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With Women, It’s About Frequency, Not Magnitude

The party was well begun. We’d taken over our favorite restaurant, Casa Rasta, to celebrate JoAnn’s 60th birthday. Friends had flown in from Connecticut and Florida. Her son Jonah’s band, Working Breed, was playing her favorite Lyle Lovett song as the cakes (lovingly and artfully made by JoAnn’s favorite chef, the delightful, 80-year-old Suzie Treon) were being served.

JoAnn Brickley

JoAnn had already declared this was the best night of her life; nothing else came close. I was two Tecati’s in when our friend/accountant, Tommy, leaned over and said, “You know you’re getting major points for this.”

I smiled, probably sighed, and said, “Yes, I know. But all points expire in 24 hours.”

Sure enough, the next morning, when moving the fountain I’ve been told never to move (I was hanging a beautiful painting Jonah bought her), I dumped about a quart of (clean) water onto the (new) carpet. And there it was, just 12 hours after the party – the best night of her life – and I was back in the doghouse.

Because that’s the way it is with women, and you can either use that to your mutual advantage, or whine that it should be otherwise. What I’m about to share is one of the simplest and most valuable relationship lessons I have ever learned – both from a love and a financial standpoint.

For women, it’s all about frequency, not magnitude. If I bought JoAnn a car, she’d be ecstatic with me … for about a day, maybe two. I’d get virtually the same reaction (excluding the momentary elation which is always short-lived) by leaving her a little love note or writing her a poem, or calling her out of the blue just to let her know how much I adore her. So, since I can’t afford to buy her a car every week (and we only have a one-car garage), I make sure I do something every week, typically every day, typically several times a day, to make sure she knows she is appreciated, loved and adored.

The afternoon after the party, JoAnn asked what happened to the leftover cakes Suzie made. I’d made a conscious decision to donate them to the Casa Rasta staff, because a) we don’t do well with a lot of wheat or sugar and b) if it’s in the house, I’m eating it. JoAnn had been looking forward to having at least one more piece of her very special cakes, and was disappointed. I started hearing on a regular basis a half playful, half complaining mantra of “You gave away my birthday cakes and I wanted another piece!”

This started to prey on my conscious, but I kept letting it slide. But, to my credit, the nickel dropped and I stepped up. I said, “Do you realize you have turned your memory of the best night of your life into the night my partner robbed me of cake?” To her credit, she got it immediately and said, “You are so right. I’ll stop,” and that was the last time I heard about the Great Cake Robbery. We reminded ourselves that gratitude is a practice and requires some diligence to overcome the thrown/default way of being, i.e., complaining.

This morning as she was ready to get out of bed, I started to wonder, as frankly I often do, is she going to snuggle with me for a minute or just get going. I’m always hoping for the former; historically it’s about 50/50. As she began to cuddle with me and I felt a warm feeling all over my body, I started to wonder if frequency isn’t just as important for men.

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Dualistic Thinking Limits Us

Dualistic ThinkingRecently a friend of mine said that his concern, “… way out in front of global warming, is job growth. Once people have jobs and income, then we can start working on issues like climate change.”

This kind of dualistic thinking gets us in trouble with our country, our environment, our relationships, our health, and in every area of our lives.

The truth is it’s almost never either/or.

Examples of such faulty thinking include:

  • I have to work and/or travel a lot so I can’t eat well.
  • I can’t take care of our children and take care my partner.
  • I’m in a huge rush, so I don’t have time to say what I need to say in a civil manner.
  • I’m too busy to exercise.
  • I’m too busy to meditate and be reflective.
  • I’m too busy to take the time to do my work conscientiously.
  • Feelings are more important than thoughts.
  • Intelligence is more important than intuition.

The truth is that if you rush your communication with your partner, if you don’t take the time to say “I love you,” you are going to have less connection, less energy, and less productivity. I know that by taking care of my partner first, we’ll both do a better job of taking care of our children. It’s like they say on the airplanes, “Put your own oxygen mask on first, so that you can better assist your child.”

The truth is that if you don’t take the time to exercise and eat well, you’ll have poorer health, less energy and less productivity.

Ghandi, whose routine included meditating an hour a day, famously said, “I have so much to accomplish today, I need to meditate for two hours instead of one.”

I’m a capitalist and a socialist, and I see no contradiction there. I believe in free markets and in ensuring that every citizen has basic needs like health care. It doesn’t have to be either/or.

Dualistic thinking is killing us. The dualistic media (virtually all media) wants to create confrontation on every front. It’s what sells. It what lets us tap into our righteous ego titillation – the juicy negative pleasure we get from being pissed off. We need to find a healthier way to get that pleasure. We need to be inclusive, not exclusive. We need to come from abundance, not scarcity.

I happen to think that both the planet’s and humanity’s survival depend on it – at least in the long run, if not in our lifetimes.

