Tag Archives: significant others

The Case Against Making Relationships “Work”

Emotion, Intimacy, Psychology, Relationships, Sociology, ,

If you wake up every morning, eager to go to work because you find it fulfilling and meaningful then I would agree that relationships are like work.  For too many people, however, work is a drudgery, a requirement for money that allows fun outside of the time spent there.  It is an obligation, a means to an end.  So, what are we saying when we tell ourselves or our friends that relationships are work? In talking to clients about this phrase, I have come to the conclusion that the phrase means we have to grin and bear it, not expect much from the relationship, or that we don’t deserve any more than we are getting.  There is little to nothing positive in the suggestion to “make it work”.

As I see it, relationships are places we go to restore our sense of peace and happiness.  Life can throw obstacles at us and make things difficult.  These obstacles and difficulties can lead us to fantasize about how it would be easier if we had made other choices, selected a different significant other.  However, those normal, occasional feelings, lead the couple to “work” to restore the peace and happiness they find in each other.  But what if we reframed it so it wasn’t “work”?  What if we framed it to feel like finding a new path to that supportive, comforting place? 

Perhaps a more helpful analogy regarding relationships is clothing.  We are uncomfortable in clothing that doesn’t fit us properly.  If we see something we like, but is too tight, we can take it home and choose to work out and lose some weight so we can fit into it.  Notice that the change happens in you and not in the clothing.  The work is on your part, fueled by a desire to have that clothing and feel comfortable in it. Similarly, if the clothing we love is too large for us, we can choose to have it altered.  In other words, we change the clothing. 

What troubles me most is when a person is in the early stages of a relationship, yet still refers to it as work.  In those cases, I think it is important to question the “fit.”  Is the person trying to figure out the world the way a toddler does when given a sorting toy and is trying to put the circle in the triangle?  This causes frustration and anger; once the toddler learns to sort properly, the task is easy.  I believe that relationships are supposed to be easy, too.  They are not supposed to cause us frustration, anger, and upset; they are supposed to replenish us.

If we think of relationships in terms of how they fit us, we can maintain a view that each person involved has qualities.  The question becomes do those qualities fit our needs and do ours fit theirs.  Do the roles we have in other areas of our life fit?  Do our outside interests fit?  Is their mutual respect? Is there a desire in both to make the other happy? Are both willing to maintain separate interests as well as explore mutual interests?  None of this sounds like work to me.  None of it sounds like an onerous chore that must be handled.

It seems much more productive to think about a potential relationship in terms of fit.  Just because an outfit doesn’t fit doesn’t mean it isn’t of good quality.  We can go into a high fashion store and know the material is flawless, but it just doesn’t fit.  Life is like that sometimes.  So is love.

It seems much more productive to think about a long-term relationship in terms of fit.  A favorite item of clothing can bring us comfort over so many periods of our life.  We sometimes find new ways to make it fit our lives.  I cannot stress enough that our relationship with our significant other should feel like that – comfortable, familiar, and adaptable.

When the fit is right, relationships are not work.  They are a place where our emotional reservoir is replenished.

A Note to the Nurturers, On Mother’s Day

Mother's Day, Parenting, Psychology, Relationships, Siblings, Sociology, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

On Mother’s Day, I get nostalgic. I think about the very first time I held my first-born. I think about how it was just as wonderful to hold my second child for the first time. I think about how heavenly it was to hold them as toddlers, to feel their head on my shoulder, to listen to their breathing as they slept, to hear them laugh as they played. I think about how breathtaking it has been to see them venture out on their own.

Many years ago, while they were still very young, I wrote: Parenting is a journey that takes us from total responsibility for another person, to the development of a responsible person. I am proud to say I’ve developed two responsible human beings and am enjoying their adulthood very much. Going by my statement from many years ago, it would seem my journey is complete, but really, as parents, we know it never is.

