Love's Communication Is Often Loaded with Psychic Bombs

18 July 2010

Loving is easy ─ but communicating, without blowing each other up, is hard

Dave Stolz wrote:

I like your "active" . . . definition but what I've found to be a problem really has to do with evaluating communication, especially when it becomes "emotional." And I guess by emotional I mean high risk to one or both parties.

We're all born with and soon develop behavioral problems, most, it seems, created through exchanges with our parents before we're actually aware of who we and they are.

What I've found is that I evaluate a communication based on biases I don't often understand. I fill in spaces thinking [that] I'm making the interpretation the other has in mind.

I know I get into trouble doing this, because those spaces are created and get filled in by patterns of behavior developed as a youngster trying to get, and not always getting, all the love I needed. It takes a lot of work finding this out, and even then I find I often let unwelcome or seemingly hurtful expressions go because I fear the outcome of a challenge, or for some reason, think the timing isn't right.

Love I've found requires an exchange in which people are always working to make themselves understood, and most often that has to be done through using words. It also means that people have to be willing to question and be questioned about what is expressed, verbally and otherwise.

I have begun to see how passive-aggressive behavior comes through a lack of courage in making what I want or what I need known. It's the avoidance of clarity that comes through what I'll call productive confrontation that engenders a sort of smoldering or subterranean anger that finds its outlet indirectly.

[Original paragraph broken up to ease online reading.]

How can we achieve clear communication?

Clarity in communication requires becoming almost meditatively self-aware.

Clear communication is hopeless, unless at least one of the parties is moderately clear about (a) what he/she is feeling, saying or writing, and (b) why.

Dave Stolz is right

The detritus of our pasts, in combination with the slant of our genes, makes for a fog that is impenetrable, unless we focus directly on its origin and its inward and outward effects.

Becoming aware of the rise and identity of our emotions helps to prevent us from making muddying small-self responses to what another person has said or done. (Small-self means narrow or closed self.)

Achieving this meditatively-originated self-wisdom is not easy

Seeing what we are actually doing, and why, is not easy. In part because that skill requires a non-judgmental, continual focus on what is actually going on inside us.

The exercise of persistent awareness is difficult, especially in a culture that seeks fast-changing, self-distracting external stimulation.

Yet, to soothe the problems that Dave Stolz has eloquently outlined, a capacity for non-interrupted awareness is necessary.

We change our behavior, not others’

In gaining wisdom, we must first see ourselves more clearly and less reactively. Only then can we begin to achieve non-destructive, partial insights into another’s behavior.

Compassion has to guide the expression of awareness. In the absence of compassion, we risk sliding into nasty judgmentalism.

In all cases, we open ourselves. The example of our opened self begins then to open others.

In reality, between lovers, compatibility makes all of this easier

Compatibility is important. It is possible to love most everyone, but it is difficult to live peacefully or enjoyable with carelessly selected samples from Everyone.

Compatibility of personality and goals between lovers is important, otherwise irritating differences can overwhelm the worth of the partnership.

That’s common wisdom. But the commonality of that thinking is usually misapplied by people who lack the clear insights that are generated by even low levels of self-awareness.

Our dysfunctions attracts complementing dysfunctions

People mired in unaware dysfunction(s) tend to seek partners who complement their twisted components. That’s most of us.

Neither person constructively benefits from the relationship. The shared dance of trigger points keeps us hooked.

Dysfunctional complementarities can create relationships that, however unpleasant, last for years. Our partner’s dysfunction so efficiently matches our own that we are (seemingly) forever trapped.

It is as if our uninsightful unawareness(es) condemn us to live, large-self tormenting lives. (Large-self here means our potential to achieve loving wholeness and, simultaneously, bloom the essence that most richly becomes who we are.)

Even with insight, finding balanced complementarity is difficult

Awareness breeds compassion, as well as insight.

However, if compassion is not balanced between the inward and outward, it tends to get skewed in unfavorable directions ─ either as too much self-sacrifice or too little.

Too much self-sacrifice can result in accepting too many unshared enthusiasms, likes/dislikes, or perpetually irritating differences in timing.

Finding a constructive balance requires (a) self knowledge and (b) an accurate assessment of just how much the lover has to be like oneself to make for a long-term, compatible mix.

This is ordinary common sense. It is usually misapplied by people not yet ready to see themselves, or anyone else, clearly.

Confused assessments are not wise assessments. Dangling on each other’s emotional hooks is not the same as providing and receiving loving support.

Seeing that difference requires a clarity that those who are unclear do not have. That’s why therapy often takes so long.

A note on the misused concept of perfection

In relationship (and everything else), nothing is perfect, so the common wisdom goes. That mundane formulation misses the vital fact that perfection doesn’t exist.

Perfection cannot be defined because the ephemeral nature of existence varies so much, so quickly, that whatever perfect standard existed in one moment is gone in the next.

Even so small a conceptual error as denying the achievability of perfection lets the concept of perfection in through the back door. Though we might deny that a perfect relationship exists, the fact that we have to deny it often means that we are secretly wishing it did.

So loving partnership cannot be about seeking even quasi-perfection.

Instead, love is about finding companionable balance in supporting one’s own and one’s partner’s development through life ─ in a way that constructively nurtures the essence in each.

That’s a complicated mix. It is always dynamic ─ wobbling too much one way and then the other.

Wise assessment of the potential worth of continuing the loving dynamic over time has to properly evaluate what has been lost and gained through the process.

We each need to assess just how much giving we are capable of doing at the stage we are in.

Person A’s character may force us to grow more (or more quickly) by often exposing our closed-nesses. But it may equally be that we haven’t the strength to meet the challenge A continually presents. Our relationship with A may actually be preventing our psyche’s growth. It may be preferable to be with less challenging B.

This growth dynamic exposes the reason why life-long monogamy may not work.

As we grow, we tend to lag or outgrow our partners. The relationship has to adjust ─ either intact or by separation. This is why some people describe their lives as a span of serial monogamies. (Of course, most of these people are actually describing their serially-displayed lack of awareness and insight.)

So speak from clarity, and if unclear, clarify later

Genuine love requires that we strive to speak clearly. Speaking clearly requires that we come, objectively and non-judgmentally, to know ourselves.

When we stumble, as most of us do most of the time, we need to try again. We can’t do this effectively, without being clear about what our emotions, insecurities, and confused-nesses are.

Nor can we communicate clearly without being willing to rise above making nasty retaliations motivated by resentments and hurts.

It is all in awareness, compassion, and an open heart. No wonder it is so difficult.

That’s what Dave Stolz is saying.

PeteFree.com

Love's Communication Is Often Loaded with Psychic Bombs