Where Love Resides

Sometimes after two people fall in love, they fall out of love.  I have even seen couples who were very much in love at one point become hateful toward each other.  As untrained observers we often cite these break-ups as a “poor match” or that they “grew apart” or had “little in common.”  Let me suggest that the explanation for the demise of a loving relationship may lie elsewhere.

Perhaps it is true that part of falling in love is the desire for more – more closeness, more acceptance, to get married, have more peak adventures, etc.  You may identify with this desire in these or other ways.  The question is where does the desire for MORE come from?

During childhood we want the five A’s: acceptance, affection, attention, allowing and appreciation.  If we do not get adequate amounts of these, we do not develop healthy adult relationship with ourselves and others.  As we enter relationships, our “lack” of adequate amounts of one or more of the five A’s shows up.  As David Richo points out, the adult version of these desires in a healthy person is:

1.  Attention to the present moment; observing, listening, and noticing all the feelings at play in our relationships.
2.  Acceptance of ourselves and others just as we are.
3.  Appreciation of all our gifts, our limits, our longings, and our poignant human predicament.
4.  Affection shown through holding and touching in respectful ways.
5.  Allowing life and love to be just as they are, with all their ecstasy and ache, without trying to take control.

Richo says that love is “not so much a feeling as a way of being present.”  When deeply understood and applied, these five simple concepts—what Richo calls the five A's—form the basis of mature love. They help us to move away from judgment, fear, and blame to a position of openness, compassion, and realism about life and relationships. By giving and receiving these five A's, relationships become deeper and more meaningful, and they become a ground for personal transformation.  An appreciation for all of this can be found in David Richo’s amazing book, “How To Be An Adult In Relationships.”

So when we fall in love and are not present with the love that is right in front of us, we are elsewhere wanting MORE.  We are striving instead of seeing, controlling instead of caring, maneuvering ahead instead of being in the moment and listening to the voice within that says “I deserve MORE!”  Loving relationships go bad because our egos are working hard to achieve MORE.  And when our partner does not meet our needs we judge, resent, criticize and blame because we are not getting the something MORE we think we need.  We grow apart. We lose our commonality. We are no longer a match.  We become needy.  And often, love turns into hate.

While most of us exhibit this type of behavior at times, Richo points out that we can learn to change how we behave and turn back to our partners in life.  If we did not get adequate amounts of each of the five A’s in childhood, our self-esteem might be severely challenged as adults, especially in relationship.  We must train ourselves to work on the five A’s and get back to the present moment -- where love resides – rather than being lost in the stories about what is missing, what we think is “right” and how things need to be different.

TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS

Growing up I can remember well times of tenderness. My mother gave me tender treatment when I was sick. I, too, find a place of tenderness when my children are suffering or ill. What I did not get then and am just learning now is treating everyone all the time with tenderness is what I am truly about.

I don’t do it regularly because I am caught up in my ego often. When my ego is in charge of my mind and body, I plow through life without regard of how I treat others and, most importantly, how I treat myself. When I am under my ego’s control, I am trying to get somewhere, to look good, to project my haughty self-image, to be “right” so I can win love. I ignore all the “softer” parts of me that exude tenderness and kindness.

Right now at this moment, I know for sure that if I were to tell you the truth it would be that the time I spend in my ego is wasted. When I come back toward whom I truly am, I am extremely happy, tender to others, kind and loving. The hardest part is to turn the tenderness inward toward myself. It takes practice to do this.

This is by far the most difficult period in my life. Actually, it probably isn’t, but that is what my “mind” (read ego) is telling me. All I think I have going for me is that I have survived before and will do so again. Really, what I have that I did not have before is conscious awakening to how my ego-mind works and some experience now with who I truly am without my ego involved. So the struggle is to give into the depressing ego or to be the peaceful, loving, kind and generous person that I really am.

Traversing back and forth between my ego and let me call it my “higher self” is difficult. The ego has a strong hold on me. Breaking away almost always feels incomplete as if the I am on a long leash, but still tethered.

Here’s what I know from my experience in relationship and I inject this into the work I do (see www.thecenterformarriage.com). My ego steps aside when others can tell me in a convincing way that I am loved just the way I am. It really works. I actually can take that love in and avoid a whole host of stories and messages my ego is sending my way ostensibly to win the love I want from another.

