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Give a Nod.

I live in an area that is filled with Achievers and the families they are raising. This area buzzes with activity.  The atmosphere is saturated with this message: “We are busy people. We all need to get somewhere and we need it to happen with as little mess as possible.” Stress levels are high. Our children watch how we handle it. They learn.

Of late, I’ve noticed an up-tick in head shaking. You know the kind I mean: when you take too long at the stop sign, letting pedestrians pass in the cross walk, and the driver behind you honks with frustration and shakes their head in disgust.

Yesterday, a teen driver miscalculated his position on a small road in our area. I was in his way. As he drove over a stretch of lawn to force his way past me, he glared and shook his head at me [barely missing a mail box]. Monkey see, monkey do. This young driver has witnessed, as I have, the difficulty of managing delayed satisfaction, the head shake, the quick judgement of idiocy from others while making one’s way down the road.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve given my fair share of exasperated head shakes meant to wake the other person up to their failure, as viewed by me, from my perspective. Lately, I’ve done it more often that I care to admit.

Today, I am visiting another area. This is dance competition season and I occasionally land in a coffee shop waiting to pick my daughter up from a performance. New to the area, I drove slower than usual while trying to find my way. I may even have accidentally cut someone off when the road narrowed to one lane before I was aware it was happening. Not one head shake. Not one. When I waved to let the other driver know I knew of my mistake and was taking responsibility, she smiled, nodded her head and drove on.

A head nod. All was well. This gentle, accepting behavior has continued through my morning at the coffee shop. It’s possible I’ve landed in a happy respectful hamlet of achievers who do not need to judge, demean or alert me to my failures. I may have landed in a hamlet of folk who have good impulse control and an ability to tolerate delayed gratification.

Either way, that head nod felt so gentle, so accepting, I found myself reviewing the power of this small action. Allowing for the other person’s humanity, assuming good intention, is loving on life’s terms. Sometimes the best way to show up for another is to simply choosing a nod over a shake.

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Love = An Action Step

Unscheduled time on retreat.  We were mulling the statement: “Love is a choice, not a feeling.” We all weighed in. I shared my current thoughts: the limbic system functions to help us find the partner; attention, thought and choice help us stay with the partner.

Love is a verb. It is an ongoing action step.

In an interview with Carolyn Alterio, poet Li-Young Lee said that as a parent he felt he needed to act “as much as possible out of a condition of being totally present.”

http://www.sobs.org/poetry/an-interview-with-li-young-lee.html

This conviction embodies love as an action step. There are those who say that Love asks us to hold ourselves to the highest standard.

  • Am I with you in body, mind and spirit?
  • Do I understand that your experience matters as much as mine in this moment?
  • Am I treating you with respect?
  • Do I care what you say [even if I have heard this 10000 times before]?
  • Can I count to 10 [24 times] before responding when pausing is prudent?
  • Can I attend to the moment and appreciate the fact that I am with you? That I am doing something for and with you?
  • Can I receive? [a compliment, a hug, help, soup, love, a push, constructive criticism]

Choosing to love puts me at risk for joy and loss, easy times and work, intimacy and more intimacy.  There is the danger: intimacy and more intimacy.

  • Can I let you into my space, my boundaries?
  • Can I risk the consequences of loving you?
  • Can I risk the consequences of being loved By you?

As you mull Love as an action step, know that perfection is not an option.  None of us are capable of being present, of loving fully, during every single interaction.  Life doesn’t work that way.  We aren’t made that way.  We can, however, strive.

After all, it’s the loving thing to do.

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Hovering = Loving?

Jason sat on the edge of my couch, his head in his hands, weeping. He had graduated from a top college on the Eastern Coast with solid grades and a gritty year abroad. On paper his capabilities were strong. However, 6 months into his first job, Human Resources had sent him to me to assess motivational and planning issues; standard executive functioning issues.  He was exhausted, befuddled and needed something he could not name.

Raising children can be the most amazing, frustrating, exciting, crazy, awe inspiring, agonizing fabulous vocation in the world as we know it. This tiny life is suddenly in our hands, in our care. Many parents have the hope that they will not make the same mistakes their parents made. Some hope they will be able to replicate the childhood they had. Others set the bar very high and hope to give their child a very different childhood experience from the one that created them.

Hovering. Helicopter Parenting. These words describe a parenting style in which the parent “helps” the child by organizing the child’s social schedule, manages the child’s “free” time with enrichment activities, offers a crushing amount of unsolicited opinions, hires tutors for the child to mange high expectations and eventually does the child’s homework so that the child gets a good grade or doesn’t have excessive stress.

As parents engage in this parenting style, they rarely say to themselves: “Let me do what I can to stifle my child’s sense of self; I want a child who cannot structure a day, execute a project, manage anxiety or forge solid working relationships with co-workers.”  Usually, the hope is to attend to their child the way they were not attended to.  The hope is to be sure their child doesn’t experience undue stress or discomfort.  The hope is to make sure the child knows that the parent loves them and will always be there for him or her.  Sometimes the parenting style is used to make the parent look good or to help the parent remain in the social group the parent wants or needs to be in.

