Our Commitment and How It Deepens
"By coming home, the heroine of a heroic journey shows she has attained a higher consciousness about herself and the world. Coming home in this case is a metaphor for realizing that all we need is within us and within the hearts of those around us. Feeling the need for a relationship is thus a homing instinct, one consistent with the intent of the universe."
"In the culminating phase of a relationship, our love is not limited to one person but reaches out to the entire world. We can attain universal compassion through the experience of loving one person. How? By commitment: giving and receiving the five A’s, working problems out, and keeping agreements."
"Partners now accept each other as perfect—but only the way an old shirt is perfect. Real love looks different in each phase of a relationship. Although an oak looks different in spring, summer, fall, and winter, it is always an oak. We give the five A’s romantically in the romance phase, dramatically in the conflict phase, and serenely and reliably in the commitment phase (when we also bring them to the world)."
“I GIVE AND RECEIVE THE FIVE A’S”
"Giving and receiving in intimacy reflect a healthy dual process that we see in most areas of human life. For instance, our body survives by both letting oxygen in and letting carbon dioxide out. Cells are porous in order to let in nutrients and excrete waste. We communicate by both speaking and listening."
"How exactly do we give and receive? The first way is a simple/difficult technique: Ask for what you want and listen to your partner. Asking for what you want combines the most crucial elements of intimacy. It gives the other the gift of knowing you, your needs, and your vulnerability. It also means receiving the other’s free response. Both are risky, and therefore both make you more mature. You learn to let go of your insistence on a yes, to be vulnerable to a no, and to accept a no without feeling the need to punish."
"A second way intimate adults give and receive is through mutually chosen sex and playfulness: You make love when both of you want it, not when one of you pushes the other into it. You can be intimate without having to be sexual. You know how to have fun together. You play without hurting each other, without engaging in sarcasm or ridicule, without laughing at each other’s shortcomings."
"Finally, we give and receive by granting equality, freedom from hierarchy, to our partner and ourselves."
"Granted, some couples choose to experiment with submission/dominance in sex. This can be a form of play (since it involves roles) and can be a healthy choice when it is mutual. But if it has a compulsive or violent dimension, it may be a reenactment of abuse from childhood. What is the difference between a submissive erotic style and low self-esteem or no boundaries? Submission/dominance is an erotic game chosen intentionally and consensually. It is not a rut partners fall into by default or when one partner’s demands take precedence over the other’s needs. It is willing not unwilling, conscious not unconscious. It is joyful instead of fearsome. It transforms rather than deforms love and respect, expanding rather than shrinking the boundaries of self-discovery. Healthy submission/dominance is not a way of gaining power over someone, but a way of playing out inclinations that are in all of us but may never have found legitimate expression. As long as it is not abusive, it can enhance the relationship and teach the partners about themselves, their egos, their limits, and undiscovered parts of their identities."
“I SHOW ANGER WITH A LOVING INTENT”
"Closeness evokes both affection and aggression, love and hate. This ambivalence, which is normal, can tear us apart like horses pulling us in opposite directions, or we can accept it as a given of human relating. In committed intimacy, I can be angry at you and still love you. I can let you get mad at me without having to get mad at you. Real relating includes being with and standing against one another: “You can be angry at me and oppose me, and all the while I know you still love me. I can do the same with you. Anger does not have us; we have anger. Discrete instances of anger cannot muddle or obstruct the flow of our ongoing love.”
“I MAINTAIN MY OWN BOUNDARIES WHILE I REMAIN CLOSE TO YOU”
"Boundaries protect our commitment and ourselves. A person without boundaries makes her commitment to the maintenance of the partnership, not to its workability. With clear boundaries, on the other hand, we see when a relationship is not working and enlist our partner in working on it with us. If he agrees and joins us, we are encouraged. If he declines, we hear that message and act on it by asking more emphatically—or if the no is unalterable and unacceptable, by moving on."
Commitment
"We have made a commitment to stay with a partner as long as she and we are both engaged in the relationship effectively or both working on the relationship to make it effective."
"Dogged determination is not commitment. Marriage is not commitment. Living together is not commitment. A healthy person loves unreservedly but does not make an unreserved commitment. A healthy person can decide the extent and length of his commitment. If it were not this way, commitment would mean submission, no boundaries, no sense of self-worth, and no sense of self."
"To say “I can love you and leave you” is as healthy as to say “I can fear something and do it.”
Soul Mates
"I can understand another soul only by transforming my own, as one person transforms his hand by placing it in another’s. "
—PAUL ELUARD
"A woman’s soul mate is not the man who takes over a woman’s functions but one who mirrors them with pleased encouragement."
Practices
STAYING IN TOUCH AND INTACT • Ask your partner in your journal or directly: Can I feel challenged instead of threatened by your reactions to me? Can I see you angry and not be enraged by it? Can I see you depressed and not become morose? Can I see you feel anything and not be so scared of your feelings that I cannot respond with the five A’s?
BEING MINDFUL ABOUT GIVING AND RECEIVING • Mindful appreciation of your fears of giving or receiving means taking them as information, without blaming others or feeling shame about yourself.
CAREGIVING OR CARETAKING? • Being compassionate does not mean becoming a caretaker. Compassion is respectful of the potential for self- activating power in others.
STANDING UP TO ABUSE • No relationship should take away even one of our human rights. A true relationship is cost-free. A relationship in which one partner continually seeks the approval of the other is a child-parent dyad, not an adult-adult dyad. In an adult relationship, however, we can drop our poses, our attempts to look good and earn love. We are loved as we are.
BECOMING DIRECT • Passive aggression (that is, expressing anger indirectly)
has no place in an adult relationships.
Epilogue
"We are on a heroic journey that began with our needing them from our parents, then continued with our seeking them in adult partners, and ends with our giving them to the world as a spiritual enterprise."
"Good enough parenting in our childhood favorably affects our adult relationships. Childhood may negatively affect our adult relationships if it left us with feelings of loss or neglect—but those can be grieved and let go of. The holes childhood left in us can even become portals to character and compassion."
If you are interested in this book, you can email me (kh.nebulishvili@gmail.com) and I'll send the PDF version of this book :)
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