Yet, the trick in self-transformation is to love oneself sufficiently so that the love of another is not required for happiness. It’s just a bonus. I have worked with the idea of loving myself and it is evident that I am making progress. However, I also know that it is incomplete because I still respond to the love of others with awe and beauty. I need to be able to respond to myself with the same awe and beauty.

The answer has been around me all the time, but I just didn’t see it until now. I have seen pitched battles between couples turn into loving situations because at least one of the people involved touches their place of tenderness. Physically this feels to me like warmth coming from my heart spreading to the rest of my body. It is not something the mind can do by itself. It comes from a place of peace, a place absent of ego, a place of stillness and trust. When I am in this place I am no longer (unconsciously) treating myself poorly and elevating others. I am totally who I am at my core. I am spiritually connected to others as if they were myself.

It is often said that loving oneself well will help in relationship. My experience in the world is that this love must be connected to others through tenderness toward oneself. Tenderness releases my loving-kindness through myself to others. As a boy, I would imagine myself as one of three amigos riding on the whitest horse leading my band of followers into battle to do good deeds for others. My cowboy days are gone. I now see myself with others in tender connection where love is everywhere and kindness lights the way.

I Don't Know Anything

Have you ever wondered how intelligent, well-educated, hard-working, fun-loving people get into relationships and have no clue what they are doing? Well, I think they think they know what they are doing, but it doesn’t turn out so well. So I must confess I didn’t used to do very well in relationships. This has happened to me several times: I thought all I had to do was to be devoted to the person I was with, adhere to certain principles of fair play and to try to fit into the situation the best that I could and be helpful and useful. Let me say that this worked for several years in the two major relationships in my life, but each one ended after 16 years. In the aftermath of both relationships I was just running on empty having given all I could for many years and had nothing to show for it. I thought I knew everything, but actually had nothing. I was hurt and in pain.

After the second lost relationship, I looked back a bit at these painful endings wanting to find out what went wrong and I asked the most important question of my life: “What was the common denominator in these relationships?” The answer was, “Me!” But how did I manage to tear up these relationships? What could I change? Would I ever be loved again? Would I ever want to love again?

The answer I sought came to me in a series of encounters. I had been working with couples on money issues to help them act together on spending, saving and earning matters. With all of them, we hit some barriers that could not be overcome. So I started working with couples on their relationships, in general, to see what contributed to their difficulties in coming to agreement on money and anything else they struggled with. I was also seeing a counselor trying to heal the pain I was feeling over the last failed relationship. She helped me open to many possible explanations of why things did not work. At the same time, I was working with a wonderfully grounded coach who reflected back to me what she had heard from me. She let me know clearly and also in subtle ways who I was and who I was becoming. I had lost touch with myself while in relationship.

I love working with people on their struggles in life. What they may not know is that they are my struggles, too. I listen carefully, honoring the words they speak and not to put my own words and judgments about their issues into the conversation. I ask questions and listen – not like a therapist, which I am not – but rather as someone they can connect with who has been through turmoil in relationships and believes strongly in the importance of staying in relationships. We learn life’s lessons in relationship. Being a part of what others discover about themselves while in relationship is a service I embrace. I nudge them on the path to self discovery.

Here’s what I observed (in others and in myself). Disagreements occur between two people’s egos. The ego is the place where we think we know things. Both parties speaking from their ego express their desire to be seen as being “right” which cannot be true unless the other person is “wrong.” Our ego wants us to “look good” at all times. It wants us to be seen as separate and wonderful always looking for signs that we are indeed wonderful. Funny thing about all this is that when we are truly loved for who we are, we totally miss receiving that love because we, I mean our egos, are not looking for it. Instead, we are looking for prestige and other “feel good” stuff coming from others. We can only receive love well when we have it for ourselves. The ego is always searching elsewhere for what it wants and we can totally miss the presence of love. In working with couples, it is obvious when there is a break-through because the agitated party relaxes into the place of feeling and receiving love. The ego has left the room.

A simple example of how the ego gets in the way is when a wife might say, “I love how you take care of the garden.” Yet, you hear her say, “The garden needs tending right now and I won’t love you until you get it done!” We are in the future in our heads. We are elsewhere because our ego is trying to separate us from others. We miss what actually happened – love for who we are being – because our ego is not satisfied by comments from someone who may have criticized us in the past, holds the keys to our happiness and has not been forgiven for any past hurts. Unconsciously, we are just not there. We are frightened and cannot hear we are loved.

So what came up for me after listening and understanding people I’m working with, working with my therapist and coach and then entering into a new relationship that has been, from the outset, caring and equal. What I learned is this: I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! By that I mean, what resides with the ego, all the things that helped me get through childhood and my initial forays into the world, are false. All my beliefs, goals, expectations of myself and others, assumptions, fears, judgments, and thoughts from stories I tell myself do not serve me. The ego separates me from others, it protects me from my fears, it rationalizes every choice I make so they feel safe to me. Yet, as I follow my ego, my life narrows and hardens. I am no fun whatsoever to myself and others when I am trying to control everything with my ego. I am suffering in my ego-self.

So I don’t know anything, at least not in the places my ego touches. What I did find out is I have what seems to be unlimited wisdom in the feeling places. Some of the feeling places are connected to my ego through emotions and stories, but others are purely my real self – connected to everyone and everything. Some call it the God within or Buddha-self. Lets call it our Source as does Dr. Wayne Dyer. It has always been there.

Before observing myself carefully in life, I did not know that this place existed within me. I learned through experience that I am already perfect somewhere within me. I just need to wipe away all the other stuff so I can be the perfection that I am some of the time. Let me say right here and right now: This is a never-ending process, this “creeping down the stairs” from my ego-self to who I truly am is rewarding, but never complete. Something new pops up every day. Invite it in because it is a life lesson just waiting to be welcomed. This new thing is, as it turns out, connected to all sorts of interesting parts of me – some bogus and some true.

Completing a walk down the stairs with a difficult emotion is worth the effort. It is not important to understand it (that comes much later). It is only important to stay with it. Most of us stop “staying” out of fear (that ego thing again) and the desire to avoid pain. Yet I learned from coaching to gather my fears, my pain and my hurts and stay with them continuously until they actually morphed into something entirely different. Some things used to stay with me for weeks. Now that I’ve worked through several emotions, they stay around for a day or so. I don’t “know” anything about how this works or what lies ahead. Instead of “knowing”, I need to trust that wisdom is there within me already waiting to be let out in the open.

We carry every childhood fear and pain with us into adulthood until we allow them to be exposed for what they are. In the pain and the fear is the way out of them (this is really a magical thing to experience). It takes no effort. Just courage to stay there even though the ego wants to “fix” the pain, protect you from fear and to demean those who hurt you. It is as though you are in a room alone with fright and pain swirling around while the ego, with great effort, is seeking solace, help and answers. Suddenly when the ego pauses for a breath, a door opens and you step through it. What is through this door is beautiful, full of light and love. Physically, you morph from extreme tightness and pain into looseness and warmth. You know you are there by the sensation of freedom and the absence of any pain. You experience your inner wisdom by feeling free. There is no thinking that gets you there.

This is the working of the wisdom within that we all have. It is just very difficult to access for some people (especially narcissists). It is certainly difficult to access it for all of us all of the time. We go in and out of our egos and act from the ego quite often even though we are “enlightened” by having channeled into our inner wisdom previously. Did you ever get upset while standing in line at the grocery store or the DMV as if you were the most important person in the world and your time was so very valuable that how dare anyone slow you down? We’ve all been there. Yet through practice, we can experience more frequently the wisdom within. We can know what freedom really feels like. And we can be loving toward ourselves and others, at least, most of the time.

How does this all work? Take these 5 steps as a “daily” routine:

1. Look in the mirror each morning and say “I don’t know anything!” (I personally use stronger language so my ego really gets the message.)
2. Sit in stillness alone or with your partner and allow any and all thoughts to go through you without judging them. Just thank them for being there and let them pass through you. You’ll be amazed at all the “idle” thoughts that come through you including mundane things like shopping lists and emotionally charged things like anger at someone or something. When your mind quiets, extend loving thoughts to all those in your life and then to everyone everywhere so you end with a sensation of feeling connection to others. (You may repeat this several times during the day).
3. Always observe yourself as you go about your day. Exercising is a great time to make observations. Observe how often you feel you have to be “right” or “look good” when at work or with acquaintances and friends. Notice how often judgments about yourself and others pop into your head. Your observations of yourself and others bring into consciousness things that were not there before. Simply notice how much your ego is at work throughout your day. This takes practice and patience. It’s a fun thing to do with a partner. Share each of your own experiences with self-observation each day. Just notice what is happening with your partner and yourself. Do not judge or evaluate. Everything you notice is evocative. There is richness just in observation.
4. Find a time to “stay” with painful emotions (again, exercising is great for this).
5. Read affirmations (David Richo, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Psalms, for example) and select some to focus on for a few days. Read them before going to sleep and imagine them being true in your life.

I do not have the discipline to do these five things every day. Life is about remembering and forgetting. Don’t add this list to the “shoulds” in your life. This is not the path to freedom. I might remember to look at this list and choose one thing. That is a good day for me.

As I said, I love working with individuals and couples on relationship issues. I created The Center for Marriage (http://www.thecenterformarriage.com/) to help people go from good to great in their relationships. There are courses and consulting sessions where I nudge them on the path toward self-discovery. Great marriages are found where people can be loving and have the sensation of being free and open in their lives and with their partners.

Nudging Karl

We all bury the truth about ourselves and we have no idea we are doing it. This is normal. It is also painful. We can learn to access our truth if we take action to reveal one or more of the multitude of stories we have created that serve to conceal from us our true selves. To understand what I am talking about, let me use the example of a friend who just recently discovered a truth about himself that he had been denying for years.
Karl acts “fiercely” independent. I say “fiercely” because he acted this way on everything in his life and it brought him no joy whatsoever. He did not ask for help at work or at home. On occasion he would ask close friends for help, but only if he had helped that person several times prior to his request for assistance. He did not want to be a burden or a bother to anyone. He did not like that about himself nor did he like it in others. He shunned friends who were “too needy.”
I had told Karl that I had always seen myself as being married until a few years ago when I realized I needed to give myself more attention so I could fulfill most of my needs all by myself. I told him that I was now so much better in relationships since I could fulfill most of my needs and looked to have a few important ones fulfilled in relationships.
Karl started to question his approach to relationships and then honed in on himself. I nudged him to notice how afraid he was and how his ego was dragging him through crises. Karl noticed that he, too, was needy. Then something hit him strongly. He realized that, since childhood, he had lived with a dream that someone would take care of him and life would be great thereafter. It was painful for him to acknowledge this dream existed within him because it wasn’t at all the image he portrayed to others and himself. He was shaken by this realization for many days.
I told him, based upon my experience, that when he was a child, dependent upon others, he wanted someone (most likely his parents) to help him and they did not. It could have been inadvertent on his parent’s part or it could have been the way they were. It likely happened several times at an early age so his desire to be helped went unheeded. For him it was a serious loss then and turned into an unconscious yearning for help now. Consciously, he learned to fend for himself because others did not or perhaps he was encouraged to take care of himself by pre-occupied parents. He learned to be independent. The message he carried with him was “I am not loved because my needs aren’t being met and no will meet them so I must do it for myself, damn them all.” So he carried into adulthood two different images of himself: the independent actor and the helpless child. Both of them are false and unlovable.
I needed to nudge him again. It's what I do (see http://www.thecenterformarriage.com/). I told him that he could go into therapy to try to come to grips with the lacking in his childhood or he could mourn the loss of what appears to be a desperate need for help and love when he was young. I told him he didn’t get it then and would not get what it was he wanted then as an adult. So it was necessary to mourn the loss as completely as possible. To be clear, it is the mourning of that child-like intense desire for missing love that needs to be mourned as not ever coming to fruition. It cannot be given now because it was only needed then.
As he listened to my nudge, he seemed to lighten a little. He was stunned to realize that he only acted at being independent when he was not free to be that way at all. He fought hard to be separate from others, but he sensed he was really a [art of the whole. I told him separateness was a source of conflict that affected him and all of his relationships. He looked down on dependent, clinging, needy people because he did not like that about himself. Even though he developed a mask of independence, the deep down yearning had a different source. Something in him was lacking because he didn’t get the love and attention he needed as a child. Children see things as their fault. It is the blaming that must go away with the mourning.
Mourning takes time. Once the loss has been brought into the light, it can be mourned. The loss of a dream is not easy to shake. It recurs and each time it must be mourned as lost. At the same time, there is an unraveling of the image of fierce independence. It is a complex, layered protection device the ego has been erecting for years. It has touched every part of your being. The ego reacts to losses by creating a whole set of beliefs, assumptions and expectations about how life must proceed. The mourning is a start, but it is the least of the work Karl must do.
Because of the loss and the images and stories the ego has erected, Karl has not been in touch with what actually is happening in each moment. He has been experiencing only those things that comport with his beliefs and his feeling of loss. He has been elsewhere, meaning he does not see the reality of his life clearly as it happens.
In addition to the mourning (the definite loss and not “maybe” a loss) he has to also start seeing what actually is in a curious way. Observing life without active judgment, expectations, beliefs, prejudices, goals, plans, assumptions and the like must be practiced along with the mourning activity.
The only way I have experienced to get to what actually is going on in life is to be aware of what pops up as I go from one thing to the other. Typically some sort of ego-driven machination will show up (judgment, expectation, belief, etc.) that will put me in reactive mode. To get back into life, Karl needs to notice what comes up, consciously ask it to abide his experiment with something new and give life a new shot. It is quite amazing to me to see that each new chance to open into awareness must be followed by a practice of getting into the moment in order to make a change in who I am becoming.

