The Conscious Heart (28 page)

In a recent workshop Gay said that he doesn’t like tomatoes, except fried green ones. A participant asked, from a place of genuine curiosity, where Gay learned to love fried green tomatoes. As Gay told the story of his southern grandmother’s special green tomato preparation, his loving relationship with her came alive to everyone listening. We could almost smell the cornmeal and frying tomatoes and see her bustling about in her apron. The curiosity of one workshop participant brought forth this rich moment.

Comparison kills curiosity. Most people compare what they are looking at to a preexisting concept and keep what already makes sense and throw out what doesn’t. But as a relationship deepens, the partners need to set aside comparison—and its companions, judgment, criticism, and evaluation—and cultivate an attitude of curiosity toward each other. There is a difference between “I know” and “I know that already.” “I know” is a full-body experience, the experience of vibrating in alignment with what your partner is feeling or how perfectly still the air is. But “I know that already” is a mental construct—one that may have little to do with the current reality.

Curiosity can also heal. Recently, a woman in therapy with us was struggling with her perceptions of men. As a result of childhood sexual abuse, she had come to view men as either “nice” or “sexual.” The “nice” men were those who didn’t want anything from her. The “sexual” men wanted something, but they often disguised themselves as “nice” and
then
aggressed. She consumed a lot of mental energy trying to determine if a given man was genuinely “nice” or was simply being nice to her so he could get something sexual from her. During one of our first sessions, she saw a
twinkle in Gay’s eye. Her mental filter immediately kicked in: “I know that look already; he looks nice, but he’s really sexual and wants something from me.” Between sessions she ruminated about Gay’s intentions, which soon gave her a headache.

This woman’s courage taught us to be curious. In the next session, rather than withhold her questions and concerns, she asked Gay whether he was sexually attracted to her. He thought for a moment and then gave her a full account of his feelings: “When I tune in to my body, I notice some sexual feelings for you, although I don’t have any desire to act on them or do anything about them. You’re not exactly my type, so even if we were two single people meeting for the first time, I probably wouldn’t pursue a sexual relationship with you.”

We suggested that she be curious about her sexual feelings, not just for Gay but all the time. As she shifted from defensiveness to curiosity, she began to lighten up, move more, breathe more deeply. She really hadn’t seen the possibility that a man could be both “nice”—not want anything sexually from her—and “sexual,” that is, have sexual feelings coursing through his blood along with oxygen and iron. Her curiosity allowed her to begin to unravel her early experience. Her relationship with Gay shifted so that she could trust him and use his feedback to help create a new map about men.

When we’re curious, we can reinvent our world. Old wounds don’t have to continue to poison the present. The real safety is seeing the world as it is; then we can let go of assumptions and mental constructs that no longer fit. Curiosity opens the door to playfulness and spontaneous joy.

3/When a Troublesome Pattern Repeats

W
hen patterns repeat, they tend to become automatic, and we stop wondering about how essence can be expressed right now. We box ourselves and our partners in by already knowing the next gesture or sentence. A while back Dan, a client, said that he would feel so much better if Sylvia wouldn’t always walk twenty steps ahead of him. For years they had repeated an interaction that looked like this:

• They leave a restaurant or movie, and Sylvia starts walking fast.

• Dan feels hurt and has critical thoughts about her, which he withholds.

• Sylvia feels that something is wrong but can’t pinpoint it.

• Dan criticizes her later about something else.

• Sylvia gets angry.

• Their closeness decreases.

• They each feel separate and lonely.

Usually if a troublesome pattern repeats more than twice, we recommend that both partners take a look at their role in it. It does little good to ask your partner to change something if you do not look carefully at how you might be inviting or contributing to the pattern.

Sylvia added some history. At first she’d say, “Come on, let’s walk together,” she told us. But after several exchanges in which Dan accused her of trying to control him and criticized her speedy pace, she stopped inviting him and just walked at the speed she wanted to walk. She realized she’d given up and had closed the doors on any possibility of change in this area: “That’s just the way we are, I guess.”

In this session Dan was visibly upset, so we focused on his process. What meaning had he attached to her walking speed? we asked. After a moment he said that he felt rejected and angry when she didn’t walk with him. As we explored what he was actually experiencing in his body, he discovered that his anger almost always covered fear. He fueled himself with anger (as did Sylvia) rather than be present with his deep fear. But focusing on what was unarguably true about his experience of the walking interaction showed him that he was deeply afraid that Sylvia didn’t care about him.

We asked, “If Sylvia doesn’t care about you …”

He replied, “I’ll die.”

Underlying a seemingly trivial incident of different walking paces was the fear of death. We must get in the habit of mining the richness of troublesome patterns rather than engage in cycles of criticism and retreat.

Using a technique we call “Separating the Boxes,” we asked
Dan to designate one hand his “I’m afraid I’m going to die” hand. He picked his right. His left hand was designated “Sylvia’s walking speed.” First we asked him to grasp them together, the way he experienced confusion and anger when Sylvia walked fast. Heaviness, tension, and shoulder pain came with gluing those two experiences together; he took a moment to be present with them. Then we asked him to separate his hands and to unglue his fear of death from Sylvia’s walking speed. By separating the two experiences, he realized that “I’m afraid of dying no matter how fast or slow Sylvia walks. She doesn’t cause my fear of dying.”

