Wednesday Challenge: Relating to the Relationship

The other day, I was a asked a question about my thoughts on remaining in a situation (with another person, a job, a boss, a relationship, a system, or an organization) when that situation has so many problems and the cost is really high to be in that situation, and there seems to be no opportunity to change it or be heard, to be respected or validated. On the surface of it, situation is sooooo easy – just speak your mind, tell them what you think, and VOILA! things will change. OR Leave, quit the situation, out! With my own clients, friends, family, co-workers, we face this all the time!!!! I typically know what to say in those conversations! BUT…as a human, it is seldom easy or clear and the responses certainly may be easy – but never simple!

This falls under relationships. Yup. Participating in a relationship. Me relating with something else, and there’s baggage, challenges, clutter. When we are in that type of relationship situation that is very personal to us but maybe not so much with to the other entiny or person, we tend to look through our emotions and our past as a frame of reference as an explanation of why we just can’t make this work out. We look at the surface at the relationship we have with people and how we feel about them, losing site of the larger context. Why do we choose to go back over and over, when the DATA clearly tells us that the relationship isn’t viable. Why do we keep going back to the relationship when as a result of being in them causes us to feel devalued, guilty, sad, humiliated or even lonely? Many of us have probably been a situation like this at some times of our lives or another. If we are not accurately taking in information about the situation and people involved, we tend to automatically have a range responses that are based on our emotional connections, and through our past experiences, judgments and emotions. And through our hopes, aspirations and inner core beliefs – which are very primative and based on our past. But are any our our typical automatic responses really helpful to us?

One response, that keeps us locked in our head and broken soul, is that we believe that we have no value, that we don’t matter or that we truly have no value or worth. “Why voice anything because no one is listening?” Then we create some internal belief to explain and keep the world consistent. It is kind of a way of ‘acting in’ or internalizing situations to match our belief system. Something like “they won’t listen because I have nothing of value to say! Why should anyone respect me?” The problem with this is that we end up internalizing something that actually is pretty inaccurate!!! We end up creating this mess inside our heads – and then it goes into our hearts – that is not accurate. SOMETIMES PEOPLE OR SITUATIONS ARE INCAPABLE OF HEARING OUR VOICE OR RESPONDING TO OUR NEEDS BECAUSE OF THEM, NOT YOU. THEIR AGENDA, THEIR VALUES, THEIR GOALS, THEIR whatever…….. Your efforts, your voice, are bigger than the situation and just because they aren’t listening doesn’t mean YOU don’t have something valuable to say!!!! You can stop relating with relationships that you assess to be lacking mutually beneficial, respectful, or healthy outcomes. It also doesn’t mean we aren’t valuable, worthy or important…..Just in the context of everything regarding that relationship, maybe the cost doesn’t outweigh the benefits of participating of the relationship.

The second kind of response is when we believe that we don’t really care anyway, that the situation doesn’t really matter anyway, and that everybody and everything is crap anyway. So we become angry and resentful. The angry aggressive attitude fuels itself, and drives us to be on edge, impulsive and intensely uncomfortable. The effort at resolution, which probably can’t come anyway, ends up being like a fly on a windowsill – banging against the window over and over and over. The behavior of ‘acting out’ on the world around us doesn’t bring resolution either. People see us as disgruntled, disillusioned, discouraged, or burned out. Why would you want to be involved in a relationship where the outcome is such negativity and cost? If the cost of a relationship is that you have to be crazy to be in it, you can unchoose that position. (FYI – crazy in this use means when you choose to be involved in something that you know isn’t healthy, helpful, reasonable, appropriate, necessary or realist – and you pay a high cost emotionally and in your head.)

We often have this belief that if we spoke our truth, people would be reasonable and respond accordingly to fix the problem. More often or not that is very seldomly accurate. Very often we can’t or won’t get what we believe is the “right” answer. Sometimes we quietly choose to leave the situation or relationship, thinking it wasn’t worth it to directly bring out the problems and work towards a reasonable solution. So we behave passively avoidant. The situation remains, and we tend to feel defeated. We become crazy to try to survive in a crazy situation that makes no sense to us. Or we take an aggressive position and become vocal or active against the situation or system. Either way, we often feel defeat.

However, what if for those situations, we actually stepped back and looked at the present moment as not being about us? What if we just looks at the facts in the context of what the relationship is all about in the first place? What if we looked without judgment or blame at the patterns? At the characters involved? What if we looked at the situation as a system that was self-sustaining, and we looked at our part in those dynamics? What you/we might discover is that the system has a life of its own!!! That the players have a dynamic pattern of their own, with subplots and relationships? That there are tremendous power differentials, triads, dyads and hierarchies? What if we looked at DATA and the inforamtion about patterns and real outcomes?