God bless us all.

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

– Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

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Transformation

A baby caterpillar doesn’t transform

into an adult caterpillar,

it simply grows into one

with all its baby-caterpillar characteristics –

shape, color, propensity to travel by land.

 

At some point it spins a cocoon.

A metaphor for meditation and stillness,

I envision the caterpillar going inside,

feeling its feelings,

asking for guidance to see all sides of itself,

pondering its place in the universe,

meditating on its highest purpose.

 

It declares the willingness to shed its former self,

all its thoughts and beliefs,

all things to which it has so desperately clung,

for the possibility of what it might become.

-BW

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Gwyneth Paltrow, Conscious Uncoupling, Conscious Coupling

With all the praise going to Gwyneth Paltrow’s conscious uncoupling shouldn’t the real focus be on conscious coupling?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of conscious uncoupling when both parties responsibly choose to end a relationship.

But what resources do we have for conscious coupling? There are some good books available, such as “Getting the Love You Want” and “Making Marriage Simple.”  (I’m also fond of “New Earth Relationships,” but that may seem too self-serving.)

I’m also a big fan of couple’s therapy/marriage counseling. The problem is that most couples won’t explore this option until there is so much baggage, the chance of success is 20% for very responsible partners, and much less for everyone else.

The whole motivation for LovePong is to have an easy, gentle, loving way to couple consciously before you acquire the baggage. We all start out with our own baggage, and, unless we’re in the process of unloading, we keep taking on more.

baggageEvery partner needs to decide if you’re going to be in the business of packing or unpacking. If the former, you’re headed for the falls. If the latter, you need a regular practice. It’s not going to happen by itself.

That’s what LovePong is for. The premium version has the Conscious Couples Course. The idea behind this course is not only to support the relationship, but to support each partner in the relationship in unloading his/her own baggage – leveraging the loving support of the other.

While I have a personal attachment to your using LovePong, I have a bigger commitment to relationships. Use our tool, or use someone else’s. But don’t just wait and hope it will work out. If things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. Do something before it’s too late.

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Let Me See Beneath Your Beautiful

This is my favorite song and video from last year. Beyond the stunning production and incredible performances, what I love most about it is the message. “Would you let me see beneath your beautiful.”

In Pathwork, we talk a lot about the defenses we put up that keep us from our people, and, more importantly, ourselves. To the extent we can embrace our “creatureliness,” our human imperfection, we can allow that which is divine in us to presence itself.

This song says it as beautifully as one could hope for.

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Depression is the Teacher; Sadness is the Healer

Pathwork teaches the profound distinction between sadness and depression. (For this essay, we exclude clinical depression, which is another animal.)

Depression is a self-generated, stuck state. In depression there is no movement.

Depression includes the attitude, “this shouldn’t be,” which is incompatible with flow, with life. It’s a feeling that we’re alone in the universe. A feeling that there’s absolutely nothing I can do. It includes the notion that there’s something outside of me that can be blamed for my depression.

However, depression can be a powerful teacher. It alerts us to tap into our sadness, so that healing can begin.

Nothing external can harm our spirit. People who have enlightened us on this notion include Viktor Frankl, whose spirit was not adulterated by the holocaust, and Nelson Mandela, who endured unconscionable imprisonment for 27 years without losing an iota of grace.

Unlike depression, sadness is a highly enabling state. Sadness in the present is a trigger of childhood wounding. We can’t always name the wounds, because at an early age we didn’t have sufficient ways of processing the experience. Rather than vivid memories, what are stored are the feelings.

There are many painful realities in our current life to stir our sadness. When we get hurt, misunderstood, rejected, dismissed, when our longings are unfulfilled, when we become present to the painful conditions in the world,sometimes a current sadness triggers our “ancient” pain and we grieve both at the same time.

Healing comes from feeling the sadness and from re-experiencing childhood wounds.  While we can’t necessarily recreate the childhood events, we can recreate the feelings. Rather than resist the sadness, we can drop into it. We can feel those feelings. We can map our current feelings to those childhood feelings. We can alternate from just totally immersing ourselves like a child, crying, screaming, punching pillows, kicking our feet, rocking, etc. to engaging our adult conscious ego, who can soothe our child. Our adult can help our child distinguish that what’s happening in the present is just a trigger. Our adult can remind us that we are whole and complete and ultimately in control – that our true self will still be there when everything else goes. And that by opening ourselves to sadness and vulnerability, we are ultimately making ourselves more available to life.

Oh break my heart,

Oh break my heart,
Oh break my heart again…
So I can love even more.
—Rumi (adapted)

Depression is unidentified sadness gone underground. Said another way, it’s an unhealthy attitude to the way we respond to sadness.

There is such a warm, wonderful richness in feeling our sadness. And there is catharsis. Not only do we wind up feeling better in the present, we also begin to heal our child consciousness. That child sadness may never fully go away; but, if we continue to re-experience it in healthy ways, its power over us diminishes over time.

