Habits in Relationship
After the Friday night meeting on the 18th of June, I felt a bit guilty for dominating the flow of conversation. On the one hand I am grateful that my personal difficulties can be examined in the group context but, on the other hand, I worry that the specifics of my situation will be SO specific that nobody will be able to relate.
The little voice inside me kept saying “People are tired of hearing about your habits and failed relationships. Stop being a broken record!” This got reinforced when the idea came up that I may tend to depress when things go poorly in a relationship and that this process of “misery creation” is seen by the outside world as being no different from mental illness. I found it disturbing that a viewpoint from external control psychology could be suggested as an attempt to spur me on, out of my slow slide downhill.
The habits I struggle with, which I most want to change, are probably quite universal. I tend to withdraw from my partners and in so doing I reject and hurt them. This is obviously a totally effective method of destroying relationship. On paper, I see this quite clearly. But at the time it is actually going on, I find I am blind and numb. As an antidote to this behaviour, I want some kind of instant awareness, because everything else is method and ego. And if my ego is there in control, I’m right back where I started.
- Peter
The need to be secure in any relationship, is really what we are all up to and no matter what game we want to play with ourselves or others it is all about wanting control. The need to control others by pushing then away then reeling then in again is for most of us entertaining.
We all want the world to be a better place but do not want to be the change in the world that we want to see. We have what is called a very deep psychosis. The term means, according to Websters, the inability to face reality. I have found from my own life the pain of not being able to stay in relationship with people because of my selfishness. But that is my choice, to be or not to be.
When we look around and see people who are beaten down, on the street, using drugs, depressing the last thing they want to hear is the truth that this is self inflicted and change is their choice. We want to run to some profeessial that will tell us we have a brain chemical problem and need some drug. We love the power of rejecting another before they reject us. If I can blame my behaviour on my parent, my personallity, my habits, it is all the same. I can do the biggest rejection of all – reject the fact that I can change. We don’t want to change but we want to mininize pain, we want to be comfortable. Things sound good on paper, it always does, getting along with people is the fact of the matter and to get along we must give up control, and in relationship both people must win.
People who want control aways try new smarter and more refined ways to tantrum. When the other person feels their control because their freedom is being imposed upon, they usally will question the motives of that person if they really care about them. The controller doesn’t like this as they have been found out. When I am found out it is hard to take responsibility for the issue as mankind is a master of external control and blaming the person who has pointed this out to us. But a new action comes when we remain with it, realizing that we can do nothing mentally about it. It is as if you were told the snake that just bit you is very deadly and in an hour or so you will die. Help is too far away.
So you remain with it, and do the only thing you can do, choose how you will treat that person and be the change you want in the world. Then you kill the snake.
lov bri
The self that is put together by thought wants only the pleasure, and will do anything for anyone as long as it gets want it wants in return. Conflict is always to opposing forces and the root of self interest. Self love when in a pressure situation to fight or flight. Self doesn’t want to look at the simplicity of one’s own struggles and so withdraws. THIS PATTERN IS SO HARD TO BREAK BECAUSE IT IS IN OUR GENES, which we feel because of it’s strength and will and we don’t want to see it is the will of self. You can not break this by trying to use another pattern. The pattern that creates the problem can’t be the pattern that fixes the problem. See one’s inner uglyness and staying there and reaching out and being vulnerable, doing nothing but remaining in the state of evaluation is self evaluation. Only in that process of self knowing can one choose to do a behaviour that will make the situation better,which is to connect and love. Yes hard to practice when you are seen through and face to face with our petty little arrogant self. There we want to rip the person’s head off, rather than thanking them for the opportunity to set our self aside. This means a life of no direction, just let life show us where we must do the work – everything is perfect the way it is , we avoid our own growth and turn it into drama. And how I hate my own drama and smell of the self inflicted path of my on crap I try to dump on others.
coach bri
It seems that as things get more and more sophisticated, it becomes more and more difficult to tell who is the controlled and who is the controller. Of course it is easy to see the other person’s controlling behaviour. Mine I seem blind to. But a strange dance begins as soon as controlling enters: the ante is upped and one person responds to control with more control. This seems to me to be violent. I see it, I want nothing of it and …. I withdraw! And the cycle begins again. Or I think, in disgust, “If this is what relationships entail, I would rather be alone.”