What's in a Relationship?

Previously I've written about how a relationship is essentially made up of the way you feel and interact, however I have yet to say much about the complexities of relationships and what to look for and look out for. A lot of that comes down to experience and perspective, which I didn't really have enough of until recently, and hopefully this will shed some light on some of the biggest questions people have about relationships.

Relationship Ethics

Relationships are very complicated, make no mistake. Every person and situation is unique and the only way to figure things out is ultimately to throw yourself face first into the fray. However, when it comes to love relationships, people are generally looking for more. They want a relationship, something that means something, something that signifies that they are important to you. For a long time I've resisted that paradigm because I didn't want to sacrifice flexibility, but now I've begun to appreciate the value of having "a relationship" (or relationships) and what that means to people much more.

However, my idea of what "a relationship" is is still very different from what most people think of. Whenever I decide I want to have a serious relationship with someone, I commit myself to following some basic ethical rules-of-thumb that I've come up with from my own experience, as follows:

1. I won't give up on the person, even if they give up on themselves (perhaps especially). That means I won't leave someone for stupid petty reasons, and that I'll always do my best for them even if I don't necessarily know what to do. It doesn't, however, mean that I won't lose interest. I have had cases where I ultimately decided that we weren't compatible and ended a relationship on more or less neutral terms, but I do my best to avoid ending relationships on bad terms, and especially abandoning them.

2. I will not under any circumstance act out of revenge. This doesn't mean that I don't get into fights, or that they aren't shitty, but if something makes me angry I'll come out and say it up front rather than being a little shit and trying to do asshole things to 'get back at them' while pretending that nothing is wrong. That's just childish and solves nothing, and creates increasing resentment that will ultimately destroy the relationship.

3. I will never purposefully try to use a person's feelings as a weapon against them. That means I will never try to make a person that I relate to jealous, or to use their jealousy to get what I want if they happen to feel that way anyway. Jealousy is a pretty disgusting emotion, and can never form the basis of a healthy relationship. People who use jealousy to manipulate others are pretty disgusting, too, in my opinion.

The Next Level

A more difficult question is when to take a relationship "to the next level", which of course means sex. Normally my answer to this is "whenever it feels right", by which I mean when the relationship is otherwise sound emotionally, and when we are close enough that I feel like it (and it's typically mutual at that point). The first time with any person is usually very stressful, but after that it typically takes a lot of the stress out of a relationship. The girl I've been with the longest would say something like "sex is the most intimate act of connection between two people", although I'm not sure that I agree with that completely (I like post-sex cuddles just as much).

There are other cases where my usual answer does not suffice, however. Sometimes there's just too much sexual frustration, and it just needs to go somewhere, and sometimes a person might be too afraid to accept or believe in love right away. In those cases I might allow sex to come first, but it is always a judgement call (and a very difficult one at that). In those cases I try to take extra care to ensure that I can deal with the person's feelings effectively, so that eventually they can relax enough to feel love and enjoy everything more. "Eventually" is usually not very long, either, since my methods (when I'm not emotionally buggered myself) have proven very effective.

Types and Compatibility

Knowing what you want or don't want in a person is very important for making a relationship work. At one time I avoided making such a distinction because I didn't want to be a judgmental asshole, and to a point that's valid, but at the same time it's hard to be excited about someone who you don't really care for, and I'd prefer to be emotionally honest.

To me, personality is easily the most important factor. If you don't like a person's personality in general, if it doesn't attract you, and if you can't interact with them in a fun, casual way, then you're unlikely to get very far with them. Keep in mind that a person's emotional problems may obscure what they are really like, but you can usually catch at least glimpses if you pay close attention. There are also types that I like and get along with even though they aren't necessarily the most compatible, and some that I just can't bring myself to like. As long as you know where others stand and don't expect too much of them, things tend to work out well enough.

It is also important to know what you don't like. If someone has some trait that seriously turns you off, it will be hard to take them seriously emotionally, which usually does not lead anywhere good. For example, my 'main' type is probably intelligent, highly literate girls with an absurd sense of humor and preferably real interests. I also like shy, sweet types, although my compatibility varies. On the other hand, I absolutely do not like girls who are dumb, religious or excessively shallow. There are some exceptions, and it is more a spectrum than black-and-white, but if a girl has one of those traits it significantly hurts her chances of ever being very important to me.