When the heart weeps for what it has lost,
the spirit rejoices for what it has found.
—Sufi Proverb

(Adapted with liberties from a lecture by Sue Van Doeren on October 3, 2013.)

 

The Prisoner

In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He was allowed one visitor a year for 30 minutes. He could write and receive one letter every six months. But Robben Island became the crucible which transformed him. Through his intelligence, charm and dignified defiance, Mandela eventually bent even the most brutal prison officials to his will, assumed leadership over his jailed comrades and became the master of his own prison. He emerged from it the mature leader who would fight and win the great political battles that would create a new democratic South Africa.  (source)

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What’s So Good about Death?

Death is the last taboo in our American culture, and spiritually, it’s killing us.

“The gift of death,” according to Stephen Jenkinson (a.k.a., the Griefwalker), “is life.” If there were no death, life would not be precious in its ephemerality. We would just take every day for granted.

Except, in our culture, that’s exactly what we do.  We do everything possible to stave off and deny the eventuality of death. And it’s costing us our lives.

I’ve begun to use this in my relationship coaching and couples workshops to help create a sense of urgency. What if you were going to die on September 30th, 2013? This next, would be your last Thanksgiving, your last Christmas, your last Valentine’s Day. It would be the last time you’d see the crocus pop up in spring. I mean, wouldn’t you want to just spread out a blanket and watch that crocus for hours? Would you make sure you showered your children with love? Would you forgive your partner his/her past transgressions and desperately find a way to, one final time, really connect on a level you’d always dreamed might be possible?

You and I, I tell my clients, and now I’m telling you, have squandered our lives.  We’ve spent most of it feeling like we have forever. We don’t. And we’ve squandered our relationships (at home, at work, with work). We dole out forgiveness and affection like there is a scarcity of it, and it needs to last forever. What a shameful waste!

The truth is, not everyone reading this even has until September 30th, 2013. “Not me!” you say.  “I’ll still be here!” To which, I say, so what. You are still going to die, sooner or later, and probably sooner than you think.  But are you really living now? What are you doing with your short time here on earth? What actions are you taking to make every moment count? When are you going to heal your relationships and your relationship with yourself?

What are you waiting for?  Death is around the corner. Embrace it and rejoice!

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Acts of Kindness Images – Have Kleenex Handy

Many of these 24 inspirational acts of kindness moved me to tears. Well worth your time.

Click here to view

I was going to have it be a quick read (just look at the pictures), which you can do. But the comments drew me to watch the 5-minute video of a dying man whose last wish was to meet the Colt’s quarterback, Andrew Luck.  Three tissues later, I’m writing this post to you.

Enjoy!

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Bend It Until It Breaks

There has been a lot of breakup in our extended circle lately, and each one seems to be fitting the same pattern. The “giver” in the relationship keeps giving, and giving in, without standing up for, or taking care of, him or herself. Finally, he snaps, and ends the relationship.  The thing bent until it broke. And everyone rallies around the so-called giver saying, “You did everything you could.”

I don’t think so.

What you did was become a “victim” of your dance with your partner, and in your intended generosity, you sold out your partner by allowing your resentment to build until you burst. One might also say you belittled your partner, by treating her (or him) with kid gloves – like she just wasn’t big enough to handle your being authentic.

And maybe she wasn’t.

heart-breakBut isn’t that how we grow?  If you break (and properly set) a bone, it grows back stronger. Five years ago, JoAnn and I ended our four-year relationship. We made a clean break. Then we healed it, and today we are much stronger than we ever were in our first four years.

I had to learn to stand up to JoAnn’s rage. To be both a heat sink to help absorb it – so that she could discharge it – but to also know when to say enough, so that I didn’t become consumed by it. My friends all agreed I should end it. But they didn’t know what a precious jewel I had, and I was a stand for what was possible for us, and a stand that JoAnn was so much more than her frailties.

When we are frail or acting out of our lower selves, we can convince the people around us that we’re just not up to being adult, strong, passionate, resilient human beings. In my case, I had to stop being a victim and stop treating JoAnn like she was some fragile, breakable thing. This is a woman who survived child abuse, spousal abuse, who told an armed robber, “Go ahead and shoot me, you’re not getting my money,” who has built successful businesses, and who spends most of her time healing the physically and psychologically challenged.

I wasn’t going to be the one to help keep her small anymore. That’s not what partner’s do. And thank God, because among her many gifts, she’s also the most amazing partner – beyond what I’d ever dreamed of.

If you’re the giver in your relationship, and you notice you’re being resentful, stop it. Stop ripping your partner off. Treat him like an adult. Confront what you’re not confronting. Don’t be afraid to bend it until it breaks. Take it from me, straight from the heart, it might be the best thing that ever happens to you.

 


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