Soulmate Skills

“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.

Do you have to get ahead of other cars on the road?  If someone tells you they just bought a new computer, do you have to talk about your computer and how much better it is?  Do you hate excuses?  Hate to be conned?  Is your motto, “I don’t take shit from no one”?  If these statements describe you, you most probably have developed rigid Toughness as a way to deal with anxiety and pain.  Yes, it works to armor you against pain.  But, you’ve probably found that it doesn’t work in relationships.  It destroys closeness and even the relationship itself.  That’s because at those critical moments of conflict and pain with your partner, you choose winning instead of reconciling; hardening your heart instead of softening; getting revenge instead of closeness.  What’s the solution?  Realize that it’s your Inner Critic that has commanded Toughness and criticizes you for any tenderness you display.  Then, challenge your Inner Critic shoulds with, “I have the right to lose, to soften, to choose closeness.”  It’s a radical value shift that will transform you.  It will permit you to add Tenderness to your repertoire.  You’ll have the success you seek–but this time in relationships.*

See page 105 of DIsarming Your Inner Critic for more on getting free from rigid Toughness.  It’s available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

You’ve probably heard people talk about marriage with low expectations.  Don’t buy that.  Know instead that you can dream big dreams for your relationship.  And you can make them come true.  We watched our wedding video yesterday to celebrate our anniversary.  The words my mother said to us I want to pass on to you.  “I bless you with love and gentleness.  And wonder.  And remember:  When love and skill work together, it creates a masterpiece.”  Take your love and passion, add skills for producing closeness.  There’s your recipe for fulfillment.  Serves two.  Can be shared with the world.

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.

“I feel like a puppydog about going with you to New York, wagging my tail about the chance to be with you on the plane and share experiences at the seminar.”  Jim wrote that to me when we were living our long-distance relationship those first six months.  I loved that he could give me such a vivid picture of how he felt about being with me.  When you find your love, that’s how you feel.  As excited and unashamed as a puppy about showing your love.   That attitude is what makes love blossom.  If you start being aloof and guarded, you’ll just add distance and anxiety to your budding relationship.  So, it’s a principle of high-voltage soulmate love:  Let your inner puppydog wag!

“She wants so much; I feel suffocated.”  That’s the Distancer talking.  “I want so little; and I don’t even get that.”  That’s the Pursuer replying.  The more the Pursuer pursues, the more the Distancer distances.  The process escalates.  Sometimes until it ends in a breakup of the relationship.  What’s going on?  In Anthetic couple work, we discovered the mechanism:  The Pursuer’s actions are desperate moves toward loving closeness.  The Distancer’s retreat behind walls is simply a lack of skills needed to be close and still free.  What to do?  The Pursuer needs to learn to reduce judgmentalism that gets expressed in an attempt to open up the distancing partner.  The Distancer needs to learn the Inner Critic challenging skills to be assertive and close. *  So, if you’ve found yourself in a Pursuer-Distancer relationship, you can view it as an opportunity for inner freedom.  And for growth.  And for learning closeness. 

*See p. 102 of Disarming Your Inner Critic for more help on getting free.

Transformative change.  We’ve said before that it’s the gift of high-voltage soulmate relationships.  What is transformative change?  It’s essentially about getting free.  That means having psychological distance from any inner figures that cause you pain.  For example, a prideful part of yourself that resists feedback; that says, “Nobody’s going to change me.  I am what I am!”  As you step away from such figures and look at their impact on your life, you can then direct what part, if any, you want them to play in your relationships.  In this way, you’ll no longer be driven by inner figures that sabotage your goal of closeness.  You’ll be free to create your life in the way that brings you happiness and fulfillment.  Now, that’s transformative change.

This is Father’s Day Weekend in America.  It has me thinking about the “Daddy Factor.”  That’s my term for the almost universal process of looking for a partner who gives us the best of what our dads were to us and subconsciously seeking from our partner the love and emotional connection our dads failed to provide.  In one of my early letters to Jim, I told him I was feeling afraid, even frantic, that what I was feeling for him was just a longing for “Daddy love.”  His wise reply:  “Why sure.  Your feelings to me are Oedipal [Sigmund Freud's term] as are mine toward you.  So, what else is new? All we have to do is keep reminding ourselves, ‘Jim, you are not Daddy.  Kathy, you are not Mom.  Let’s continue to enjoy our Oedipal feelings.  Just not let them drive us to expect perfect parental love from each other.’”  So, soulmate questers, we say to you, the Daddy Factor is normal.  Just let your inner Executive Self be in charge of  the power you give it in your partner choice and in how you live out your relationship.

Have you ever been under extreme pressure in your life?  Maybe you are even now.  We’ve been meditating on our own experiences of urgent need.  Jim tells of how, in his thirties, hardly eking out a living, he thought, “How am I going to make money?  How am I going to make money?”  And out of that caldron of not knowing came a breakthrough:  “Maybe I should lead groups!”  And because he followed that thought, he began to lead groups.  And that led to developing Anthetic Psychology, Anthetic Philosophy, and Anthetic Therapy.  And it thread by thread led to his sitting in a meeting room, waiting to begin his doctoral program, when a young woman sat down next to him.  That was me.  That was his soulmate.  So, take heart.  It appears to be a principle.  That the very life pressures that seem to torment you actually are the force which lead you to make transformative change.  And to open the door to meeting your soulmate.  Just follow the next step.

Teasing.  Sarcasm.  Humorizing.  These are three things people often do in relationships.  But they’re closeness deflecters.  They are defensive maneuvers to derail the intensity of intimacy that’s building between you.  Each involves making comments that poke fun at or subtly demean the other person.  And while the target of such comments may laugh, underneath they’ll be experiencing an uneasy feeling of emotional pain.  The pain occurs because an opportunity for a soul-satisfying connection just got lost.  For a soulmate connection, we need to empathize with the other person.  Ask yourself, “Will what I say trigger pain in this person?”  Then, “Because I love them, I’m not going to say it.”