Where Neglect Comes From

I ain’t got no book learnin’ about psychology and emotional stuff. I only can relate my own experiences, the experiences of friends, the experiences of those who I have worked with and the people I observe from day-to-day. In my own experience of a failed marriage, I can clearly say, “I didn’t see it coming.” In watching other marriages fail, I sensed that these failures, as well as mine, were due to neglect.
I have been “listening” for a few years for neglect in relationships. I had accumulated a jumble of observations that did not reveal to me the nature of neglect and how it works. The pieces came together for me during an Episcopal Church service. The service had a script – God’s Word – and there was no deviation from it. The Word extolled a single system of belief in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Father.
As I listened to the service, I became aware of my own past penchant to treat the world as deterministic – understandable and predictable, really. I sense that this belief kept me in a trance, listening only for things that I could make understandable and were predictable from a logical thought pattern I had developed.
I developed this way of thinking so I could get to where I was going – a financially successful person, a good parent, with a home, a wife and a stable, calm existence. I was constantly striving to attain this success, I guess because it was so elusive or because I wanted to maintain the appearance of having it all.
As a result of being elsewhere with my thoughts, I was not aware of the things that were happening around me. I was also not open to making changes or even to recognize change as it occurred around me. By focusing on attaining something not in my grasp (yet sure it was within my reach), I was not in touch with others or with myself.
We don’t choose neglect directly. It happens when we are pre-occupied with being something other than what we are. I now have faith that I am, at my core, a perfectly formed person (in God’s image). I can be anywhere and listen to this part of me that was unavailable when I was in a trance. Awakening from trance is a vital part of the work we do at http://www.thecenterformarriage.com/.
I enjoy the uncertainty of life now because I know I don’t know as yet who I am in my fullness and richness. I am more cognizant of the emotional quality of my life as I take action in the various aspects of it. I am learning about my self in relationship with others and in a special, intimate relationship where my fullness of spirit is readily accessed and revealed to me.
Yet, I can back lapse into the trance – as we all can. Life is about remembering and forgetting. When I start listening again, I can notice neglect and be open to all that might be there right in front of my nose whether understandable or not. It brings me to a place of freedom where I get in touch to that God within. It ends when I forget by tricking myself into believing things are predictable. Then I remember to listen.
As I age, the periods of forgetting diminish in length until I see the beauty in life again.

