Soulmate Skills

“I have this sense that seeing you again, looking each other in the eye, and your holding my face in your hands would be enough to bring me to orgasm (no genital touching necessary).”  I wrote that to Jim one month after our meeting.  I’m sharing it today, because I hope it will encourage you about deepening your sexual connection.  It’s not about being a good technician; it’s about being a good connector.  I continued, “That’s how deeply you touch me.  And that’s a tribute to you and the quality with which you relate to me that I could be moved so deeply by the emotional/spiritual interchange with you.”  So, if you’d like this too, start by telling each other what a treasure they are to you.  Be specific.  Let your heart gush words of valuing of the other.  It will lead to a profound connection in your heart, your soul, and your body.

“We have so little time together.  It’s hard to connect.”  That’s the challenge that so often faces the couples we see in our counseling practice.  Here’s what we say:  You can take those few minutes you do have and turn them into a deep connection that sustains you all day.  It takes two steps:  One, avoid using that time to talk about items external to your relationship, such as the news, the neighbors, the chores.  Two, use that time to talk about what you mean to each other.  Jim and I had to put this to the test during the first six months of our relationship.  It was 1989; we were 2,000 miles apart–no internet; just phone and letters.  So, we would dive in to talking about what we meant to each other.  For example, Jim wrote, “When I look in my post office box and there is a letter from you, I begin to feel a glow that starts in my chest and spreads throughout my body, and I sit out on the ledge in front of the library near the steps and read it, and the whole world of Berkeley falls away, and I am intensely with you for a few minutes as you speak to me through your letter, and I have a vivid sense of your sweet presence.”  You can use Jim’s words as a guide.  Say to your partner, “When I look at you (getting the kids ready, waking up beside me, feeding the dog), I begin to feel (warm, loving, proud, in awe), and I fall in love with you all over again.”  Your partner will feel as I felt when I read Jim’s words:  warmed, loved, cherished.  Those few minutes shared with him, and I walked on a cloud.  You will too.

“Numnutz!” “Old Fart!” If you’ve gotten into a pattern of calling your partner such names, that’s a clue that you’ve got some unprocessed anger toward your partner.  What’s more, it’s turned into an attitude of disrespect.  That’s not funny.  It’s corrosive.  We’re not going to tell you to just stop it.  That’s not enough.  You need to analyze the anger that’s driving it.  For example, “Have I been silencing my voice about my needs?”  “Have I translated my anger into neutral requests of my partner?” There are others, of course, but this will get you started.  We want you to be free of anger, at peace, and happy.  Most important, we want you to have closeness.  So, today, start with No Name Calling!

Odd as it may sound, to have closeness in your relationship, you have to be a researcher.  Now, don’t panic.  You won’t need to know statistics, you’ll just need a few simple skills.  You’ll need to employ these skills whenever your partner gives you feedback.  For example, Jim told me, “You seem touchy.”  Now, my impulse was to automatically deny it with, “No, I’m not touchy!”  But, Jim taught me to say, “Can you tell me more about that?”  And even to say, “Can you say what I’m doing that leads you to say that?”  Once you learn to respond to feedback in this way, you’ll reap three dividends:  One, you’ll have a chance to learn about yourself.  Two, you’ll have the opportunity for elements in your personality to emerge and be accepted by you.  And three, using Anthetic releasing statements (see our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic), you’ll get free from some self-condemnation and constrictedness.  Oh, and as an added dividend, you’ll get closeness with your partner.  So, be a Researcher!

Want more closeness?  There’s one word that will go a long way to producing it.  That word is–”Yes!”  In our work with couples and in our own relationship, we’ve discovered that saying “Yes” to easy-to-do requests is an important ingredient in closeness.  Why?  Because you’ll not only be making your partner happy by fulfilling their desires, you’ll be living from a caring part of yourself.  That’s a part who can empathize with your partner’s pleasure.  Now, to say Yes, you’re going to need to be free.  That is, free from psychological blocks such as self-centeredness and hard-heartedness.  In short, you’ll need to get free from your Inner Critic’s condemnation of your surrendering to love.*  So, today, listen to your partner’s requests.  Then, try saying, “Yes!”  Closeness will be your reward.

