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Tag Archive for: predictability

connection

Neighborly behavior

Like a Good Neighbor…
When we all emerged from our cozy homes the day after Snowmageddon we were faced with a parking lot filled with snowed in cars. Everyone was outside armed with shovels, brooms, and willingness to help. As we began to dig out, the snowplow arrived to help clear the lanes. We were laughing, dodging snowballs, using teamwork to get each other’s cars free, one by one.  Our strapping teen boys dug fast and hard.  Our playful middle schoolers climbed the biggest snow drift to shout out direction about things they could see from their 13 foot perch.  Little ones watched from windows with mugs of [warm] chocolate.  We all had work to do and understood that gathering together made that work much more manageable.

Except for one of us.  He was in his four wheel drive truck, frantically shifting gears from reverse to drive, rhythmically gunning his engine in an attempt to rock his truck out of its snow prison.  He was clearly panicked, needing to be mobile sooner than the rest of us.

At first, the group reaction was one of annoyance which turned quickly to concern for the kids running around.  Neighbors alternated between looking over at his distress and putting their heads down to complete the task before them.  His distress, however, was increasing.  After a couple of minutes, we began to trickle over toward him and explained that we would dig him out if he would be still for a little while and let us do that.  He slumped in his seat and let us get to work.  When his truck was free he drove away with great relief.

We knew he had survived genocide before he arrived in our townhouse complex.  Neighbors may or may not be reliable.  They may only think of themselves and their own safety.  He later told me that his panic that morning had everything to do with his sudden knowledge that, no matter how prepared he was [even with a large 4 wheel drive truck to help him escape just about anything], he still had to depend on the benevolence of his neighbors.  Digging out from Snowmageddon made him feel as vulnerable as he felt the moment he understood he would have to get himself and his family to the nearby mountains in order to survive the slaughter going on around him.  The difference, in 2010, is that neighbors advancing on him with shovels and brooms came to help him escape.

Hopefully, not every neighborly opportunity to help will feel as desperate as this one.  There are opportunities every day to let someone near you know you see them and are friendly.  I know a woman who makes several sandwiches each morning to pass out to homeless folk as she walks to work.  Offering your seat to a fellow commuter who seems tired is a gift.  A smile or a nod as you walk by.  These moments, so small, communicate community. Such a simple thing.  Such a necessary thing for all of us.

Loving on Life’s Terms: being available for small and big moments of connection and awareness of the needs of others.

February 24, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-02-24 09:00:352021-10-14 22:25:00Neighborly behavior
connection, dating, disconnection, friendship, history, intimacy, love, lovers, patterns, protecting love, sex

Falling in Love: Easy. Staying in Love?

In the most recent post “To Fall in Love,” I wrote about a pathway to falling in love. It includes asking and answering 36 questions with a partner, sitting face to face, then finding a quiet spot and looking into each others eyes for 4 minutes.

Key ingredients: A willing partner, willingness to Listen, willingness to Share, a quiet environment, sitting face to face, authenticity.

When you try this, are you going to fall in love?  It is easy to fall in love.  Harder to Stay in love.  Falling in love, within this context, is actually the decision to open oneself to receive another person.  Opening oneself to show one’s authentic self to another person.  The questions are designed to offer deepening authenticity; designed to offer opportunities to receive a level of truthful communication from another.  These things create the platform on which love and connection can thrive.

We humans crave attainment of a state and hope to live there as if we have scaled a vertical cliff and reached the mesa at the top.  Stasis, however, is not a viable option.  To stay in love requires effort.  It requires us to continue to risk with our partner.  To continue to be willing to be seen clearly, to risk being disappointed, to risk living in intimacy.  This can be a terrifying state of affairs…at the very least, exhausting.

My willingness to continue to ask questions, your willingness to live with my answers when I give them has everything to do with connection and attunement, those experiences that deepen love.  We humans often move in and out of states of awareness with each other and in our day to day worlds.

Loving on Life’s Terms is avoiding tuning out, finding that balance between connection with an Other while living life as it needs to be lived today.

 

January 30, 2015/1 Comment/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-01-30 09:03:102021-10-14 22:25:02Falling in Love: Easy. Staying in Love?
dating, friendship, love, lovers, patterns, wing woman, wingman

Attraction Versus Résumé

My friend was beginning to think about dating after his divorce. Well, in truth, he wasn’t necessarily ready to Date. It seemed that everyone in his circle was ready for him to date. His dating life, or lack thereof, was a hot topic. I signed on as his wing woman, ready to help him navigate, offer sage advice from my own dating experience and give him support as he took risks.

What was my most important piece of sage wisdom? Easy:

There is Attraction and then there is Résumé.

Nature wins, every time. We understand that our primary function is to procreate and make more humans. Nature decrees it and we follow it. For this reason, we see a suitable sexual partner and respond accordingly to that hot guy or sexy woman. We are made to attract and to be enticed.

What Nature didn’t take into account is our propensity to share lives with each other, or try to.

This is where résumé comes in. That potential lover looks and feels So Good. We sign on for some enjoyment hoping that enjoyment will build into something we can rely on. But what is the résumé? What is this sexy creature’s history with lovers and partners?

If we agree that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, the way our Sexy Creature has treated his or her lovers in the past has everything to do with what we can expect in our future.

Questions to attend to:

  • What story does she tell you about previous relationships? Both beginnings and endings?
  • What relationship patterns does he describe? Understand?
  • Does she blame his or her partners for most of the relationship health or pain?
  • What about current relationships? Does he have healthy friendships? Family relationships?
  • Does she expect certain things in friendship but forego those same expectations with lovers?

What does your résumé look like? What do you bring to relationships? What are your strengths? Growth edges?

January 4, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-01-04 19:59:242021-10-14 22:25:03Attraction Versus Résumé

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