He looked at one hand and then the other, saying “I’m afraid of dying” several times. Then we asked if he’d like to make a request of Sylvia. Requests can be very effective, but often they do not get met until after you’ve presenced and communicated your true feelings. He asked Sylvia if she would walk with him for a little while when they came out of restaurants and movies. She said, “Sure.”

They noticed that other solutions to the walking-speed problem had never occurred to him. For example, he never took the option of walking faster himself, or of making walking a “follow the leader” exchange. She never slowed down. That was one clue that both of them were contributing to the pattern that was occurring. When creative solutions to couple differences don’t spontaneously occur, finding the underlying pattern can help.

4/When You Don’t Feel Loved

O
ne of the most powerful learnings of our first few years together was that we each tended to demand from the other what we were unwilling to give ourselves. We would demand love from the other person when we were not feeling loving toward ourselves. We would demand good treatment from the other when we were not offering such treatment to ourselves or to the other person. As a result of seeing this truth, we changed our understanding of the physics of relationship. We came to see that if we were not getting what we wanted, it was because we were not creating a space within ourselves for it to occur.

Once we understood how it worked, our satisfaction level
took a remarkable jump in the positive direction. When we didn’t feel loved, we would open up to loving ourselves and all our feelings. As if by magic, everything would shift.

In one interaction, for example, Gay was making dinner in the kitchen and Kathlyn added something to the bowl. Gay stiffened and asked sharply if she wanted to make the salad. We each paused and took a breath, realizing that one of our familiar unlovable places had been poked. Gay quickly saw that he had interpreted Kathlyn’s gesture as a signal that his contribution wasn’t valued—an old feeling that was first triggered in his mother’s kitchen. Kathlyn saw that she was trying to be helpful, an old pattern from her deep feelings of unworthiness. Each of us took a moment to love that aspect of ourself. The whole interaction took a couple of minutes, then we were back to creating dinner together and having fun.

Often the shift would occur spontaneously, without any behavior change on our part. At other times asking for something we wanted changed the other person.

Looking at our relationship this new way allowed us to take more charge of ourselves. By asking “How am I contributing to this situation?” and “What needs to be loved here?” we took ourselves out of the victim position.

Sometimes the problem is deeper. Many of us feel fundamentally bad about ourselves, so we consume our energy with overdoing to prove our worthiness. But the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. The truth is: You will never be adequately loved for doing. See if any of these phrases are familiar:

• I am only doing this for the relationship.

• If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be doing this at all, but I am doing it for us.

• What are you doing, just lying there?

• I do and do, and still there’s more to be done.

• Do you have any idea how much I do for you? You have no idea what I do for you every day.

• I have so much to get done, I just don’t know how I’ll do it all.

• What have you done today?

• It’s never done—doing rises with the sun.

“I do.” The vow of marriage is not “I be,” “I become,” “I commit.” It’s “I do.” I vow to do and do and do—usually over and over, doing the role and the task at hand.

Then “don’t” slithers up. I don’t know. I don’t get it. I didn’t do it. I don’t do windows. I don’t do late dinners, early walks, prints, stripes, or polka dots. Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t speak to me that way, don’t hit your sister, don’t touch the brownies, don’t scuff your shoes, don’t walk on the grass.

Do you have the time for a walk? Doing turns to doodling with a little more time. Doing is right. Doing is the only right. It’s my right to do what I want with my body. Do whatever you want, I don’t care.

Doers of the world weave the tight underwear that rides up the crack of humanity. What a doing nation we are! We get 20 percent less sleep than our ancestors a hundred years ago. We work longer hours, have fewer children, and don’t see the ones we have very much. We are a huge ant farm of workers, moving piles of things and papers from one place to another. A dying person never says, “I didn’t do enough.” She says, “I didn’t love enough, sigh at the stars enough, rest in the bathtub with music enough.”

The point is this: Take time to love. Find out what it is you are afraid to be with, then love it. Many problems disappear in a moment of being present: being with a fear, being loving toward yourself, being open to your creativity.

The whole point of taking responsibility and telling the truth to yourself and your partner is to allow more love to flow. Kathlyn describes a recent experience: “Gay and I were talking about some vague upset feelings I’d been experiencing, and he said, ‘It sounds as if you were waiting for the answer to surface to report on it rather than using the tools you know.’ I immediately responded,
‘But I
have
used the tools this week.’ We both realized that I had responded defensively. I took a moment just to rest my awareness on that response, the immediate defensive retort, and on how familiar it is. And as I let myself be with it, I felt the whole middle part of my body shift. I had been having roily sensations in my belly; they now relaxed. In a few seconds I started noticing waves of excitement and warm streamers of internal giggles. I realized I was feeling more love. Intellectually I knew that Gay’s feedback was loving, but this was a different, sensory experience. Defensiveness shifted to wonder, and right on its heels came more openness to receiving love. I could let Gay’s love in more, which circulated in me like fine champagne bubbles.”