*For more on getting free from blocks to closeness, read Disarming Your Inner Critic, by James Elliott & Kathryn Elliott, available here on our sidebar and at amazon.com.

There’s no getting around it.  Conflict is going to happen in your relationship.  So, how do you cope?  Low-Voltage partners usually rely on one of three options: fighting, submitting, or distancing.  They have to avoid closeness, because they lack skills.  If they get too close, they often end up in a bitter argument.  That’s a combat relationship–one where verbal attacks have become accepted as normal.  High-Voltage couples, on the other hand, have learned skills for successfully resolving conflict.  That creates a safe haven.  Safe enough to talk about anything, especially feelings.  How can you tell if you’re creating a safe haven?  You’ll enjoy emotional closeness, soft-heartedness, and love.  It all comes down to a basic values choice: Do you choose a safe haven or a combat zone?

Wow! So your first date went well.  Now what?  Jim and I want to share with you what we did.  We’re considering our ten-day doctoral meeting our “first date.”  What we did was talk about it–to each other.  At length.  Listen to Jim’s letter written about the night we parted:  “As I lay in bed, all kinds of images came to me–your dear face, your empowering words, the song you sang.”  (He’s bringing up the images of our meeting that stayed with him. You can do that too.)  Then he told me the impact on him our meeting had produced:  “I was driving to go shopping for groceries, and a car cut in front of me.  I was about to get angry when I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and I was now speaking from some deep place in me, and the episode of the other driver now seemed quite insignificant; just a little ripple way up there , not very important at all, and I could love the driver of the other car.  So I now felt that serenity that I hadn’t known at all that I was lacking.  And you had evoked that in me.”  Here, Jim puts into words how I had affected him; even changed him.  You can do that too.  So, if you’re wondering what to do after the first date, we say, talk about it.  Review with each other the scenes left in your mind.  Most important, put into words how that experience has impacted you.  Do these things, and you’ll be creating your high-voltage soulmate relationship.

Endings can be hard.  Even painful.  Whether it’s the last day of vacation or of college; of a career or of a life together, when you’ve loved the experience, it can be heart-wrenching for it to end.  But the way Jim and I spent the last day of our meeting experience at Asilomar may be helpful for you when you face those inevitable ends of things:  That meeting had it all–everything we each loved–intellectual sharing, collegiality with warm people, the beauty of the ocean, cozy fires, great food.  But most important, it had our meeting; our Finding each other.  That final night was a celebration of all this.  Jim and I and our fellow learners and faculty gathered in our meeting room.  We sat in chairs or on the floor in front of a warm fire crackling in the fireplace.  We left the room dark, only the firelight reflecting on our faces.  We talked about our impressions of each other and of what the experience had meant to each of us.  And then we began to sing!  Song after song.  Songs of joy.  Songs of blessing.  I was on a cloud.  Here are the elements you can use:  Talk directly to each other of your impressions.  Savor what the experience has meant to you; speak of it to each other.  Sing to each other.  Bless each other.  You will make that ending wonderful.

It’s true.  Three little words can go a long way to saving your relationship.  They are:  “That’s my stuff!”  Which means, “That thing I just said was my emotional baggage.  I take responsibility for it.”   In Anthetic Psychology, we call “stuff” reactivity.  It’s the strategies we created to defend against Inner Critic pain.  And it invariably comes out in relationships.  It shows up as anger, short-temperedness, and all kinds of negativity.  We help couples understand and dismantle this machinery.  Piece by piece.  But in each case, Step 1 is learning to label it and admit it to your partner:  “That’s my stuff.”  Sure they’re just three little words.  But they can stop an argument.

Since his stroke disabled the left side of his body, Jim’s right arm has been doing all the loving.  When I first greet him in the morning, I say, “You’re my James.  I’m your Kathryn.  And I love you with all my heart.”  He reaches for me with his right arm and holds me tight and pats and pats and pats me.  I love it.  Yesterday, when he woke up, Jim said to me, “I like pats too!”  So, as we sat together last night, I patted and patted and patted him.  He loved it.  Our point is what you give your partner in the way of affection and love may very likely be what you would love to receive.  You just need to do like Jim did:  Tell your partner.  That’s the thing that makes a high-voltage relationship so satisfying.  You think it.  You feel it.  You voice it.