We invariably shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to love from the toddler brain. In addition to the illusion of sameness and the delusion that we know how to make modern intimate relationships work, here are two more common ways of self-harm in intimate relationships.
Toddler-Love Mistake # 3: Focus on feelings rather than values
Falling in love is about feelings; staying in love is about values. Committed relationships are more difficult to maintain than in previous generations because our culture has elevated feelings above values.
We live in a "cult of feelings;" what you feel has become at least as important as what you do. (Think of all the interviewers who shove microphones in the faces of celebrities, politicians, victims, and perpetrators to ask, "How do you feel?") Pop culture places greater emphasis on personal feelings than personal values, on expressing how you feel rather than doing what you believe is right, and on blaming (relief of guilt and shame for violating values) rather than improving.
Some relationship books claim that to be "real" you have to explore and express all your feelings. The problem is that "exploring" and expressing feelings amplifies and magnifies, i.e., distorts them. In addition, exploring and expressing your own feelings makes it difficult to see your partner apart from your feelings about him/her. At that point, your partner ceases to be a complex person and becomes either an angel or a disappointment, depending on the current state of your feelings.
In our Age of Entitlement, people are entitled to express every negative feeling they have, without regard to the effects on others, just as they felt entitled to litter a few decades ago and to smoke in public buildings a few years ago. The result is a world rife with emotional pollution that divorces the superficial experience of feelings from the deeper meaning of emotions.
To feel genuine and empowered, you need to know more than whether your feelings are valid and "appropriate." You need to know what your emotions mean about you and your relationships. The meaning of emotions does not lie in how they feel, but in what they tell you about your deepest values. No matter how "appropriate" feelings of entitlement, resentment, or anger may seem as reactions to your partner, the more important questions are the following:
"Is my entitlement, resentment, or anger reflecting the kind of person and partner I most want to be?"
"Am I blaming my failure to be the person I want to be on my partner?"
If you act on your values, your feelings will eventually follow, as you feel more genuine. But acting on feelings will usually cause you to violate your deeper values (e.g., hurting the person you love) and thereby make you feel guilty, ashamed, and phony.
Toddler-Love Mistake #4: Focus on communication rather than connection
The great cliché about intimate relationships is that they are all about communication and that communication is all about talking. First of all, communication is not primarily about talking. We interpret the meaning of spoken words based on tone of voice, body language, and level of focus/distractedness. These, in turn, are determined by the motivation of the parties - by what they are trying to do, which is not necessarily what they consciously intend to do.
Motivations of all animal behavior fall into three broad categories: approach, avoid, attack. These are far more influential on how we perceive one another than the words we use. You and your partner know before any words are processed whether the other feels pleased, interested, disappointed, devalued, angry, anxious, or defensive.
In intimate relationships, verbal communication is a function of connection, rather than the other way around. (See post.) When people feel connected, they are able to talk with ease. When they feel disconnected, their talk tends to be attack, as they blame each other for the pain of disconnection. Both seem to imply, "I cannot love you until you agree with me or see things my way."
If you need to talk to your partner about something important, figure out how to connect before you try to communicate. Connection occurs with approach motivation, i.e., showing interest, affection, caring. Failure to show caring and interest in your partner's perspective implies that your connection is less important than what you want to talk about. Always make it clear that what you want to talk about is important because your connection is important.
Most people claim that the goal of communication is to get cooperation, and, when pressed, they will say that they want cooperation because it makes them feel more connected. So ask yourself, is the goal of talking to your partner to connect? Or is it to criticize, devalue, punish, manipulate, or control? No one admits to the latter, but that is almost always how they come off to their partners when the desire to connect is not clear in the communication.
There's a simple rule for getting cooperation that is especially potent in intimate relationships: the valued self cooperates; the devalued self resists. If you want cooperation, you must show that you value your partner. That is likely to make him or her more interested in what you have to say.
CompassionPower
