The New Resilience

..standing in your partner's shoes
..leaving your ego at the door

the idea is sensible but hardly new, and doesn't justify a new name, which I find confusing anyway.

...breaking the cycle as much as it is about feeding into the negative energy and acting out of emotion, which rarely produces a positive result in any capacity. In other words, you may need to take yourself and your feelings out of the picture to focus on what actually is there.

So lemme get this straight: To revitalize and resuscitate your flagging marriage, if you're having an emotional reaction to something in your marriage, disregard it for what it is.

I beg to differ. Your emotional state in a marriage is as important as your intellectual state, your spiritual state, and your sexual state. Indifference or minimizing or recasting of emotional state is what lands most when-one-wants-out-and-the-other-doesn't couples on the couch in a therapist's office. Which is to say, most divorcing couples. Which is to say, 50% of all couples. Well, most of them don't come. But they could.

And let me get this straight. You write: "Even when arousal is jacked up by Viagra or the new products purporting to enhance women's desire, your libido - desire for the person you're with - remains diminished. That's no surprise, because the latter is relationship-dependent. It remains unaffected even if you're physiologically able to become aroused."

I be go differ again. Desire is something very primal. It is not necessarily relationship dependent. We've all heard of the couples where everything is going south and sex is great. And we've all seen the couples -- many more of these, for sure -- where everything is pretty much rocking, and the sex is a flipping disaster area.

Plus, desire has a ton to do with attractiveness. I love what LoPiccolo and Friedman wrote (1988, p. 125):

"As psychologists, we often tend to look for complicated psychodynamic or relationship system causes of low sexual desire, and often find ourselves overlooking the obvious. If a person simply does not find his or her spouse sexually attractive, low sex drive is hardly a surprising result."

Harsh, yes. Not much that can be done about that in the therapy room. But kinda incontrovertible, no?

Nonetheless, provocative piece. Thanks for writing and posting it!

In the interest of accuracy, there's a word typo in the sentences I quoted in the entry just above.

"Sexually" should be "physically."

So, more accurately....

"As psychologists, we often tend to look for complicated psychodynamic or relationship system causes of low sexual desire, and often find ourselves overlooking the obvious. If a person simply does not find his or her spouse physically attractive, low sex drive is hardly a surprising result."

Gotta slow the fingers down.... :)

I think this would work for a high conflict couple, those who both want in but have difficult communication patterns that are sinking the relationship. This method works for addicts -- face it, they have to rewrite their thinking and perceptions in order to live more happily.

There's some degree of not accepting intolerable behavior and there's a point where we need to live among the human race. I like this approach.

These are great ideas, and I wish more people practiced them as a whole in every conversation they had. I don't see it as letting your feeling fall by the way side, as some commenters seem to suggest. There is a happy medium between feeling what you do and blaming others for it, and taking responsibility for your emotional responses as your own. As my Ethics teacher said many years ago, no one makes you feel anything, and you should never say such to a person. No more "You made me feel _____". Instead, you should address it as "I felt _______ when you ________". It delievers knowledge without placing blame.

I think overall this takes two types of intelligences that sadly, not a lot of people have or have worked on developing, especially late in life, as the article presents in the examples (I.E. 40's and so on). Intrapersonal, being able to look towards yourself and recognizing your feelings and reasons for doing things, and interpersonal, being able to look and understand the feelings and reasons other people are doing things. Some people have such intelligences and I don't think the idea of this article would be hard to achieve, but for those that don't have such intelligences, I see this as being very difficult. And it sometimes is even hard if you have interpersonal, if your partner doesn't have intrapersonal. Especially if you have been married a long time. After constant years of hearing "That's not what I was thinking, but I don't know what I was thinking" it tends to wear down on your abilities, at least from my experience.

As far as the notion of learning these ways of behavior early on, I would love to see this taught in schools early on. I think it would definitely help not only our romantic relationships, but relationships with our bosses, our neighbors, our parents, etc. In a world where so much blame is being placed, these would be much welcomed improvements, at least by me. But sadly, most people are ruled by their egoself and don't like to take any sort of responsibility.

I don't know that I'd want to count on indifference to rebuild my relationship. It would seem to go against the common wisdom that the best relationships are based on strong and consistent communication. Indifference would seem to undermine that tenet.

Instead, I would urge people to have the conversation described in a brief e-book called "I Have One Question." The author argues convincingly that admiration is the key to a successful long-term relationship. I was skeptical at first, but after reading the book I'm convinced he's right. And the conversation he describes and suggests a couple have with each other would seem to me a much better strategy for rebuilding a relationship than indifference. Check it out at www.haydendane.com

Disagree with the poster who wrote...

"As my Ethics teacher said many years ago, no one makes you feel anything, and you should never say such to a person. No more "You made me feel _____". Instead, you should address it as "I felt _______ when you ________". It delievers knowledge without placing blame."

If this were the case, all the anti-bullying work we're doing in our public schools now would be useless. But the fact is, certain certain behaviors, attitudes, and approaches are designed to push emotional buttons in others, and in fact push those buttons on a deep and visceral level.

If the poster's position is were the case, words like k*ke, n*gger, and sp*ck could be used freely in everyday public discourse, because of course it isn't the word that triggers the emotional reaction, it's just the person reacting.

And while it's true in marriages, I suppose, that one need not react with resentment when your husband habitually leaves wet towels in the middle of the bed, or comes home drunk at 1:00 a.m. after not calling to say where he was, or your wife over-shops on HSN, or spends every free moment on the phone with her mother even after you tell her it's a problem, it seems to me that squelching this emotional reaction or trying to recast it as purely your own is hardly productive for the long-term health of either the marriage, the party feeling the emotion, or both.

