Parts I and II of this post described how we make movies in our heads starring the people we love and how those movies can easily turn love sour. This post shows how to edit your movies for more benign and realistic characterizations of loved ones.
Step one: Compassionate Binocular vision
Due to the unavoidable bias of subjectivity, your perspective is never as factually right as it seems. But regardless of how right it may be in a given circumstance, it is always incomplete. The reality of your relationship has two perspectives that must be seen simultaneously.
Many people resist holding their partner's perspective alongside their own because it feels like they might lose something, as if their partner's perspective will take something away from theirs. In truth, learning more about your partner's perspective adds to yours, just as binoculars add information unavailable through a telescope.
When you appreciate your partner's perspective, even if you disagree with the "facts" underlying it, you gain a more accurate view of the reality of your relationship. You gain depth-perception and a grasp of the interactive dynamic between you. You begin to see yourself simultaenously through your partner's eyes and your own. This will increase the likelihood that your partner will see himself or herself through your eyes.
General rule: If you feel things are unfair, you are probably not getting your partner's perspective. Make it your goal to better understand rather than undermine his/her perspective.
Not surprisingly, couples with negative internal movies disagree on just about every important issue of their lives, often losing site of their values in disputes about facts. For example, many of my clients disagree about the frequency of their sexual intercourse. She swears that when things were going well between them, they made love three times a week. He is just as adamant that they never made love more than once in a week during their entire marriage. In their internal movies, they view each other as, respectively, delusional and a liar.
Here is how compassionate binocular vision transforms them:
• He understands why she describes a higher frequency of lovemaking than he perceived: During their good times she felt close and connected, making it more likely to overestimate the frequency of intercourse.
• She understands why it seemed less often to him than she perceived: he had so much painful doubt about how desirable he was when she did not want to make love to him that the pain dominated his memory, making him overlook exceptions.
Compassionate binocular vision is reconciling disparate views in the most respectful way possible.
• He had to understand that helping her feel close and connected was more important than pinpointing the number of times they made love. For her, making love was a way of life, rather than a discrete sexual act.
• She had to see that calling his self-doubt "destructive" or describing his depression as "seeking pity" would make him feel more undesirable and cause more withdrawal. Reassuring him made them both feel more lovable.
General rule: If your internal movie about your partner is negative, you need to learn more about his or her perspective.
Step two: Compassionate assertiveness
Compassionate assertiveness is sympathizing with your partner's position while asserting your own. In other words, you do not try to "disprove" or devalue your partner's perspective. With this new respect for each other, the couple above could compassionately assert their true positions (rather than ego-charged reactions to each other) in negotiations about their sex lives and about their relationship in general.
General rule: In love relationships, assertiveness without compassion feels like aggression and abuse.
Step three: Humility
Your internal movie is nothing more than an artifact of imagination that helps you organize your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It has not helped you figure out the reality of your relationship, much less the reality of your partner. It does not even give you an accurate picture of yourself. The best it can do is make you feel self-righteous. The worst it can do is make you feel like a victim or a fool.
With due humility, you will recognize the truth: to a large extent, you have become what you accuse your partner of being. For example:
• It is selfish to say that he is selfish (you are failing to understand his perspective and substituting your own for compassionate binocular vision)
• It is unreasonable to say that she is unreasonable (you're emotionally reacting to her emotional reaction and failing to understand her perspective)
• It is passive-aggressive to say that he is passive-aggressive (a form of passive aggression is harming the self to get at someone else; you are harming yourself by focusing on your "damages")
• It is controlling to say that she is controlling (the statement is an attempt to control, not describe)
• It is irresponsible to say that he is irresponsible (you have a responsibility in your relationship to be compassionate, not condemning)
Step four: Positive Character Identification
Characterizing your husband as basically considerate, assertive, responsible, constructive, helpful, compassionate, and affectionate will tend to make him behave more in those ways. When he behaves uncharacteristically, i.e., selfishly, you assume a benign explanation, which you want to discover, so that you can compassionately support his efforts to behave characteristically.
Characterizing your wife as cooperative, reasonable, affectionate, and respectful will make her identify more with those characteristics and behave accordingly. When she behaves uncharacteristically, i.e., unreasonably, selfishly, disrespectfully, etc., assume a benign explanation, which you want to discover, so that you can compassionately support her efforts to behave characteristically.
Caveat: As I have said many times before, compassion means never tolerating abuse, which robs the abuser of his/her core value.
