Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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This week, we wrote about how radical non-interference makes our relationship feel so peaceful. Here are some posts we’ve written on being both separate and together at the same time.

How To Respect Each Other’s Separateness While Being Together “For Phil and me, one part of expressing that is respecting the other person’s separate life; their individual wants and needs, thoughts and feelings, comings and goings. I don’t try to alter him to be more like me, to see or do things the way I do. As we mentioned last week, we do look for mutuality of action, seeking to find something that fits what both of us want or need. And we find rich abundance in the differences we each bring, as well as being strengthened by the similarities. This peaceful way of interacting is also a matter of respect for the other person; a respect that has to be applied in any relationship: romantic ones, friendships, and family relations. All these connections are improved when you honor each other in this way. It requires that you don’t try to make the other person into your image of them. Don’t trespass inside them.”

The We That Exists With the Separate Self “The world seems filled with darkness these days, and yet, the light shines brighter through our very real connections to each other. It radiates forth and has greater strength than any transitory, no matter how horrible, aberrations. Phil and I share these weekly posts to add to that light by writing of the beauty and potential of peaceful relationships. We have been reflecting on an element of that sweet peace that we enjoy. Perhaps you can recognize some version of it in your relationships, or find a path toward it. Our wish is to spread the calm, loving presence of that peace. Phil and I each take care of our own inner self, making sure we are as whole as we can manage. We support each other in this ongoing practice. There is no sense of invasion of my person by Phil, or vice versa. Nor is there a bleed-over: a space where part of me is him, or taken up by him. And yet, at the same time that we both feel complete within ourselves, we are fully with each other. There is an us, a we, that has a total existence, but in no way impinges upon, nor overlaps onto my separate self. This seems somewhat impossible, but it is so.”

How to Be Both Together and Separate in Your Relationship “The key to this is the ABC of Acceptance, Balance and Communication.
Acceptance
For this sort of mutuality to exist there must be a kind of total acceptance, in which each partner rests secure in the other. When this acceptance is present you can rest in the knowledge that you will not be judged, attacked or manipulated. You know in fact that you will be celebrated and appreciated for who you are. This acceptance eliminates any fear of disapproval or any threat of withdrawal of affections. It offers support for your explorations of yourself and your path without any worries about agreement or explanations. One of the things that we marvel at is that although we both pursue our individual lives and their separate expression, we never feel disconnected or estranged. We have forged such a deep bond through this experience of support and trust, that it goes with us everywhere, whether we are physically in the same place or not.
Balance
A critical part of achieving this type of loving flow between together and apart is to reach a balance of these states. Pay attention to the balance between your need to find your own destiny and the need for connection. This will be different for each partnership and will change over time as well. This is part of the grand adventure of living this type of love: keep redefining your time together, evaluate each of your needs in the present, and honor your bond with time and attention. Take time to be together no matter how busy you become in your private journey. Take time to be apart no matter how enticing that shared intimacy is.
Communication
The way to avoid getting lost in either part of this balance between self and union is to stay in the present together and communicate what is happening. Offer your partner both the freedom to fly and the security of connection. The simple act of talking with each other regularly will eliminate many an avoidable misunderstanding. Never take your partner for granted because things are so good between you that you instead put your mind to what isn’t working in your life. This is a mistake that we can all make too easily. Rejoice in your relationship and let it be your nourishment for all the mountains you need to climb in your personal work. Me’, ‘you’ and ‘us’ are all parts of a successful relationship. Foster all the parts and the whole will be a bastion of renewal and life force.”

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This week, we wrote about how to apply your intention toward peace in all your relationships. Here are some other posts that talk about the role of intention in your relationships.

How Conscious Intention Can Lead to Peace in Your Relationships “When you are on guard or defensive, reacting from triggers often implanted long ago, you are already bringing barriers into the exchange. In your partnerships and friendships, you hopefully share core values, and although each other’s actions and words may seem quite different, they reflect the unique quality of each rather than true clashes. So how can a conscious intention help when you are feeling angry, frustrated or alienated in a relationship? It reflects a choice that you have made about what your motivation will be in your responses and viewpoint. If these feelings are not reflective of your choice, you can remind yourself of your true intention. This is a way of aligning yourself with your choice. The more you become conscious of your intention, the more powerful it will become. Every time you can step out of a response that doesn’t reflect your choice, you gain a bit of distance, and are a step closer to living that choice. In a most basic way, the decision is whether to come from love or fear. Fear rears its head in many manifestations, and when it is the underlying driver of your responses it will always lead to feelings of distrust, separation and often violence.”