I know I will always feel a part of their continuing development, but now, I also focus on how they helped me grow. They developed me in concrete ways (they are my go-to tech group…I’m certain I will always need them for that!). They developed me emotionally. They kept me young at heart. They kept me playful and joyful. They added to my compassion. They guided my understanding of complex social and political issues. They opened my eyes and heart to new ideas, new people, and new adventures. And they continue to help me grow in all those ways.

As I think of all of this, I also think about the many forms that parenthood takes. There are the other family members who nurtured them and helped them become who they are. Clearly this includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It includes friends who chose to become family. It includes co-workers who guided and mentored them when I could not; who shared professional knowledge with them and helped to nurture their careers.

So, on Mother’s Day I celebrate all the people who help develop us, who nurture us, who help us face and conquer the “next” stage of our lives. Parenting, after all, is not biological. Parenting is a choice. It is the choice to nurture someone else. It is the choice to help someone else achieve his or her potential.

To all of you who have nurtured someone in some way, thank you. Happy Parenting Day!

“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination” ~Carl Rogers ~

When Sex and Intimacy Got a Divorce

Equality, Intimacy, Psychology, Relationships, Sociology, Uncategorized, , , ,

As far as I can recall, the separation began in the 1960s. Women’s liberation was making its mark. Women took off their bras, declared that they were more than their bodies, and demanded true equality in the workplace and at home. These were wonderful truths and wonderful goals. Women were ready to move from a norm where sex was a male prerogative and they were simply there to please the men they married. We were ready to move away from the imbalance of power between the sexes. Again, a very good goal.

The difficulty with any social change is that to change we focus on the extremes. The horror, the injustice, moves us to fix the problem. What is lost in the process is the fact that most of us do not live on the extremes; our lives are more normal than that. So, while the stated norm was that sex was a male prerogative there were always men and women who were eager to satisfy each other’s sexual needs and recognized that their own pleasure was enhanced by pleasing their partner (whether opposite sex partner or same sex partner). In reality, just as it is today, the balance of power was not a giant divide, but a place where control shifts from side and side and where each member has responsibility for the actions they take. Men are not always the enemy, women are not always the victims; we all make choices and our choices have consequences that impact us in the moment and in our futures.

While it may seem I have digressed, I hope you will now see the connection. The focus on the extremes led us, I think, to a new extreme – to a place where the norm is that sex is an activity one can engage in solely for pleasure, divorced from intimacy. Early on in the separation process, I began to hear of the “three date rule” (you have sex by the third date or you stop dating that person). Now, of course, there are apps where you simply pick a person based on their looks, “hook up”, and resume your life as it was before the act of fulfilling your need for physical pleasure. In sessions, I meet men and women who feel embarrassed that they want more from sex than that; they want to feel a connection.   I think the embarrassment stems from the shift to this new extreme and the fact that our focus became intercourse (sex) rather than sexuality.

Sexuality involves intimacy. It involves familiarity with the other person, knowledge of and an understanding of that person, a feeling of affection for them, and at its deepest level, a feeling of love for them. Sexuality is a term that encompasses values, body image, sense of self, and self-respect, as well as intercourse. This broader definition brings trust, caring, concern, warmth, and connection back into the equation.

Our power – our control over our bodies and our lives – lies in our sexuality, not in our ability to have sex without intimacy. It lies in our ability to trust our partner, to know that they are looking out for our pleasure (as we are looking out for theirs). It lies in our willingness to be vulnerable – because vulnerability in a trusting relationship allows us to not only be genuine, but to move out of our comfort zone and to grow. Our power lies in our ability to give consent based on our values, our body image, our sense of self, and our self-respect. Our power lies in knowing that our value to the other person does not rest on what we do in this moment, but in the fact that our partner knows and understands us, values us, and that their affection and/or love is not based on the moment, but on our history and our future. Our power rests in knowing that a “no” does not mean our time together is over.

I do hope that sex and intimacy reconcile. For it is in that reconciliation that true pleasure is found.

 

 

 

 

 

The Answer

Psychology, Sociology, Uncategorized, , , ,

We all crave “the answer”.

