Conflict, Lock and Key

Conflict is like a gate, it is both the opening into the walled off garden of love, and the obstacle which keeps us out.

Which of these it is depends on whether you have the key or not.

Conflict is the smoke that points out the fire - the passion in your life. It also burns your life up with destruction. It depends on whether you know fire-craft or not.

Conflict reveals the hidden truth in both parties, or it broadcasts the lies far and wide. It depends on where you look: inside yourself for truth, or at the other person for blame.

If you avoid conflict, your life shallows out. It becomes calm in appearance it is mirror smooth, but then it just reflects your inner turmoil.

If you become habituated to the anger and blame, your life becomes a series of eruptions punctuated by tense terror, and things just seem to get worse and worse.

There is a third path, where conflict resolves into respectful differences. Sitting quietly, the calm hands you the two keys: the first unlocks your own truth; the second unlocks your curiosity about the other person’s truth.

Did You Marry a Friend or Foe?

I did a session this week with a couple who have learned the language of NVC, but were missing the starting point of the violence: the assumption that the person you are talking to is an enemy.

Obviously, we marry people we feel friendly towards. That happens to also be the starting assumption of any non-violent, compassionate communication.

It creates tons of slack - we listen using what I call the “Best Possible Interpretation.” If your new love says, “Jeeze, you’re such a bitch!” you assume they mean your are really assertive and you feel appreciated and respected. If they say, “I’m gonna take you out an buy you a new shirt” you think, “Oh goodie, a gift!”

The whole time you use LOVE as your guiding assumption of their motives, it’s really fun no matter what they say or do. We call this the Infatuation Stage - it’s stage one.

Then, when your relationship transitions into stage two, the Conflict Stage; you switch more and more of your motivation from LOVE to FEAR, and eventually, imperceptibly, your significant-other shifts from friend to competitor to enemy. This is accompanied by a shift from “Best Possible Interpretation” to “Worst.”

Suddenly, black becomes white, and white black. Now, if your love calls you a bitch, you assume they are being really, really mean. And if they say, “I’m gonna take you out an buy you a new shirt” you think, “They hate the way I dress!”

Each of the parties in the couple I was working with had pretty much changed everything that they were going to change to suit their partner. What was left was the actual difference that they had invited into their lives by picking this particular person. The other change they had made, was from lovers to competitors, and when things got heated, they made it all the way to enemies.

They both now know enough NVC to know that when their partner is angry, that’s just the frustration that comes when one of your needs isn’t getting met. But they couldn’t figure out what to do about that, because when your enemy is angry, it’s just a drag; it doesn’t seem like it would be fun to help them out.

So I took a turn “being” each of their partners. I said the same thing that their partner said that consistently made them angry, and when they responded angrily, I opened my heart and let my concern for my friend to spread through my body, and express itself through my words.

Same anger, same relationship, same issues. I just modeled what it feels like to be received as a friend, instead of an enemy.

They turned and looked at each other with renewed interest. Instead of issues and anger, the relationship suddenly came back into relief.

The relief that comes from relating with a friend.

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.

Rest

So many of my clients say they have no time to do the homework I assign them each week. They don’t have time to even talk to each other, sometimes not even once in a whole week.

Of course, they have no time to rest.

I prepare to rest on the next in-breath. I relax on the turn-around between in and out.  I rest deeply on the out-breath. I relax again on the turn-around between out and in.

Every breath, therefore, is an opportunity to rest.

Sometimes, between the typing of one letter and the next, I take a breath-vacation, and rest.

The wisdom of the world can arise on one of these breath-vacations. A single one. They are like doorways to the place where serenity is manufactured.

They are always available. Anytime you still have time to breathe.

Pre-Occupied

People keep asking me what the Occupy people want, what they expect to change, how do they expect to do it, why they don’t have any leaders or agenda?

Of course none of these people have ever been to a GA (General Assembly) meeting, or gone to any of the thousands of online documents and chats about content. What they are really asking is: Why hasn’t the Occupy movement done anything that is “newsworthy” enough to be reported in the commercial “news.”

I could quote Einstein to them, “No problem has ever been solved by the kind of thinking that caused it.” It is apropos.

Those of us whose political habits are pre-Occupy are so preoccupied with the structures of power and information that got us into this mess, we not only don’t question the process, we have a hard time noticing when change is occurring.

It’s the same with my clients. By the time most of them come to me, their relationship is in the same kind of disarray our society is, these days. They too are about to lose their homes, their dreams are already turning into nightmares. 

Still they come to me hoping I will change some “thing” within the existing structure - usually they hope it will either be how their spouse is, or who is their spouse.

Instead I do what the Occupiers are doing, I set up camp beside their “business as usual” processes, and advocate for inclusion, for all the parts of themselves and of their spouse that have been marginalized, downsized, foreclosed, and disenfranchised.

At the macro level that the Occupy movement confronts, I don’t know what the solution is. On the micro level of the family, the solution is just as invisible to the couples I work with as it is to the 99% who keep asking when the Occupy Movement is going to fix everything.