Aron had executive functioning issues.  Or, equally accurate: he needed to learn, in his early twenties, what kids were learning naturally in middle school and high school.  He had never learned how to make his own schedule and keep to it.  He hadn’t learned how to budget time to complete various stages of projects.  He struggled with co-workers and the distribution of work.  He needed a supervising agent to tell him what the next goal was.

Aron’s case is extreme.  He had a lot of unlearning and learning to do in order to catch up to his peers.  Other kids experience this steep learning curve when they go to college or move out of the family home and leave their helicoptering parent behind [as much as possible].  Cell phones and texting can make this very difficult.  We also had to work with his parents, his father in particular, on managing their reaction to his anxiety as he mastered some of these goals.

Loving on Life’s terms means giving a child enough guidance and support that they can accomplish the learning they need to accomplish without doing it for them.  Children must learn how to manage anxiety, learn through trial and error, handle down time without screens or being entertained, think for themselves.

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To Fall in Love…

Attraction, resume, hook ups, loneliness, the attraction of connection…the hope of connection…
How do I know if s/he is attracted to me?
How do I know if s/he is lying to me?
How does everybody else do this?

We live in a world that speeds along. We have forgotten how to relish building, creating together. Together. We live in a world in which many act first and create later. Falling in love is an act of creation. While there may be attraction, Love the foundational feeling upon which many hope to rely requires the willingness to share, to be intimate, to risk exposing.

Recently I read an article in the New York Times titled:
“To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” by Mandy Len Catron. http://nyti.ms/1BQibt2

She relates the particulars of Dr. Arthur Aron’s research [self disclosures and other relationship building tasks] and her own experience when trying this out with a colleague she ultimately fell in love with.
Read the article. Read the research.
What does creating a loving relationship require? A partner willing to risk falling in love.
Most of us fear risking unless we know there are grounds for mutual risking. The short answer to the questions listed above are: Listen. Be with that person.

How do you know if he or she is attracted to you? Spend time with that person.

How to fall in love with that person? Ask questions and wait for the answers. Attend to the answers. Don’t have any preconceptions of what you would like to hear. Just listen. Soak the answers in.  Answer those same questions with authenticity.

Risk.

Loving on Life’s Terms is risking, hoping, taking faith walks with another.  You can do this.

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You can have specifications?

Ali, a student at a local college, came to see me to manage sexual discomfort. As we explored Ali’s relationships, it became clear that Ali gave little to no thought about who was a good friend and who might be a trustworthy lover. When I gave the homework assignment of writing a list of ten things that make a good partner [“Come closer”] and ten things that shout “Stay away,” Ali was flummoxed.

“You can have specifications? I don’t even know what I want in a partner. What do I look for?”

The main thing to pay attention to is how you feel while with the person, but more importantly, when you are not with the person. We can have a delightful time, an intense time, a hard time with someone. How we feel after those experiences matter a great deal.

Do you feel Empty? Blank? Happy? Content? Gently awake? Abuzz? Do you want more time with that person? If yes, do you want more time in order to continue a conversation? To correct a feared wrong impression? Do you feel empty waiting to be with that person? Do you feel calm and connected when not with the person? Answers to this small inventory show us many things about the people we spend time with..

Loving on Life’s Terms means seeing the people we are with clearly. It also means seeing our responses and reactions to the people in our lives clearly. Seek people who energize you more often than not. Spend time with people who leave you feeling whole and hopeful.

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Behavior Speaks Louder than Words

Loving on Life’s Terms means accepting Reality as it appears.

Hunter broke up with Ilyana.  It broke his heart and it didn’t.  He met her ten years ago.  They enjoyed the same movies, music and comedians.  They liked the same restaurants and had fun exploring new ones.  Shopping was intriguing, especially when they made each other laugh with whispered observations.

He reached out first and she responded.  He invited and came up with plans for them.  This seemed okay, most of the time; except for those times that he wished she would text him on her own initiative.  But then again, he was the guy and she was “traditional”.  He didn’t feel like the burden of guiding the relationship was on him.  Not necessarily.  Her responsiveness helped him feel they had a partnership.

Within the year he asked her to marry him.  She said yes.

Engagement meant planning and budgeting.  Engagement meant talking things over and coming up with the best wedding for both of them.  Except it didn’t.  It seemed to become Ilyana’s Day.  She did this through making decisions over things too small to bother him with.  She did this by planning with her girlfriends and mother instead of with him.  She scheduled the tasting event with her sister during Hunter’s work day.

Behavior speaks louder than words.