What if we could choose, and allowed ourselves to make decisions consciously, to stay and play by those rules but remove our emotional connection and responding through our logic? What if we could choose to change our investment, we could understand that some relationships can’t be person, or we could unchoose participating and engaging in the dynamic. What if we chose to remain based on our agenda or needs, not connecting our emotions or personal needs to the entire pattern?

What I’ve found is that I often engage in these situations or systems with false expectations and assumptions about it and the people involved. I assume, and act on this inaccurate belief, that we all have the same agenda, definitions or desired outcomes. I discovered,…(drum roll), that I have been wrong (gasp!!!). When the world didn’t conform with me – screeeeeeeechhhhhh…….bam!

That my reality needs to be grounded and clarified. Okay, before we go too far, yes I said it, I was wrong. It was a fact, not a judgment, not an evaluation. This is a statement of fact. I viewed the world inaccurately and drew conclusions based on my imposed values, expectations and judgments, which impacted my choice of action.

I think I often remain in relationships too long, and keep relating to some relationships hoping that they will change if I just try harder. Long after the purpose or benefit of the relationship has outlived its purpose, long after I have banged my head against a wall that won’t yield or can’t yield. I’ve tried over and over and over to talk until they understand me and my point of view!!! Long after I’ve tried and tried and tried to change the situation, and twisted my own reality to make sense of it. After I’ve twisted my reality to try to understand why no one was listening, and twisting my insides around trying to make sense of it!!!! Yes, seriously, “WHY CAN’T THEY SEE HOW HARD I’M TRYING?” or something like “PICK ME! PICK ME!” Gosh, it sounds so silly – putting so much out there on something that clearly doesn’t seem to value me the same way I value it!!!! I’ve certainly felt that the situation and the players were wrong and I needed to correct it, just give them a bit more time, attention or information! When that didn’t work, I flipped the other way, and believed that I was a terrible person, all those internal dialogues!!!! Internal and external chaos. Look at all the trouble I WAS CAUSING them, me…the trouble maker. And in this case, I was the one swimming against the current. Truth is, in fact, I was the trouble, the system had a path, a course, an agenda. I was swimming against it. So, by definition I was the problem in the relationship. Ok, don’t panic here, it’s okay!!! A light bulb moment!!!! I wanted to be true to myself, I wouldn’t change my path for anything. The cost was that I could pull my emotions out, because I was thinking with my head. My choice how I handled this, the relationship was no longer PERSONAL. WHEW!!! What if, I truly compared my goals and aspirations to those of the relationship? UHM…..guess what, they didn’t match!!! Not at all……..

Then one day, clarity!!! I opened my eyes and listened to people with wisdom who’d been encouraging me to truly look at what I wanted from life and could those relationships help me? I looked for patterns of how the relationship system treated people in general. I looked for patterns…..things that didn’t have to do with me personally. When I stopped to breathe, I could hear those wise words of others, that maybe the SITUATION or the SYSTEM had a role in the dynamic!!! Of course! This makes such sense when I step out of my head and the clutter in my soul, and look out of my reality and take into account the true facts, there is an opportunity for clarity. I know this! There are three parts to a relationship – my part, the other part and the relationship itself has a role!!! The relationship is a dynamic created by the ongoing interaction between me and the other part.

My answer became clear, the cost of relating to someone or something with different agendas and values was costng more than it was helping me move towards what I want, need and value. My behavior was actually setting me up for self-defeat! Why was I spending so much energy? Why am I raging against something that isn’t listening? Something that I am not taking personally, and certainly doesn’t take me personally? Why am I constantly trying to logic with something that isn’t willing to be logical or logical? Why am I caught in my internal and automatic patterns and disregarding being grounded and connected? Why is it so damn personal? How did that tie into my own core beliefs? Why would I chose to keep myself in this crazy mess? What was the emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual cost?

As a dear friend would say, this is a great opportunity try something new…………

When I realized that removing my personal investment in the situation and clearly defined my own goals for myself and my life, there was a shift. When I removed my filter, the one that says “if someone isn’t listening to me, then I must be wrong, or not good enough” what I actually saw was a situation that had a different agenda. That helped me put my feet solidly on the ground, eyes open, and helped me begin to pull out that emotionally-clogged filter and just look at reality. It helped me change my view and save my soul.

So the challenge here – put your feet on the ground, and just look around you. Look at how you engage in relationships, and how do your emotions, your self-talk, your agenda, your judgments and evaluations, cloud your interaction? What if you were willing to be open to changing the outcome, being willing to stay as well as go? Change or stay the same? What if you were willing to consider other alternatives as the resolution?

So if you are willing to CONSIDER changing your patterns, your view, your thinking and your feelings about your part of the relationship, think of how things can be different for you and your life? Does it match what you are trying to create for yourself? Just a thought. If you were willing to think differently about what you do, what would change?

You can’t be different and stay the same.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt