Feature Article - Everywhere I Go, There I Am
As a Facilitator of the Fisher Rebuilding Divorce Recovery Seminar I am privy to a variety of the causes of ended love relationships. It is always more complicated than a good relationship gone bad. Many relationships begin on an unstable foundation caused by the childhood dynamics each person brings into the union. Anything on top of an already weak foundation becomes a stressor. Children, financial hardship, aging adult parents, sickness, and even day to day routines can be a strain. It's ok for a while — and then it isn't.
Adaptation Strategies
One of the first things we look at in the Rebuilding Seminar are the behaviors we adopted as little people to acquire the love and nurturing we needed to grow. These strategies were vital to our survival when young, but when brought into adult love relationships can cause significant difficulty.
Some of these adaptations strategies cause us to relate to others as people-pleasers, caretakers or perfectionists. And that's if we're lucky. Some of us never grow up and remain angry, pouty little kids always wanting our own way. Summed up in the saying: "Everywhere I go, there I am" these dynamics do not limit themselves to romantic relationships but show up at work and other relationships as well.
How these strategies affect love
We have in us a lot of voices; "parts" if you will. Among the many voices are adult parts, parent parts and child parts. You can see the difficulty it might cause if one person relates as adult and the other responds as a child. Greeting your partner at the door you say: "Wow, you really look tired." And s/he responds: "Why are you always criticizing me?" Hmmm. Where'd that come from? That was the 9 year old showing up. If this is a common occurrence in your relationship rather than an isolated incident, it may serve your relationship to be watchful of this dynamic between you.
The most common cause of divorce
Endeavoring to change a parent-child dynamic in a relationship to one of adult-adult is one of the most common causes of divorce. If we look at this from the view of roles in the relationship we can see how role nausea plays a part. The parent grows weary of being so darn responsible all the time and wants to have a little fun, and the child longs for freedom and to experience grownup challenges. Both long for change. The relationship itself longs for such a change.
Who is in charge?
Of the three "parts" we're currently talking about: adult, parent and child, ultimately the greatest benefit comes from relating to others from the adult. The adult has the ability to wisely orchestrate the other voices as it best suits a given situation. Sometimes parent behavior is appropriate. Sometimes child behavior is appropriate. Remember the question is always: "What is appropriate now?" The adult best determines the answer to that question.
Next month the Design Your Life Newsletter will look at the Parent-voice. Where does it come from? Can you trust it? Is it just a child-voice in disguise? When is it appropriate behavior and when is it not?
For now I encourage you to create space for your adult. As much as possible allow the adult to orchestrate your choices. What do you notice?
From the Bookshelf - How To Heal A Painful Relationship
by Bill Ferguson
"...and if necessary part as friends..." so reads the tagline. Bill Ferguson is a former divorce attorney. He has watched, counseled and coaxed thousands upon thousands of couples as they have made their way through the conflicts surrounding divorce. He points out: "Whenever you take action to come out on top, without regard to the other person, you create opposition against yourself." From that premise he writes his book. He provides examples of relationship dynamics that couples struggle with, and ends each chapter with action steps. The steps start with words like: notice, find, be willing, and do. The man who sold me the book said he and his wife were helped by doing the exercises together as a preventative measure. Couldn't hurt!
Life Designers
Non-violent Peacekeepers
Conflict rages daily in every nook and cranny of our world - amongst nations and families alike. At a time when America grows weary of war, and the old, old ways of dealing with conflict, we can be encouraged by the tens of thousands of unarmed soldiers who are staring down bitter conflict as part of the growing non-violent peacekeeping movement.
Thousands of people have been trained in conflict resolution and daily risk their lives to enter zones of conflict world-wide. The Compassionate Listening Project has taken more than 400 volunteers into the midst of conflicts such as between Germans and Jews, and Israelis and Palestinians, and taught them how to listen to each others' stories with compassion, and to imagine walking in the other's shoes. In Angola, Search for Common Ground trained 10,000 displaced persons in conflict resolution. The Nonviolent Peaceforce is a consortium of 93 member organizations from around the world and is developing a large-scale professional force of well-trained unarmed peacekeepers. There are many other groups: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Peace Brigades International, International Solidarity Movement, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Nonviolence International, Women Making Peace, and more, as well as the Freedom Project which operates here at home in our own prisons.
In the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi's non-violent approach to conflict, nonviolent peacekeeping has saved thousands of lives. (September 11, 2006 was the 100th anniversary of Gandhi's proclamation of 'satyagraha' (nonviolent action based on "soul force".) Gandhi's writings remind us that nonviolent resistance has to be "no less brave, no less glorious than violent resistance." I would respond that it must be even more so.
It takes savvy, creativity, skill and great courage to step into what conflict would reveal to us - rather than just kill the messengers. I am grateful for those who have designed their lives to seek the wisdom -- and at the same time stop some of the madness.
For further reading:
Greater Than the Tread of Mighty Armies... by Mel Duncan
Heroes for an Unheroic Time, by Carol Estes
One Thing I Want You To Know About Divorce...
By Mike Bare
The reason most people don't race motorcycles is because the downside outweighs the best possible experience. The chance of death is just too high. Up until 3 months ago, the thing I had learned from my divorce was: companionship, love, sex, children are all great but the chance of misery is just too high. I'm coming to a different point of view.
The reason motorcycle racing is so dangerous is because most people don't have the necessary skills to race with relative safety. I now believe that marriage is also extremely dangerous (to your emotional health) if you don't have the necessary skills and, in fact, most people do not possess those skills. Some of these skills include how to recognize and cope with personality differences, how to deal with personality changes in both you and your partner, how to set boundaries to protect yourself, how to avoid pathologies like "enabling" where your actions encourage bad behavior on your partners part with no consequences or "caretaking" where you are always responsible leaving your partner free to be irresponsible and many others.
My belief is these skills can vastly improve the chances of a successful, lifetime relationship. My regret is that I didn't posses these skills to (possibly) save my first marriage. My hope is my second relationship will be much more stable because of my work to master these skills.