Why it is Important to Set an Intention for Peace in Your Relationships “Just as this project of intention works on a global scale, many of us have a number of practices that bring the intention for peace into our daily lives: some meditate regularly, some write intentions in journals, and some do affirmations of gratitude each morning. These help us to manifest our intention. Great quotes with which to start each day in a calm peaceful frame are:
This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before. – Maya Angelou
It’s morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it. – Mary Oliver
This need for a peace intention on a global scale, as well as for our individual selves, holds the same importance in our relationships. Whether you are developing a new relationship or wanting to improve a long standing one, an intention for peaceful loving interactions is the place to start. And yet, people so often don’t see this as realistic, and fall into different habitual patterns of behavior. The good news is it’s never too late. With the awareness that there are better possibilities, you can start anytime to apply an intention of peace in your relationships. It starts with accepting that the other person is who they are. What they do and say is their choice. You shouldn’t interfere in that. (You’ve probably learned that you can’t change people, anyway.) You don’t have to like it, either. This is where the work begins. Does that dislike come from within you, or is it really something unacceptable about the other person? That’s certainly possible, though unlikely because most people are doing the best they can.”

How To Create A Peaceful Relationship In A World That Says It’s Impossible ” Peace is a choice, as are peaceful relationships. It came to me this morning that, in the same sense, peace is a verb. Being at peace and bringing it into your relationships takes action. It starts with intention and belief. It is necessary to want to be peaceful, to intend to have peaceful relationships, and to create and maintain them. It can be a challenge to imbue your relationships with the belief that they can be peaceful and loving. Society encourages the opposite viewpoint, pushing a belief that conflict is inevitable. Phil and I have the experience that it is possible, with intention, to find other ways of being. When core values are shared, there is a path to mutual solutions for differences and disagreements that does not involve conflict, separation, or distancing. All my deep and intimate relationships are built on this belief and intention. I am active in finding paths to peace when relating. This also means working on my own inner peace. Regardless of the practice, whether it be through meditation, mindfulness, walking in nature, or becoming aware of the love that surrounds me, I am actively engaged in growing toward inner peace. From this direct experience and its quest, I approach my relationships. What are the actions I can take to manifest this way of being together? Foremost are the actions of truly being with the other person. These involve awareness of the person, interest in them, and offering myself and my presence. It means paying attention, looking upon them with openness and loving kindness, without fear or defensiveness.”

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This week, we both had experiences with the boombox guy that pointed out a secret to peace in relationships. Here are some earlier posts that cover the same subject from different angles.

A Different Approach to Differences in Relationships “When there is a gaping difference between how I would respond and how Phil does, it stops me at first. There is that moment where I go, “What’s happening here? Something foreign is occurring.” With Phil, this short stop lasts a relatively brief time. I don’t have that initial response to push it away because it’s different, or to defend against it, or change it. I relax and look at the response with interest, examining if I might try it that way, or at the least, I see that it’s Phil’s way and has nothing to do with me. Occasionally, when something is so different that it keeps nudging at me or even unsettling me, I tell Phil about my feelings, making sure it is clear I am talking about how I feel, and it is not about him. Often just telling him, while he listens calmly and with love, changes that feeling. We both listen, looking for that thread, for that opportunity of understanding. We talk back and forth until we get to a mutual place of peace and balance with the difference. Never, even when dealing with an originally charged reaction, do either of us ever question our connection, or the we of us. These kinds of things don’t even touch on that.”

Why Differences Don’t Need to Create Problems in Your Relationships
“MAUDE: All of those things that you brought up are about making comparisons. You used words like “far more,” “handle it better,” and “failings.” You didn’t say anything negative. You said something you know very well, which got you to ultimately look on the sunny side. We are different because I don’t work through comparison, but you used those comparisons to get to the same place I would go to. You know what I’m saying? We are different, but the thing is, we wind up getting to the same place regardless of how we go there.
PHIL: That’s an inspiring and humbling observation, and something I hadn’t noticed until you brought it more into the open. But our relationship doesn’t hinge on that kind of comparison.
MAUDE: If it’s not measuring and evaluating, if it’s merely seeing, that’s so different, and I really love that.
PHIL: Right, it’s an apples and oranges thing.
MAUDE: And then you have a bunch of fruit instead of just one piece of fruit.”

How to Embrace Differences, Not Trip Over Them “In last week’s post, we wrote that having peaceful relationships is a choice. So, let’s say you have made that choice. What now?One of the biggest things to find a way to embrace within yourself is the fact that we are all unique; we are each one of a kind. Although we all share many similarities, we are all different. Many who write on the topic of relationships feel that this difference means that conflict is inevitable. From our own personal experience, we strongly disagree with this viewpoint. To change this propensity, it is necessary to learn to respond to the kind of differences our uniqueness creates in a way other than fear, conflict, feeling threatened, distancing, anger, or protectiveness. Start with relationships that are, or that you want to be, deep and close: friendships, partners, relatives. It is easier to accept these differences in those we feel close to. As you develop the experiences with them, you can move out toward those with whom you have less and less similarity.”

