I've already cleaned it is not something she is doing to me. Rather, it's something she's doing for herself. Finally, act in ways that deserves respect and notice the ways your partner deserves respect. Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Most of us get to a place where all we want is someone more like us than not. However, remembering that growth only comes with risk and difficulty can shed a kinder light on incompatibility. I was recently interviewed by a reporter from my local newspaper. He was working on an article about what couples need to address before getting married. Understandably, he wanted short answers to what feel like very complicated questions. I did my best to avoid offering short answers but doubt the article will reflect that effort. The whole thing reminded me how strongly we want quick and relatively painless routes to our desired goals.
Giving that interview rekindled a line of thought I've struggled with for the past number of months. That line of thought has to do with my own desire to find a quick and relatively painless route to the goals I've set for myself. The truth is that in order to successfully embark on the desired path, I first have to come to terms with myself. Coming to terms with myself demands the ability to thoroughly and compassionately take a "moral inventory" (to borrow a term from 12-step language) of my own life in all its dimensions. When taking this inventory, I've noticed the temptation to think that it's most important to catalog shortcomings, failures and flaws. Though noting those is essential, it is likely more important to note the places where I can exercise the courage to change...to live out the good things I want as opposed to bemoaning the flaws that block forward movement. I suppose there's a fine distinction to be drawn between noting fear and noting occasions where I'm called to exercise courage. For me, there's an ease that comes with noting fear. I can rest in the truth and humility that comes with acknowledging fear. Noting an occasion that calls for courage, on the other hand, demands some sort of action. It calls for living something out...putting some "skin in the game." It's no more or less true than noting fear but it does seem more demanding. So, what I'd say to couples going into a committed relationship and what I find myself saying to myself is, "Pay attention to who you are and do what you need to do to come to terms with that. It's a prerequisite to a successful relationship journey." |
Jake Thiessen, PhDI've been working with couples for a very long time. And, I love it! This blog is my attempt to communicate some of the things I've learned over the past 40 years. Archives
October 2020
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