Soulmate Skills

There’s another way to check for the goodness of the relationship you’re in.  Jim’s 1989 letter to me captures it:  “As I was coming from the dentist’s yesterday, I ran into my favorite school comrade from my master’s program.  I hadn’t seen her since before you and I met.  As we talked, I noticed that I was more open, more loving, much more boldly emotional.  It felt so nice to watch myself enjoying the fruits of yours and my precious relationship; to see the change in me because of you.  Your femaleness is so damned good for me!”  Can’t you just hear the expansiveness in Jim?  That’s what to look for in yourself.  Does this relationship; does my partner open my soul?  Am I expanded by this relationship?

“Does Mariage Make Us Happy?”  That was the question posed on the cover of the October 2010 APA Monitor on Psychology.  The answer:  “It’s not marriage that makes you happy.  It’s happy marriage that makes you happy.”  So spoke Harvard researcher Dr. Daniel Gilbert.  He added, “The single best predictor of human happiness is the quality of social relationships.”  Our work in Anthetic Relationship Therapy has produced a model to guide you in producing a happy relationship:  The High-Voltage Relationship model.  Its goal:  optimality.  Optimal relating involves a two-pronged approach:  skills for psychological growth of each partner and skills for deep expressive love.  We want you to be happy.  We’re here to show you how.

“Our meeting is having a profound effect on us.  We have, it seems, taken a quantum leap into a new way of being.  It was just a sort of orientation session, and all we did was talk about our deepest concerns and then shared our love, but the ripples from that are still spreading through our lives; it was a big bang emotionally speaking.”  I’m quoting Jim’s letter to me of February 6, 1989, one month after our first meeting.  This is on my mind, because of a great article by Rebecca Webber in the September 2010 issue of Psychology Today.  It’s titled “Big Moments” and talks about those Aha! moments; peak experiences in our lives.  As Jim and I read it, we reaffirmed that meeting each other at our doctoral colloquium was a perfect example of one such peak experience.  Webber quotes Jeffrey Kottler, psychologist, on the impact of such moments:  “Their sense of who they were and what their place was in the universe had fundamentally shifted.”  When we read that, we both said, “Yes!”  Like us, when you find your soulmate, it will be a peak experience.  In fact, it will be a quantum leap in your life.

Ugh!  I should not have eaten those spicy shrimp last night.  They made me sick.  It’s not the first time I’ve felt ill in our marriage.  Each time Jim has been true to his promise that he would attend to my slightest qualm.  Even now, as he is bedridden by a severe stroke, he’s there for me.  I rested my head on his shoulder and told him how I felt.  He took my hand in his and held it tightly.  I felt his incredible strength and succorance toward me.  It is a great gift not to have to be self-sufficient in the face of physical challenges.  Soulmates say:  “You are my refuge and my comfort.”

Yesterday, I got upset.  It was a day packed with stresses.  I needed soothing and support.  I knew where to turn.  I talked to my soulmate.  Jim wasn’t feeling well, but I said, “Sweetheart, I’m troubled.”  And I dived in.  I confided in him and asked him for guidance.  He, even though weak from illness, nodded or shook his head to guide me in the things I told him I was considering doing.  Then I asked him, “Is my sharing this with you upsetting to you?”  He shook his head, “No.”  That’s how soulmates are.  When they’re upset, they turn to each other.  It’s what keeps you close.

“Yes, you are indeed in labor, giving birth–and to what you do not know, nor do I–but I will be here to give you whatever help you wish and to hold your dear hand when it gets painful, and encourage you to bear down.  I am here [as with my therapy clients] to help you give birth to yourself.”  Jim wrote that to me only one month into our relationship.  I was in an intense change and growth process.  And that can be painful, as you may know.  It was incredibly comforting to have Jim beside me (psychologically speaking; he was 2000 miles away).  His support and encouragement helped me birth strength and clarity and self-expansion.  And happiness.  Just as Jim was for me, you can be each other’s midwives in your own growth processes.  Just listen, encourage, and stand with the other in their pain, holding them.  It will be a wondrous experience.

On the surface of your relationship, it looks like sweet love.  Beneath the surface, there is more going on.  Much more.  In fact, you are calling each other.  By this we mean evoking feelings, attitudinal shifts, and behaviors you’d never touch if it weren’t for your partner’s influence.  Jim explored this concept in his June 1989 letter:  “We are calling each other to great things–greater depth, greater merging, greater union.  We each call the other to surrender to the love that wants to flow through us and give it its strongest voice possible.  We call each other to inclusive growth–I to include my shamed child, you to include your pain-filled little girl.  And we are each growing into what we are called to be and do.  It will be difficult for a while, but soon we will have the results of these callings as a foundation upon which to deploy and exercise our personal power in the world.”  We wish for you the sweetness of the surface of your love and the growth invoked when you follow your lover’s callings.

Glitches can have a curious benefit to soulmate partners.  A glitch is a strained communication, even an argument, over stuff either partner is having.  You’d think it would harm the relationship.  And, of course, if left unprocessed, it certainly can.  But, Jim and I discovered the gift that a glitch can contain–power.  Jim wrote it this way:  “Our glitchwork gives us, ultimately, more power.  Power to confront a negative feeling in the other.  Power to trust.  Power to soothe our little child parts, as they feel scared by the high voltages of our relationship.”  We were using the skills Jim had developed with his groups.  And they were serving us well.  Skills like asking each other, “What are you feeling?”  and “Can you tell me more about that?”  Try them.  And watch your love and power grow.

It was one month into our long-distance relationship.  Jim was facing a fearful moment; something that, in the past, would have been quite intimidating to him.  He wrote me these words:  “As I faced this, the following thought came to me out of the blue: I am wrapped in the enfolding love of my beloved; there is nothing here to fear.”  Love is like that.  An enfolding blanket that comforts and empowers us.  If you’re soulmate questing, look for someone whose love has that enfolding quality.  Someone who soothes and sources power to you.  If you’re in a soulmate relationship, feel the comfort and courage available to you.  When you face something fearful, you have the antidote.

One of the skills that you’ll need in order to have a High-Voltage Soulmate Relationship is Giving and Receiving Feedback.  That means lovingly telling each other what you see that might be blocking your optimal relating.  For example, “Is your Inner Critic pouncing?”  and “Are you in your scared child?”  By not just expressing love and approval but also offering perspective about what you see going on with each other, you’ll be using your relationship for psychological growth.  It’s a gift you’d never get being single.  Because our partner can see things about us we can’t see.  Or things that only surface in the context of an intimate relationship.   This skill is challenging but, boy, does it reap rich rewards.  You’ll be closer, and you’ll get transformative change.