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This week, we wrote that your relationship expectations make you miss what’s happening. Here are some posts that we wrote that touch on aspects of expectations.

It’s Important to Treasure Each Person’s Uniqueness in Relationships “Everybody is the same AND everybody is different. It’s hard to come to terms with such a contradiction. It’s like trying to look in two different directions at once. It means that in any relationship, there are always going to be differences. They might be achievements or failings: How do they manage to do that? Why do they think that way? Why don’t they do it like me? Are you going to let those differences bug you, or can you let go of expectations of how things ought to be. But there is a step beyond being neutral; those differences can be a source of curiosity and fascination. Isn’t it amazing that another human does things so differently? Looking at that can prompt questions that might not have otherwise occurred to you: why do you do things the way you do them?”

How Peaceful Relationships Create the Freedom to Be Yourself “For much of my life, I was called commitment-phobic across a number of relationships, and that was probably true, except that I got married once, and bought a house with someone once, so what was the source of my reluctance? Rather than lie on the couch and attempt to understand the past, it’s easier and more useful to describe the difference with Maude, and that is that she has no expectations, no demands. OK, it feels like that, but it’s not entirely true. Of course, we have expectations of each other, and we formalized those in our wedding vows, which were basically (top of my head recall here) to be open with each other. So the freedom lies within that constraint, which is no constraint at all, but a wonderful invitation, the freedom to speak and be myself. Add to that the knowledge that what Maude says is the truth; there is no hidden agenda, and these are what create a spacious place to live.”

How It’s Possible to Practice Acceptance in Your Relationships “I never survived in any other relationship for more than about three years, and yet with Maude, I’m about to hit 20 years. Much of that earlier dissatisfaction was of my own making; I had expectations about intelligence, looks, and interests that were unrealistic, but I now see there was another aspect. After those breakups, along with the loss I had a sense of finding myself again. What did I like, what did I want to do, questions that were always moderated by how they would fit with the relationship. With Maude, there is no sense of losing myself, and hence no need to make space in order to find myself again. I’m not saying that there is no caring, no doing things for or with each other; of course there is, but it is a giving, not a taking. This is a subtle point. We have tasks that we take on like changing the sheets and taking the trash out, but they never turn into expectations.”

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This week, we wrote about why communicating strengthens the connection in your relationships. This may seem obvious, but it’s a really important point to think about. Here are some other posts we’ve written about this.

How Communicating From Your True Self Deepens Your Relationships “Although we often covered many topics, he wasn’t interested in long conversations filled with chitchat. He wanted to converse on our connection, who each of us was, and what was important to each of us. Don’t misunderstand; we laughed a lot, hiked, went out on the usual dates, and walked around our beautiful city. These all happened, and were crucial to our relationship building. Yet, what made the difference was finding out what was important to each of us, and that came through the emphasis within our communication on sharing ourselves with each other. We soon discovered that communicating on this level was a core value to both of us, and developing this style of connection was central to our movement toward one another. We were each strongly attracted to this way of being together. We bonded early over what was of meaning and value to each of us, and we built our relationship upon that foundation. This understanding was not always spoken. It was also shared through behavior and actions.”

Why Peaceful Relationships Start With This One Radical Choice “This kind of being together doesn’t work when one person is self-absorbed or withdrawn within themselves. Open communication is a prerequisite. You have to be able to bring a certain level of interest in another being: one that involves inner work and a developed consciousness that creates in you a fearless state of being present. You are able to be quietly there with your whole self, offering that presence to the other person. For those who choose to walk this path of peace, this core value will reside in both of you, even if it is not fully developed yet. The dance of learning how to live that within your relationship is a beautiful one; full of surprises, calm, gentleness, openness, and trust. It is freeing and precious.”

Communication and Individuality in a Relationship ” One such topic was respect, and another is regular contact and communication. When the relationship is filled with honoring and accepting each other, a special kind of trust and security is present. For this to exist, each partner must be willing to share their thoughts and feelings. It is important to stay in regular contact and for that contact to be intimate and totally open. When partners know their partner’s thoughts and feelings, they don’t have to make them up from their fears or insecurities. In our experiences with couples, we have found over and over that when this regular contact does not occur, the couple slowly becomes estranged, and the projections and misinterpretations that occur just deepen the rift that grows between them.”

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