Listening to Your Spouse

Marital therapists often focus on communication styles when couples need some help, but what is most important in doing this work is where you come from when you are speaking and listening. Listening, really listening, requires curiosity. With practice, you can learn to listen with curiosity and to deal with any blaming, judgmental or defensive thoughts that may arise as your spouse speaks to you. Author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle refers to these negative reactions as an unconscious virus eating away at our spirit – our” pain-body.” It is aligned with our “little ego” – the part of our “mind” that developed early in life to protect us from pain. This “mind-pain-body” lurks in all of us and serves to separate us from others, and can interfere with the way we communicate in our relationships.

The first step in effective listening is to become aware of our little ego or mind-pain-body. Spend a few days or weeks noticing how you listen in all your conversations. Continue observing your listening habits until you see the role of your little ego in your listening. Notice what is going through your mind. Are you thinking about the next thing you’ll say? Do you sense some anguish in the speaker and want to make it better? Are you judging the speaker or anyone or anything the speaker is saying to you? Do you conclude there is a clear “right” or “wrong” answer to the situation the speaker is describing as they speak? All these places your mind goes to – interrupting, judging, fixing, evaluating, and many more – arise out of the little ego. It is always working even when someone else is speaking

The result is that you never hear what the other person is saying. You may have an impression of what was said, but it’s only what the little ego wants you to remember. How many times has your spouse admonished you for not hearing what was said? Sometimes there are assumptions and subtle evaluations built into your listening like, “Gee, I’ve heard this before” and “Oh God, I’m in trouble!” Whenever you tap into the vast reservoir of assumptions contained within you, you stop listening. Any time you judge, want to fix or interrupt, evaluate or take sides, you have stopped listening. If you aren’t listening to your spouse, how will you be able to listen to your children, your boss, the news, or a clerk at the grocery store?

It takes practice to get the ego out of the way so you can hear what anyone is saying to you. At first, just become aware of it and practice becoming curious instead. Practice with your spouse, someone who will greatly appreciate your efforts. The most tried and true method of listening is to sit, face-to-face with your spouse and have them tell you about anything, such as what would be their ideal vacation. Let your spouse talk without interrupting them. Then repeat back what they said. Your spouse can then add anything you omitted or correct any misunderstanding you had right then and there. You cannot help but be curious when you need to repeat what someone said back to them.

You may not get the impact of this kind of listening until you reverse places. Have your spouse listen to you and gain understanding of what you think and feel about the same subject. Afterward, notice that you will feel heard, really heard. That’s what went on with your spouse, too. You will also begin to feel safer in saying what is on your mind.

When leading couples in this exercise just to practice the procedure, I notice that the listener often interrupts the speaker (against the instructions) with some type of response prior to the speaker finishing. This can be viewed as an enticement to further revealing your thoughts or a barrier. It can go either way. Avoid any interruption. It’s good practice.

Listening without assuming, fixing, taking sides, judging and evaluating is very hard to do. It is harder the more your mind pain-body controls your life. Become aware of the little ego and consciously move toward curiosity. Listening in this way brings you close to who you really are – a caring, understanding presence in your spouse’s life. Course 1 offered at www.thecenterformarriage.com focuses on listening.

Trust and Commitment

Kathy and John have a GREAT marriage. They exude equality, practice transparency, both have their basic needs met and each is capable of receiving love. They also have high levels of trust and commitment. They have made their 18-year marriage a safe place – a sanctuary. It is not a stretch to say that the moments they have together as husband and wife and parents are sacred. It is the way they learned to trust and how they have committed to each other that have made their marriage GREAT.

When Kathy and John first met, they spent hours and days revealing who they were, warts and all, and what was important to them. It was a good match of interests and soon developed into loving attraction. They describe it as a “primal connection.” They each realized that life was sending things their way that were unexpected, unplanned and uncontrollable. When Kathy saw John sitting by a river for hours, she wondered what it was all about. John said he would meditate outdoors. He explained to her that it was “hard to get to know the river.” It was his way of saying that everything was continually changing and he didn’t really know anything except what was within him – his spirit.

It was John and Kathy’s acceptance of the inexorability of change that allowed them to develop trust and commitment in their relationship. Most of us learned to trust others because our parents provided food and care when we demanded it. If we carry this same expectation for others to meet our needs into adulthood, we look for a mate that is as trustworthy as we needed our parents to be. This childish craving then becomes our expectation of our partner’s behavior in adulthood. It is really a form of control. We crave for our partner to do the “right” thing all the time so we do not have to face any unpleasant feelings and circumstances where our needs aren’t being fulfilled.