What made a relationship with a friend end? What made a relationship with a significant other end? Why did (someone we know but don’t particularly like) end up with such a great partner? Why is school so hard? Why am I always the one who gets in trouble? Why don’t you ever yell at (insert sibling name here)? Why did I – or someone I care about – wind up with a chronic or terminal illness? Why am I alone? Why can’t people leave me alone? Why am I unhappy? Why don’t people believe in climate change?

So, what is the issue we need to consider? It is that there is no the; there is no one factor that could account for the event in question. The answer really rests in accepting that we must seek out answers.

Let’s start with a fun one.   Why am I always the one who gets in trouble? We have all either said that as a child or heard a child say it. From the child’s point of view, it is a fact that he is the only one who gets in trouble. The reason he will give for that fact is that the parent favors the other sibling. Of course, parents see it very differently. Parents will say, “Yes, I do reprimand ________ more often because he/she is older, knows or should know better, is the one who takes it to an extreme, is the instigator…” In other words, the parent is considering multiple reasons. Why? Again, one might be tempted to give one reason, but I can think of a multitude of reasons: the parent has a broader view of the situation, the parent is older/wiser/more experienced, the parent is trying to justify their unfair practice. Yes, that last one is a bit of a game changer. It opens up an entirely different path of possible reasons for why something is happening.

Let’s consider another. What made a relationship with a significant other end? Over the years, I have had countless clients grapple with this question. Again, the search begins with a quest for the thing that went wrong. I was too pushy. They were selfish. They cheated. I was young. Drugs/alcohol. I wasn’t ready. The timing was off. Finances. He didn’t give me flowers. She gained a lot of weight. The sex wasn’t the same. I lost interest. We had kids. Monogamy isn’t natural.

Each one, at first glance, seems like a reasonable explanation. Once we consider the reason as reasonable, our search for understanding comes to a close. However, when we decide to examine the answer in greater depth, we quickly see that, once again, many paths emerge. For example, “I was pushy” leads to another question: Why were you pushy? The answer to that one can be: my needs were not being met; I felt like I was not a priority; our energy levels were very different; we enjoyed different things; we had different goals; I thought he/she was unmotivated. Each of these answers lead to further questions such as: Why would you want to be with someone who did not meet your needs? Or did it make you happy to be with someone who had a different energy level? What does it mean that they were unmotivated? Each question represents different problems and different categories of issues that would have had to be addressed in order to keep the relationship alive or justify its end. The questions represent the futility of looking for the reason.

I will add a little psychological science here too: correlations are a common tool used in the social sciences. A correlation represents an association between two variables/events. For example, there is a relationship between number of hours one studies and success on an exam. However, that is all we can say. We cannot say that number of hours studying causes success on an exam. It is tempting, but it is not what a correlation allows us to do. After all, a person can spend hours studying the wrong material and therefore do poorly. Or someone can spend hours studying, then become so anxious that one’s memory is negatively impacted and therefore performs poorly. Or a person can have an eidetic memory, not have to study at all, and do very well. It is far more productive to search for the multiple factors associated with success on an exam because causation is more likely to rest in the grouping of factors.

Why am I going on about this? Well, in part, because it demonstrates our desire for simplicity over complexity and for causation rather than association. To bring it back to our earlier examples, a child associates getting in trouble with a parent favoring a sibling and then comes to see that as the cause because the child is unable to understand that is a combination of factors – none of which have to do with favoritism. A person hurt by the end of a relationship associates “I was pushy” with the breakup, attributing causation to that single factor of pushiness, rather than looking at the whole picture.

So, when we are tempted to find the answer, let’s remember that real life is not based on multiple choice and the identification of a single correct answer. Let’s remember that even sophisticated multiple choice tests give us options – you know those answer options we so dislike such as “all of the above”, “only B and D”, or “none of the above”. The fact is: life is more like that. Even more so, it is like an essay question where we choose the facts to consider and present and with those choices, we select a path for our response, a path for our future. So, embrace the question, generate even more questions, and have fun finding the answers that will bring you satisfaction, acceptance, and, hopefully, a joy-filled future.

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