How the Play Between Words and Feelings Affects Your Relationships
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PHIL: Besides writing with Maude, I also write independently on Substack. Maude is away on a trip for a few weeks, so I want to describe some ideas of mine and explain how they apply to relationships.
I’ve been thinking about language and how it has captured our attention. Many moons ago, we lived quite successfully without language, but once it was developed, we created ideas about the world far beyond what our senses could tell us. From the Greeks through the scientific revolution, we have come up with ideas about germs, atoms, electromagnetism and much more that we have used to construct society as we know it today.
But let us be clear about language. Words are not the world; they are only labels for it, yet they are so powerful that our attention works almost exclusively with them. When we become aware of sensations or feelings, we find words to describe them, and in that way, we incorporate them into our verbal world.
Yet our preverbal, nonverbal self continues to operate and keep us alive. Digestion, circulation, walking, and sleeping; our body is constantly at work. Besides these physiological reactions, it also assesses safety and seeks opportunities, all outside our consciousness.
In other words, we have two sides assessing and responding to the world. They communicate with and moderate each other to a certain extent, but it is a tenuous partnership, as neither side understands the language of the other.
These both operate in a relationship. Each half is going to make a judgment separately: you might have a meeting of the minds but no physical attraction, or you might have a wham bam can’t keep your hands off attraction to someone who votes weirdly, treats credit cards like money presses, or considers driving a competitive sport. In other words, you need to match on both levels.
Consider a conflict, a disagreement, call it what you will. It takes place in words. Your reasons might seem rational to you, but you have carefully chosen them to fit with how you feel. Pretty much all your beliefs are this way; it’s very rare that you say, “This is what I think, but it doesn’t feel right.” So you need to look beyond your reasons as quickly as possible and instead present how you feel. Think of this as the nonverbal sides of the two of you having a dialogue.
You might think that being angry or aggrieved sounds like a recipe for just continuing the conflict at the emotional level. Certainly, you’re each going to have different feelings. Let’s say the disagreement is over the dishes. Behind that might be how you feel about hygiene, order or social pressures. But there will also be deeper feelings underlying the ones you first encounter, and to resolve the disagreement, you need to find those.
There are only two basic emotions: love and fear, which correspond to attraction and avoidance, the strategies for staying alive practiced by every species. Yes, there are a hundred other emotions, but they are all in service of the big two. Fear is often concealed by anger. It’s one of the responses to danger: fight, flight, or freeze. Fear is hard to look at because, well, it’s scary.
But the reality is that in a balanced relationship, there is nothing to fear; instead, there is the strength of two. So don’t get stuck at the language level; look beyond the words at what attracts you to the other person.
Photo credit: Phil Mayes and GIMP
Photo note: Taking on the weight of the word
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