Kathy and John realized that trust comes from within each of us, a concept therapist, speaker and author David Richo often addresses. We trust ourselves to be able to receive the love, consideration, trustworthiness and attention given to us by our partner and to love them back. We also understand that each of us is fallible. We trust ourselves to handle our partner’s betrayals (infidelity, unreliability, falsehoods, inattention, etc.) when they arise. Trust is bolstered when spouses feel safe in fully revealing themselves to the other. Trust is enhanced when you know your spouse accepts you being who you truly are in every moment. Trust is not placing your heart, your feelings and your happiness in someone else’s hands. It is, instead, a sacred bond with yourself, a conscious, spiritual knowing that you are great just the way you are, that you can handle whatever comes up and that you will be understood by your spouse. If you trust yourself, you will receive trustworthiness in return. You do not have to prove anything to your spouse to obtain trust.

The same is true of commitment. If you are committed to openly pursuing self-growth and personal healing and engage your spouse in the process, you will create an ally. Commitment is the act of turning toward your partner in all matters day after day. The bond between John and Kathy is so strong that they do not have a negative word for each other even though each admits to their own struggles and fears. It shows in how they relate to their children and, in turn, how their children relate to everyone.

Kathy and John have what some would call “mature love.” Mature love is unconditional. By that I mean the total acknowledgement of the uncontrollable nature of what is. Seeing life as it really is in each moment and the recognition that the river is “hard to know” is what allowed them to merge their deep love for each other into a mature love. This is not the typical way people look at love, trust and commitment. Some people think we need to have a spotless record of honesty and fidelity to demonstrate love and to be worthy of trust and commitment. The truth is we all are tempted to conceal and cheat to make ourselves look good. When we are open to our temptations in front of our partners, we reveal the degree of love, trust and commitment we are prepared to give. We will receive the same in return.

Neither Kathy nor John is free of fears and expectations. They just don’t let them run their lives. They trust themselves and are deeply committed to the principles of a GREAT marriage.

Making a Marriage Great

A marriage is like a garden. Each partner brings many types of seeds to the marriage. The ones that bloom into beautiful flowers are to be nurtured. But there are inevitably weeds there, too. They need to be watched and dealt with – eradicated really -- so that the beauty of the garden can be enjoyed rather than eventually overwhelmed by aggressive weeds. GREAT marriages are like a lovingly tended garden. The attentive gardener sees and handles the weeds long before they take hold and choke out the garden’s beauty.

There are, at least, four flowers to nurture and cultivate in your marriage:

1. Equality
2. Transparency
3. Basic Needs
4. Receiving Love

Equality is where each spouse is as important as the other. It is the acceptance, enjoyment and enthusiasm by both parties for who the other person truly is. It means that neither partner wants to change the other. It is the absence or quick recognition and correction of controlling and manipulative behaviors. It is the absence or quick recognition and correction of judging, blaming and any other thoughts that separate one party from the other. We will see in later posts how to deal with the “weeds” that obscure equality. Please note that complete equality is probably never achieved since new weeds crop up all the time as some of the seeds sewn in earlier years are slow to germinate.

Transparency is the willingness to freely reveal to your partner what you are all about. Openness can be difficult since we have learned during our lifetimes to cover up some things and withhold parts of ourselves in order to protect ourselves from ridicule and criticism. In practice, transparency is the gradual and continuous opening up to our partners – an everlasting blooming, if you will. We, and everything around us, are changing in subtle ways. The challenge is to be open to change and to continue revealing who we are becoming. Consider your partner to be a stranger each day and give them room to reveal who they are becoming. Transparency is a key building block to intimacy. Transparency is a constantly evolving process of digging deeper into who we really are.

