As a mediator, I hate compromise

I guess it depends on the world view you hold, but I believe in Compassionate Design: that whatever happens to you can lead you right into the heart of love.

When I first heard about this possibility, I was in my 20’s, and I decided to put it to the test. Along with two friends, I set out one winter to hitch-hike across the country on $2. There was a blizzard the day we started, and we considered postponing, but that would have been admitting defeat before we began, so we headed out into the snow. A month later we returned, tired, amazed, intact, and with our original $6; and so much richer for having “proved” the hypothesis.

If you travel in gratitude, you arrive fulfilled.

So it’s no surprise I ended up a mediator. I spend my days in rooms where people have lost their way, and I show them the gate of hope. Not all of them pass through there, even with a guide to help. But most look up from their distress with a sigh of relief and leave with a smile and new hope. Time and again they say a great weight has been lifted.

Last night I had a second session with a couple who married before they found out who each other was. Then they had a son, and now, for his sake, they are trying to get to know who they married.

I did what I do in the first session: I translated their accusations first into statements about the speaker’s truth, and then into requests of their partner’s indulgence. And I switched the description of our work from stopping the fights into finding the love. From less-pain into more-fun.

In their case, they were both mourning their single lives. All that freedom.  “Okay,” they seemed to be saying, “teach us how to compromise.”

As a mediator, I hate compromise. It almost always means one or both parties not getting what they want, and that just assures more fighting and discontent.

I told them what my marriage is like. It is a first marriage for both of us, and I was 50 when we  met. We both had had long single-lives, and really knew what we each liked. So instead of giving that up, we kept our autonomy and freedom, and added on all the benefits of married life.

I gave them an example. My wife hates standing on lines. She hates being told what to do, especially when it doesn’t make sense to her, or isn’t fun for her. I, on the other hand, don’t mind lines at all. I have a rich inner life, and lines just give me time to think. So anytime we encounter a situation that involves lines, just as Elise is tensing up, I offer to hold her place in line, and suggest she go exploring. I get time alone with my thoughts, and she gets even more freedom that she had when she was single, and had to stand in lines and fume.

The Edge

Elise and I keep moving our relationship to a further edge. How many times have we gone beyond any known horizon with our truth telling? Those quiet conversations, usually in bed late, late at night, or early, early in the predawn morning.

The foundation of my home, is now, therefore, afloat, way out to sea. Grounded, I am, now in the deep waters of the soul. Mated there, soul-mated. 

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. This is the closest locale there is to my own true epicenter. It isn’t a place. You can’t get there, the traveling was done in moments of truth-telling, and now the place I live is no longer a place. I live in Elise’s understand of who I am, and she lives in mine.

If she were to die (first - we will die), I think I would be set adrift. The journey would begin to unravel like my other, mundane memories, and I think all I would know is that I am not home, but I would not know how to get there from here. Half of here would be gone.

Marrying My Wife's Needs

A few months ago, I decided to marry my wife's needs. I had been seeing my needs as good (okay, a pain when they were unmet, but mostly good) & hers as a pain (except when I met them, & then they were fun for me). I realized that as my skill for meeting needs increased, BOTH of our needs were becoming increasingly more fun for me. So I married hers, & now I have twice as many opportunities for satisfaction!

 

Controlling Controlling Partners

It's been an interesting week. I've done two sixth (last) sessions, and two first sessions. It really shows how much can happen in just six weeks.

One of the couples I just finished with came in with a really popular issue: The Controlling Partner (and by implication: The Partner Who Feels Controlled).



In this case, the wife felt like her partner wanted everything his way. He was "always" correcting, suggesting, and judging. Occasionally, he would ask for input, and then he'd go ahead and do it exactly the way he wanted to. Sound familiar?

I put "always" in quotes, because it is a red flag that I listen for. It tells me that the speaker is describing their experience of what happened, and that their perception is distorted. Nobody does anything always.

It certainly was true that this husband knew how he liked things. It was also true that he really wanted to share the load, but he didn't feel met by his wife, so in the vacuum of her speaking out about what she wanted, he went ahead and did what he thought was what they both wanted. I call this the "Generous Controller." Most "controllers" are trying to be generous, though it certainly doesn't feel that way to their partner.

Even though the "controller" obviously has a lot to learn about how to cooperate, I want to talk about the judger - the one who calls their partner a controller.

In this case, we went over a few instances of his "control" and in each case; his behavior was motivated by a positive intention. As the wife went from example to example, she began to see her husband in a new light. Here was the man she had married because she liked how he made an effort to please her. She liked his proactive nature.

What she didn't like was not having input, but then whose responsibility is that? I will teach the husband how to seek it out, but I focused this session on having the wife notice how hard it is for her to advocate for her own needs.

We practiced some, and in every case, when her needs were expressed non-violently, he was completely open to co-creating a solution.

As so often happens, the "controller" in a relationship is the creation of the one feeling controlled. And keeping their focus on their partner not only created tension and judgment, it kept them from knowing what it was they needed.

The Mature Relationship

I believe that marriage is a three stage process: Infatuation, Difference and The Mature Relationship.
During infatuation, you both get all your needs met, without having to ask. I think of this as the sampler - you get to actually experience all that is available to you with this person.
It ends when you start to have to ask for what you need. That begins the Difference Stage. If done with the skills available through Teamwork Marriage Mediation, you quickly learn how to negotiate with each other and get the benefit of these differences you brought into your life because you needed them.
If you do it the way most people do, stage two feels more like the Conflict Stage.
Either way you do it, if your relationship survives, you get to stage three: The Mature Relationship. In some ways, it's exactly like the Infatuation Stage, except this time it's real. It's flexible, because both of you can talk about what you need, and negotiate ways to meet both your needs.
So how to say describe this stage, besides "like before only better?"

What comes to mind is that it is like the year or so that I kept the Sabbath according to the Jewish practice.
It often seems like the work week is your Life. Then you choose you take a break from all that, for 24 hours.

After a while, for me it flipped. Suddenly Shabbos became Life. It was like one of those optical illusions where the ground and subject switch and instead of a line drawing of a vase, you see two faces looking at each other in outline.

The silent background of peace is like a blank sheet of paper and the busyness and "to-do" lists are just the words we write on that perfect paper. After a while, if you get really good at it, each time you lift the pen, even during the work week, the peace shines through. So even just lifting it to dot an "I" or cross a "t" gives you a little, mini, Shabbos.

Right relationship is just like that.
Once you've started fighting, the other person shifts from Shabbos, the safe base, into another part of the work-week, stress. And the part of you that longs for rest in another's arms turns against you and blames them for not being the right arms.

So the second stage, the difference stage, where you take back your projections, and relax into the simple truth of your longings and desires, unhooks your other from the trappings of the stress. They float free again. "Hum, I wonder who that is?" you get to ask again. Your curiosity is reignited. And your desire.

Inviting another person into that Shalom, is phase three. 
The teacher in my first class was another butch, drill sargent, and she held her hand up to me in a "stop" motion as she went on with her tirade to the unwashed masses of her class: "Don't chump these speakers," she shouted, "They have jobs! I have a job, your other teachers have jobs! Here's your chance to learn about jobs!"

Then, her sermon done, she rushed out of the room without a word. In my mind's eye, I assumed to get a smoke and wash it down with bourbon.

The class, frozen in an artificial silence of jundgment, all eyes on me like deer caught in headlights (or was it like lions catching the scent of prey) turned to me.

I walked slowly to the front of the room and said, "You're not gonna chump me, are you? I don't quite know what it means, but I don't think I'd like it." They all let out a sigh of relief, and giggled. I wasn't going to be a problem. This might be fun.