It’s hard to see the answer, when you’re right inside the problem – so close you’re actually part of it. That’s why a marriage mediator is do valuable. I stand just outside their marriages, so I can see the way out. “Follow me.”

The Mirror You Married

Stop looking into the mirror which is your spouse, and blaming them for the reflection you see.

You don’t do that in your bathroom cabinet, nor the full length one in the hall, nor even in the huge mirrors in public places.

In those you look and see yourself and you let the mirror be.

So why, when you marry a mirror, do you suddenly become so angry at it? You stay calm, of a summer’s day, when the pond reflects your life. Why not blame the water? Accuse the fish? Blaspheme the muddy bottom?

But put a mirror in pajamas, with admittedly foul morning breath, and you act like your own flaws which show up in your own heart when you see the love in their eyes deserves your derision.

Take a moment and reflect. Be kind to the mirror you married.

Take Your Love for a Walk

The couple I worked with last night love each other. Like so many couples who come to see me.

Like so many couples who come to see me who are about to divorce.

They come when the fighting gets intolerable. When so much of the space between them is filled with either shouting, or the silence of the fear of the shouting, that they can’t move anymore. Then they come to see me, and I sweep it all away, and there, sitting patiently like an old dog waiting to be taken for a walk, is their love.

How do we come so easily unhooked from something as powerful as love? And by what? A dirty dish? A few minutes late? An errant thought about what I was thinking that you were thinking when you didn’t say anything after I was silent?

And when they find it again, their love; there in my office. It makes them so happy. So why do we let it go so easily?

Maybe it’s like being blown away by a sunset. When you turn your head away, in that next moment, all you see is your own shadow.

Managing Manager Fatigue

 

My marriage, like many, has a manager, a social director (and in my case, let’s call a spade a spade) a queen.

I worked with a couple this week who were having some of the same management issues we have from time to time, what I have come to call: Manager Fatigue.

The Manager is generally the person in the marriage who has strong preferences, and who likes to plan. At the end of each week, Elise emails me a list of options, and I get to pick which ones most appeal to me. This arrangement works just fine for me - like many managed spouses, I’m easy. Frankly, just being happily married is enough for me, and then getting to do any kind of fun stuff, is icing on the cake.

But every once in a while, I think it happens about every 3-6 weeks, Elise suddenly comes down with Manager Fatigue. It usually happens when she is scanning the Philly Fun Guide, with its thousands of events. She just gives up, “Why do I always have to do all the planning? How did I get that job?”

These outbursts used to take me by surprise - I thought our system worked pretty well. What happened? And how did I suddenly become the slacker in a system that she set up?

But I’m a pattern finder, and eventually I recognized the pattern here. Managing meets a lot of Elise’s needs, but it is also tiring and requires a lot of mental work. That’s fine when she’s relaxed and able to focus on the fun she’s planning, but when she’s fatigued or stressed; or sometimes if it’s just gone on too long and so doesn’t meet her need for fairness and teamwork, it switches into a problem.

If you’re in such a relationship, and you’re the managed partner, here are some tips:

• Ÿ  Every once in a while, plan something, set it all up, and surprise your manager with a fait au complet. You can’t do this too often, because it will seem like you’re horning in on their territory, but you can do this preemptively, best right before Manager Fatigue sets in. I like to get a whole week of credit out of it. On Monday I’ll say, “Don’t make any plans for this weekend. We’re all booked up.” On Tuesday she’ll start trying to get more info (Managers love info) by saying something like, “Well, how am I gonna know what to pack if I don’t know what we’re doing?” I’ll respond with just a tantalizing hint, like: “Just make sure you have a bathing suit.” On Thursday I’ll say something like, “Our plane reservations are all set.” A carefully doled out set of hints like this will not only make for a happy Manager all week long, it can stave off Manager Fatigue for weeks.
• Ÿ  Doing little things which are usually the Manager’s tasks can keep your Manager happy and unfatigued. Elise takes out the recycling on Friday morning. If she’s had a busy week, and I’ve noticed, especially if there is a lot of recycling, I’ll sometimes take it to the street Thursday night. If she notices and says so, I’ll just say, “I noticed you’ve been busy this week, so I thought I’d do the recycling this time.”
• Ÿ  You need to understand that asking if there is anything you can do, does not help with Manager Fatigue, because although you’re proving yourself to be a willing serf, you’re still requiring that they Manage you. This is a mistake a lot of managed spouses make.
• Ÿ  Another frequent mistake is believing your Manager’s resistance to your substitute managing. If you make breakfast for them one morning as a way of helping out, don’t take it personally if they have things to say about how you did it. Of course they’re going to complain that you overcooked the eggs, or forgot the toast. That’s their job - to manage. If you take the bait and argue, you lose all the benefit. Just agree that you didn’t do it the way they would have, but remind them, “But isn’t it nice to be served your breakfast without even having to ask?”

 

Look, you chose a Manager, so you must like being managed. It’s just that like any expensive sports car, they are a lot higher maintenance than the salesman at the dealership ever let on. Still, with a little routine maintenance, you can manage your Manager and then take them out for a ride.

[This blog entry has the seal of approval of my Manager :-) ]