How Peaceful Relationships Create the Freedom to Be Yourself

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

MAUDE: Peaceful relationships are attractive. Once you have experienced the kind of deep calm and relaxation that such a connection provides, it is natural to want more. Developing these kinds of interactions through the many methods we outline in our weekly posts, opens up a rich field of delightful pleasures: being seen, accepted and appreciated for who you are, the removal of tension that comes from knowing you won’t be confronted with power and dominance issues, the joy of sharing with another with trust, openness and honesty.

All of these arise from one of the most important elements created by peaceful relationships: the freedom to be yourself. When you share an actual living peace with another person, as opposed to a hypothetical one, this freedom underlies all your exchanges. It transforms the relationship, bringing with it a relaxed, gentle kindness in the place of stress, pressure, anxiety or defensiveness.

Our survival skills flood us with many responses that are left over vestiges of a way of relating that is much closer to war than peace. The more we learn how to respond rather than react, the easier it will be to leave behind these more primitive forms of interaction and establish connections founded on the intention to love and support each other.

To do so requires the intention as well as the belief that it is possible. This is a primary reason that Phil and I share our adventures in having a peaceful togetherness. If we can, so can you, if you so desire. It does require the will to do so, as well as the willingness to look at yourself and become aware of your behavior. Peace is a form of connection that requires both presence and awareness.

If you lose awareness of your own actions and reactions, you are apt to fall back into the kinds of behaviors that lead to distance rather than bringing you closer; those unconscious ones like a snarky tone of voice, disregard of the feelings and needs of the other person, answering with stock responses or pushing the other person away, and not being attentive. You cannot listen and offer love if you are not actually there in the present with the other person. The more you are in your own head, the less you will be able to practice peace.

Won’t you join us in spreading peace with intention and joy? It is a powerful way to balance all that we are living through with what we know to be of true meaning and value.

PHIL: Maude writes about the freedom we have in our relationships, and I think it’s an uncommon word in that context. People think of relationships in terms of obligations or commitments. The very act of marrying involves making promises.

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.

Maude also writes about intention, and I could riff on how that implies choice or how empathy counters my ego, but it’s really about how you want to live. If your experience of relationships has been of anger, shyness, blame, or avoidance, then it’s a challenge to move away from those and live peacefully, because they are familiar (in several senses of the word) patterns. This is why we write about peaceful relationships. By describing their many different facets, we hope to convey that they are both real and possible.

Photo credit: Phil Mayes
Photo note: Maude dancing in Big Sur

Read what some other writers have to say on this topic.

Get our free weekly newsletter about how to have a harmonious relationship.

Tell your friends!