Understanding your partner’s basic need to feel loved was discussed in depth in the previous post as a key element of a great relationship. The genuine gift to your spouse of their need to feel loved in their special ways creates a GREAT marriage. While it is unreasonable to expect you to meet your spouse’s basic need for love 100% of the time, the point is to meet that need as often as possible. Sharing freely with one another what makes you each feel loved and giving that to the other as often as possible is a vital part of building intimacy in relationship. If you each feel secure in the fulfillment of your basic needs, you will be free to reveal things that make you feel unloved without blaming, judgment or resentment. The seed of divorce is sewn by withholding love and holding onto blame, judgment and the sense of self-righteousness. A great marriage is characterized by each partner’s ability to understand, communicate and give freely genuine expressions of dissatisfaction and for both the experience of joyful fulfillment of basic needs.

Receiving love that is freely given is the other building block to intimacy. It sounds simple – the act of receiving love – but it is not. You bring your own seeds to relationships that inhibit your ability to recognize and receive love from another person. These seeds look for a certain type of love that you didn’t get earlier in life. When you fall in love, you are sometimes fooled into believing that you can get what you missed out on earlier from your spouse. These are really weeds of expectation. You think these weeds are flowers. In effect, you unconsciously expect your partner to be something they are not and to give you something they cannot. Digging up and disposing of this seed of expectation allows you to plant and cultivate the flower of being curious about the true nature of your partner and not what you project them to be. This knowledge becomes food for thought. You clear the way for a deep, conscious relationship. It also means that you allow your partner to lovingly mirror who you are in those times (and they come often for most of us) when you are not being true to who you really are in your actions and deeds. If you can allow your spouse to influence your life without feeling hurt or seeing their comments as criticism or judgment, then you are receiving love kindly and your marriage can be GREAT!

As all four flowers of GREAT marriages grow, their roots intertwine to support the well-being of the entire garden. I offer courses on all these flower. See www.thecenterformarriage.com for more information.

How Do You Feel Loved?

Love is the common denominator in all marriages. Is love a fragile thing? I would say so after witnessing so many angry divorces among people who once loved each other deeply. It appears love is hard to sustain in the United States since the divorce rate has been near 50% for many years. Love is also harder to come by these days. Even as the divorce rate has stayed steady, the percentage of households headed by a married couple is in decline.

The good news is there is an active Marriage Education movement designed to help couples HAVE A GREAT MARRIAGE. A great deal of information on courses and training that are available can be found at http://www.smartmarriages.com/. Government funding of The Marriage Initiative supports some of these programs, even some faith-based initiatives. Yet, as I noted in the previous post, it is difficult to get couples to take advantage of all that is out there for them. In fact, individuals spend more in this country on match-making than on keeping married matches intact.

I don’t know why it is difficult for couples to choose to avail themselves of marriage support in a timely way, well before difficulties become large problems and love turns into resentment and anger. Groups and people offering courses and training for married couples spend a sizable portion of their funds on ad campaigns just to get people to come to meetings and see what is being offered. These courses do not have full enrollment.

I know that some of the couples I work with and teach have let things go too far. I find that I am often dealing with two intransigent egos rather than a couple interested in having a better relationship. As an educator and professional nudge, in any case I tend to go back to square one and ask, “How do you feel loved?” If there is one basic need in your relationship, it is to feel loved. I have found this is a hard question, so I let them know how I discovered my own answer.

It took me quite a while to realize that I feel loved in the company of someone who will stay with me while we talk, or watch a movie or play a game. By the word stay I mean they simply are not going anywhere and this fills me with love. I know I’m loved when there is this natural, easy, timelessness with my partner. I cannot tell you exactly when this recognizable love first happened during my life. I know it had to be in childhood and it was someone special to me, probably my mother. She was great at staying.

In a great marriage, I want someone to meet my need for love as often as possible. As an active partner in a great marriage, I can meet most, if not all, of my other needs. In past relationships, I did feel loved. What I failed to notice and ask for was the specific need I had to feel love – this staying activity. I got it, but only by accident. It was not an agreed upon aspect of any past relationship and I was not conscious of this need.

It is extremely helpful to learn how you feel love and to let your partner know. For sure, you had it with them at some point. A marriage will thrive if that basic need is being met. If your partner ever withholds it, then you know there is a problem to address and adjustments to be made. Withholding of affection comes way before resentment sets in. Making your need for love known to yourself and your partner will only make it easier to deal with any new hurdles that come your way.

So how do you feel loved? I offer a course on this subject. See www.thecenterformarriage.com for more information.