Well what is "love" anyway other than what we individually feel as stimulation? If our partners do not stimulate us then we don't feel we "love" them. Of course this makes "love" all about "Me". All love is conditional. If it isn't then everything and nothing is love regardless of whatever the stimulus.

/

From the headlines, I thought the article was going to be about taking time apart or acting "cooler" towards the partner, that kind of indifference. Like "playing hard to get". Making the other person less certain of your constancy and attention for a while, to build up the partner's stress, hormones, achievement-orientation, need for uncertainty-resolution and all that.

After reading the article, I see that "creative indifference" in the author's view is more what I would call detachment.

I am detached generally (it's deliberate on my part - for my mental, emotional and spiritual health, but it seems that it's also easier for me with my personality type -INTP on the MBTI- to do this than it is for some other people), and this "creative indifference" is how I treat most people and most situations in my life.

Indeed, my detachment makes people uneasy, people who are used to getting into dramatic entanglements and falling into old scripts they learned in childhood or early romantic relationships. People I am forming new relationships with seem to feel that they can't latch onto me via any kind of old familiar mood-swing type of dance, and therefore they find me a little alien, too calm, too rational, too thoughtful, too nice, too mature, and not "exciting" or dramatic enough. Detachment/indifference does not a roller-coaster sensation create.

Therefore, I think it's interesting, and correct, that this creative indifference/detachment would be prescribed for a relationship after the partners have committed, but probably is not the best thing for normal folks to do from the start of their relationships with other normal folks, or otherwise the commitment might never occur and the relationship might never get off the ground.

I think the difficulty over the definition of "indifference" is occurring because many readers (and seemingly the dictionary) do not define that word as the author does.

He writes that, "With indifference, you're engaged; it's not that you feel nothing or have no connection..."

However, I don't think that the mainstream meaning of indifference includes being "engaged". I think it means the opposite of being engaged. According to the dictionary, it means "not caring".

It's not that I'm trying to be critical of the author, but it seems to be an uphill battle to redefine a common word when there are other words that might be chosen that might express his ideas better and more clearly; and they deserve to be expressed in the most intelligible way possible, because they are good and well-meaning ideas.

from dictionary.com:

in·dif·fer·ent  –adjective

1.without interest or concern; not caring; apathetic: his indifferent attitude toward the suffering of others.

2.having no bias, prejudice, or preference; impartial; disinterested.

3.neither good nor bad in character or quality; average; routine: an indifferent specimen.

4.not particularly good, important, etc.; unremarkable; unnotable: an indifferent success; an indifferent performance.

5.of only moderate amount, extent, etc.

6.not making a difference, or mattering, one way or the other.

7.immaterial or unimportant.

8.not essential or obligatory, as an observance.

9.making no difference or distinction, as between persons or things: indifferent justice.

10.neutral in chemical, electric, or magnetic quality.

11.Biology. not differentiated or specialized, as cells or tissues.

in·dif·fer·ence   –noun

1.lack of interest or concern: We were shocked by their indifference toward poverty.

2.unimportance; little or no concern: Whether or not to attend the party is a matter of indifference to him.

3.the quality or condition of being indifferent.

4.mediocre quality; mediocrity.

So many meanings of "indifference" that it must come down to many different perceptions. However, there are mainly positive interpretations of many of these meanings;

"2.having no bias, prejudice, or preference; impartial; disinterested."
(Disinterested in being biased or prejudiced is hardly a negative and, in fact, probably quite brave in the face of popular opinion)

"3.neither good nor bad in character or quality; average; routine: an indifferent specimen"
(Someone who may have transcended a dualistic view of things, which is a positive trait due to Dualism being a conflict of apparent opposites. Also routine does not need to be seen as negative)

"4.not particularly good, important, etc.; unremarkable; unnotable: an indifferent success; an indifferent performance."
(This observation could just as easily describe someone who does not need to show off and just goes about their business with a self sense of satisfaction due to their doings being a private passion without the need to be recognized by others. Self sufficient, one could say)

"5.of only moderate amount, extent, etc."
(Understands moderation. Not into excess. Such a trait is needed for a moderater between two antagonists, someone who can see where both can be right due to seeing where each are coming from)

"6.not making a difference, or mattering, one way or the other."
(Has transcended "matter" or the surface "material" of things. Can see light in things and "light" is, afterall, the reality of "matter")

"7.immaterial or unimportant."
(similar to "6". Matter is not important compared to light. Light shows material to be transparent. Material is superficial when light is shone onto it, like "bringing the light of consciousness to a "dense" material situation)

"8.not essential or obligatory, as an observance."
(To be "obligatory" is to be dutifull rather than a real passion, so, just another positive trait for "indifference")

"9.making no difference or distinction, as between persons or things: indifferent justice."
(Well distinctions between persons or things can be very superficial. Skin color for example. An "indifferent" personality may see deeper than that)

"10.neutral in chemical, electric, or magnetic quality."
(If this relates to a person it could translate as "even-minded" or "calm". Equanimity. "Nuetral magnetic quality" is desirable, otherwise if magnetic poles "swing" you get Bipolarity)

"1.lack of interest or concern: We were shocked by their indifference toward poverty."
(Not manifesting emotionality which is useless anyway when responding, not "emotionally reacting", to an event like "poverty")

"2.unimportance; little or no concern: Whether or not to attend the party is a matter of indifference to him."
(Could take it or leave it when one has more mindful things, other than a party, to consider)

Overall it seems that an Indifferent Character is concerned with more meaningful things by not being distracted by conflict and general duality. A non dualistic (and indifferent) mind is a highly evolved one, in real human terms, as described in the vast majority of these listed meanings. Its charactaristic of Real "engagement" with Real concerns for Deeper aspects of Humanity. Like "Devine Indifference".