Passive-Aggression

The ugliest and most hazardous thing to look out for in any relationship is passive-aggression. This can be difficult to spot, but most commonly it shows up as things like fishing for compliments or attention, whining or unreasonable expectations. The worst thing about passive-aggression is that the person who is being passive-aggressive will almost always leave themselves some room for plausible deniability so that they can weasel their way out of taking any responsibility for their actions. They try to manipulate you into doing something, and if you do it then they shit on you and take you for granted, if you don't they may try to guilt trip or bribe you, and if you try to pin responsibility on them then they try to flip things on you. Passive-aggression is often, but not always, a huge pain in the ass to deal with. It takes delicacy and a firm hand to keep them from taking control of the situation and to discourage their manipulative behavior. There is also no guarantee that you will succeed either, because they can always find someone else who will enable their behavior, and they may even use this against you as an additional form of manipulation.

Dante's Inferno

In my last article I wrote about the levels of emotional stupidity through which all of us must pass to reach freedom. Today I want to write about my actual experiences with this and some things I've learned from them. This is probably some of the most difficult stuff I've written, bringing together everything I've learned and done so far. We all participate in creating our own experience, and for most of us that experience is a nightmare, a prison made of fictions of who we think we are. If we know how, we can also create a dream of truth, a work of art. It's a battle between heaven and hell, waged constantly in your heart and mind. If you want to know heaven, first you must fight through hell. I hope to show how the battle is waged.

Update: added some things to the weapons list.

Symbols, Agreements & Belief

We all live in fear. Fear of living in a different universe from the one we actually live in. In the universe we live in, there is only perfection, harmony. Everything is art, everything is music. Everything, even pain, suffering, loneliness, war and death. There are no mistakes, no accidents and no coincidences. The world, just as it is, is heaven. Each of us is an artist and prophet in the unfolding masterpiece. Life is your paint and canvas. Symbols, agreements and beliefs are the tools and brushes with which you choose your colors and place your strokes.

We learn to use these tools from our parents, teachers, peers and life experiences. You can make sense of what I've written because of these learnings, because you agree that the words have a certain meaning. We each learn countless words, symbols and concepts and agree to give them certain meanings that we use to understand the world. Some of these refer to real things in our experience, while some of them refer to ideas that exist only in our minds.

As tools, we can use them to create science, art and even magic, however symbols are not the pure experiences they refer to. "Sitting in a chair" is not the experience of actually sitting in a chair, and "art" is not actually the experience of viewing a particular painting. When we believe that symbols are truth, we give them a life of their own, the tools become the user. Our accumulated knowledge becomes a wall of fog and noise, blinding and deafening us to the truth of ourselves and everything in our experience.

The Road to Hell

The path to hell starts with a single step. That step is judgment. We learn to judge from a young age. Naturally, children tend to explore and create, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. However, we learn from others; our parents, teachers, peers, pastors, etc, that when we do what they want, when we are the person they want us to be, we get rewarded with attention, praise, affection and things. When we don't, we're punished with rejection, anger, ridicule and even physical violence. We seek their attention to see ourselves, to learn who we are and what we can do in life, but out of fear of punishment and fear of not being rewarded, we accept their judgments and deny the very thing we sought.

Fear begets fear and judgment begets judgment. We learn to judge everything and everyone, ourselves most of all. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, fat and thin, smart and dumb, perfect and imperfect, valuable and worthless. Our thoughts and words become weapons which we use against ourselves and others. We judge out of fear, in order to try to control things so our fears don't come true. Judgments are always one-sided agreements, and in our effort to control we end up doing the same thing over and over, either giving and serving while getting little back, or trying to take and manipulate while giving little to nothing in return. The imbalance generally continues until the person either snaps from giving too much, or others snap from being imposed upon; there is no peace in hell.

The War of the Heart

The path to heaven also begins with a single step. That step is awareness. By becoming aware of when you are judging, you can decide to take a different step. This is where the real fight begins, and I suggest taking people you care about as opponents.

Leashes & Walls

The first thing I usually notice that tells me I'm in for a fight is what I call 'leashing'. Leashing is one-sided agreements in action. Either the other person will try to control or manipulate you in some way, or they may try to hand you control (ie throwing themselves at you), or you may find yourself putting yourself at their feet. In the first two cases, I politely decline to either accept control or being controlled. In the last case, I fight to break the leash.