Attempts to talk about his worry were met with rationales.  He encouraged her to include him, thinking this was a learning curve for her as they moved into the next stage of their partnership.  When he adjusted his schedule to accommodate the tasting event he was met with an angry Ilyana who felt he was intruding on her time with her sister.  After apologizing and trying to soothe her, Hunter was left with an uneasy feeling.  Wasn’t the tasting event supposed to be for the two of them?  Wasn’t the wedding reception a party thrown by the two of them to welcome others into celebrating their public promises to each other?  He was the one to be at the tasting event.  Not Ilyana’s sister.

Long story short: Hunter understood that his partnership needs didn’t match her partnership needs.  He had explained her behavior away by blaming her family of origin, her work schedule, her upbringing, “The Rules,” her period.  He told himself they would grow together and she would understand how to partner him.  He hoped she would learn to be affectionate and initiate more than she did.

“The tasting event is a huge metaphor for me.  I had this moment of clarity: something isn’t right.  Instead of explaining it away or hoping she could change, I realized this taste, this feeling, was the important thing.”  He broke up with her.  He stayed single and dated enough to learn to see each woman clearly.  Hunter did not explain anything to himself, instead, asking for clarity, talking with each woman about what he liked and didn’t like, what he saw and didn’t see, how he felt.

Hunter met Meg.  Hunter married Meg.  Meg shared the special day, including the tasting event.  They have been married for 7 years.  More importantly, they have related to each other for 7 years.  They have asked questions, loved, explained and seen each other clearly, as clearly as possible.  They are loving on Life’s Terms.

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It’s Break Up Season

Dana (not her real name) wept as she related her disappointment in her boyfriend.  He knew Valentine’s Day meant a great deal to her and he knew she wanted him to do something special.  Dana described in detail why this holiday mattered to her and the stock she put in celebrating it well.  Then she detailed her disappointment in his performance:

  • He had disappointed her by taking her to a restaurant they had already been to several times.
  • He only bought champagne when she asked him why the wait staff hadn’t delivered it.
  • His gift was a necklace.
  • When he saw her disappointment he gently reminded her that finances were tight.  He had just begun to work again after being laid off for 15 months; debts should be paid down.
  • He didn’t say he would exchange it for a better necklace.

She broke up with him, waiting to see what he might do to get her back.

Wondering if her wound was due to inequity, I asked: “How did you let him know he was special on Valentine’s Day?”

Dana’s response: “What do you mean?”

Our discussion began in earnest.  Dana’s expectations were that she would be feted and acknowledged as the most important thing in her partner’s life and that this would be done on this special day.  In her mind, this was a one-way holiday.  All arrows pointing toward her.

It is human nature to test our partners.  It is human nature to want “proof” that we are, indeed, the One our partner is committed to.

My question is this: Would we pass the test we set for our partners?  Loving on Life’s terms means understanding that our partner has needs and concerns.  It means understanding that our partner wants to know he is special too, that he matters for more than he can give [materially].

Things to consider:

When you assess whether or not you matter to your partner, ask yourself: does your partner matter to you?  How do you let your partner know this?

Do you hold yourself to the same level of expectation you hold your partner to?

If you could observe yourself in relation to your partner, what message do you give most clearly?

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Acme Warehouse of Reality

We’ve all seen it: the cottage just over there.  The one that has perfect landscaping, a gentle cobble stone walk leading to that welcoming door.  We see the lights blazing; the interior must be warm, bright [but not fluorescent] and finely decorated.  We just know that carpets are thick, linens are crisp, the refrigerator is full and something delicious and comfortably exotic is bubbling away on the stove.  Surely the inhabitants are festive interesting happy people and we would be lucky to be invited in.

At the bottom of that cottage’s driveway and a bit down that meandering road, we see a warehouse.  Its a big one.  Not so pretty; bare bulbs light the space.  The walls aren’t paneled and the floor is concrete.  The space is large, cavernous, unfinished.  But here’s the thing: everything necessary to make the space liveable, beautiful, wonderful is there.  Ready to go.  We just need to recognize things and put them where necessary to make Home.

Relationships are similar to the Cottage and the Warehouse.  When we meet each other, we come with hopes and needs.  Most folks want to move right into the cottage of light, manicured landscaping and promised softness.  This is the equivalent of wanting our partner to be fully created with no more growth edges and everything fixed, all wounds and troublespots gone.

The gift of the Warehouse, the unfinished space, the unfinished partner, is the possibility of growing, of becoming, of co-creating.  There are those who experience the finished, fully decorated cottage as stifling; changing themselves to fit the environment even when their natural tendencies don’t match.

Loving on Life’s terms means taking the unfinished person, the life being lived today [taking the risk of a splinter or two] and accepting the growth – the wonderful, messy, confusing, joyful growth – of those we walk beside.

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Loving on Life’s Terms

Life is full of joy, regret, hope, disappointment, excitement and bewilderment.  Life is messy and doesn’t follow script, at least, not the scripts we write and hope to live out.  This blog is meant to be an exploration and discussion of love on life’s terms.  We will explore romance, commitment, infatuation, hurt, forgiveness, and joy.  We will discuss when to stay, when to leave and how to use those times of separation for connection. 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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