When you follow any leash, at its end you find what I call a 'wall'. I experience them like a solid barrier, and they're like a felt experience of the denial of self and the unwillingness to experience the pain of that denial. I used to smash into them quite painfully, but now when I realize I've hit a wall, I stop and stare it down. I'll look it over, look for a way through or around, chisel at it, smash it, punch it, kick it, ram it, and fight through it until it breaks. Ultimately, getting through the wall means acknowledgment; a full recognition of the judgments which you accepted into your identity. In my experience, the usual way to get to that point either involves yelling or crying, or both. When it comes to heart issues, it seems to be inevitable, although some people seem to change more easily than others, and it probably depends on a lot of things.

Weapons of War

The fight out of hell is extremely difficult, and for most people (myself included) might be insurmountable without tools to aid in the fight. Here I present a list of agreements which have helped me to survive the battles thus far and to see truth where I might otherwise have been blind.

Focus Your Awareness: A natural consequence of judgment is that our awareness is constricted and fixated on a few limited things at the exclusion of everything else. You stop seeing, you stop hearing, you may literally close your eyes or be unable to look at what's going on. Simply by opening your eyes and looking at what's in front of you can make a big difference on whether you're able to fight or not. It may help to start by focusing your attention on random nonthreatening things to help you climb out of your head. This also means paying attention to your own feelings. They can tell you a lot about what's out of whack in your life. In Zen, they say that the path is always right in front of you. Can you hear the birds chirping? Can you see the trees sway in the wind? There is the path.

Put Your Heart on the Line: Putting your heart on the line means saying and doing exactly what you mean to, or at least refraining from saying or doing what you don't mean. This also means being honest with and about your feelings, even when you feel like shit. When things get tough, you may very well have to slow down a whole lot in order to be able to do this well.

Start With What's Most Important: Figure out what the most important thing to do is, and when you're sure of it, do that. Then figure out what the next most important thing is, and when you're sure of it, do that. Repeat until finished. The hard part is being sure. A trusted second (or third) opinion can be valuable here.

Do Your Best: You will screw up. You will blow up, you will crash, and you will have days where only the dog can understand you. It's an absolutely necessary part of all this. All you can really do is do your best, which will vary depending on how you're feeling, your health and your zodiac sign. If you've done your best, you have nothing to blame yourself for.

Take Nothing Personally: Everyone lives in their own experiential world. If someone else judges, ridicules, blames or tries to fight you, that comes from their own fear and pain, it has nothing to do with you. Let responsibility fall where it belongs; take responsibility for your own emotions, and to others the same. I can also point you to the beautiful Litany of Gendlin.

Question Every Assumption: Curiosity and doubt are some of the most powerful tools in my arsenal. If you don't ask questions, you won't find answers. Ask good questions long enough, and good answers find you. It's doubt of the self that produces judgment, and likewise it's doubt of your judgments that sets you free of them.

Know Nothing: Give yourself permission not to know. It's perfectly ok to say "I don't know". This is actually probably a large part of how I keep my sanity these days; I answer most questions with "Hell if I know!". Also give yourself permission to not know who you are, or who other people are either. Existing in this universe means continuous change and evolution. Nothing is as solid or unchanging as we experience our concepts to be.

No Merit: There is no good or bad, right or wrong. Everything is perfect, and nothing you do gains you (or loses you) any points towards everything. You do what you do because you want to, simple.

Throw Paint: When all else fails, throw paint. Do whatever, say whatever. Usually works out ok, as long as you've got nothing else.

The Stick: This is one of my favorite koans, and although it's rather subtle it speaks for itself:

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no relaization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."
Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.
"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

Dying to Live

Probably the biggest disappointment I've ever had was finding out just how difficult, painful and tedious it is to fight your way out of hell. Pain, misery, fear, anger, hatred, confusion, headaches, rinse, repeat. There's occasional glimpses of love and freedom, but just enough to frustrate you near to death. Most days it's like crawling in a barrel and rolling down a rocky hill, and feels about like dying pretty much every time. Up and down, back and forth, and I think I've forgotten what sleep is. I think the only reason I'm still able to fight is because I started seeing other people fight right along with me. It's the first time I can recall that I've gotten back exactly what I've given.

References

The Toltec Wisdom Series (1, 2, 3)
Positioning Opens Up the Lines of Sight for the Whole Situation and Very Brief Psychotherapy by James P. Gustafson
Zen Meditation in Therapy by C. Alexander Simpkins & Annelen M. Simpkins
Trances People Live by Stephen Wollinsky

"Relationship" is a Verb!

Things have been pretty rough recently, but I'm learning a great deal and I hope to write some about it now that I have some space to think. I'm always looking for depth, and I haven't been disappointed to find it (although disappointed for other reasons, perhaps). My last few articles have been basically about relationships (sexual, mainly), but I haven't really said much about what makes a good one, or how a relationship is even defined.

Nominalizations, Groupthink and Possession

The first thing I can say about the word "relationship" is that it's a 'nominalization', that is a verb which has been converted into a noun, and thus objectified. There are many words like this; "relationship" (to relate), "government" (to govern), marriage (to marry), etc.

Some of these words also objectify a group as an independent thing that can think, decide, etc, which is not true. Every group is made of individuals each having individual thoughts, making individual actions, and so on. When the capacity to think is attributed to a group, bad things happen. Words like "couple" and "government" exemplify this. Even the simple word "we" can lead you down a slippery slope.

Finally, when it comes to relationships, there is a tendency to cling to the illusion of posession. "My" boyfriend/girlfriend, "my" husband/wife, "my" country, etc. In every case, some exclusion is claimed in general by external coercion. You serve one country, one significant other, one God, etc. to the exclusion of all others, and to do otherwise is a betrayal. It is by this means that everyone is converted into a slave, to their job, their spouse, their country and so on. This is based on a fundamental distrust, and creates a lot of resentment which is ignored until things start to break at the seams.

To Relate

To understand how a 'relationship' works and what makes it good or bad, you have to start with what actually makes it up; actions. The words you say, the gestures, touches, the jokes, laughing, provocations, teasing, activities you do together, and so on. What each person does and how they do it speaks volumes for the nature of a relationship. I should note that 'to love' is also a verb, although it can be strange to consider feelings as actions.

The most important thing is what it is you're actually interacting with. Most people are unable to see the person/people in front of them. All they can see is their own hopes and fears, or else the hopes and fears of others. Unable to see both at the same time, they can't make an intelligent compromise between their own wants and those of others, so they try to manipulate the situation to get what they want.

To Consider

The theme of "being considerate" has come up a lot for me lately, but it hadn't really occurred to me just what it means to consider. To consider what? Well obviously, the other person's feelings. Stereotypically this is something women complain about to men, although the reverse also happens.

To be considerate is a very difficult thing to do no matter what's between your legs. Not only do you need to be able to consider the other person's feelings and context, but you also have to respect your own and strike a fair deal between them. Even if you're willing to do that, figuring out a person's feelings and what's important in their context is not a simple task. That's the kind of stuff psychologists have been arguing about for more than 100 years now. It occurs to me that it's not really so complicated, it's just that they try to stick really complicated names on things that are absurdly ordinary. This is also where the depth is at, and what gives relationships the potential to be great.

To Present

If consideration is the depth, to be present is what brings the depths to the surface. What is it that you present when you're "being present"? No less than your awareness, attention and influence (which are also nominalizations; to be aware, to attend, and to influence). Usually these are preoccupied in thoughts; hopes, fears etc. There is an entire class of meditations (focus meditations) which focuses (facepalm here) on developing presence. This requires a practice of developing flexibility and depth of focus, shifting from the big picture to various levels of details, and expanding your senses as far as they will go, then extending your influence through your awareness. Usually people do the opposite: they look at reality, then at their desires, and try to manipulate reality to get their desires, only looking later to see if they got what they wanted.

Deeper Meaning

This has been the topic of a few arguments I've had recently. How do you know what relationships are worth pursuing? Is it better to have just one romantic relationship or many? Where do you draw the line?

I think there are really two important points here. The first is that, in order for a relationship to be functional, it must be fair. If one partner gives everything and gets nothing back, then it isn't much of a relationship. This doesn't just mean in terms of physical things or favors, either, but also in terms of being considerate and emotional closeness. This requires that both people can see and work out a fair deal, otherwise you get dependency or co-dependency, or one person or both are getting used.

The second is that it is best to maintain only relationships which are truly awesome and which you would keep up with forever. Meaningless self-gratification is an avoidant behavior, a symptom of some imbalance in your life. Time spent satiating that instead of dealing with it is time wasted. It takes time to accumulate worthwhile relationships, but always time well spent. I think it's worth mentioning that there ought to be at least some common interests in such a relationship, although a perfect clone of yourself is obviously not reasonable to expect.

Common Stupidity

As with everything else, there's plenty of common 'wisdom' regarding relationships which is dead wrong and yet it's how people really treat each other more often than not. This is the kind of sickness you should watch out for and either avoid or smash when you run across it. I'm not gonna plagiarize, so you can read it here.