We can transform our relationships into a spiritual practice. Being here in Aptos for the past week has been a crash course in involving my husband in my own spiritual and emotional work. It is for the relationship but also for my own growth, deepening my own practice. Finding my way on my own is more simple, it is just me. Sitting alone in my home makes me feel like a freaking master of all my learning and practices, but when I take my skills beyond my living room, into the world and into relationships, I see exactly where I am. Things get real, real fast. When the work involves another person, much more confusion arises. Here is one situation that brought up an opportunity for me to practice my emotional healing and spiritual work within the relationship.
I was having coffee with a friend yesterday and saying how it was hard for me to leave Damon at home and go meet her, that I had picked up an unhappy energy from him, like he didn’t want me to go. He looked sad. Then I felt guilty for leaving. This was an old pattern cropping up.
My friend said, “Did you tell him that? That he is making you feel like you’re not free?”
“No,” I told her, “I do my work first and see if there is anything left after that to even bring up to him. Often times, once I dig in and look around, I can clear out the problem on my own.”
If I want to feel more free, then that is my job, not his. If I go to him with my complaint, he will likely react with defensiveness. He may list all the ways he tries to make me feel free. He will likely not see things my way. He may even list the ways I make him feel ‘not free’ as a return attack.
STEP ONE - Take inventory
First, I had to take ownership, claim my part. Clearly identify the things I was doing on my own; not necessarily “wrong” things, just anything I could notice that I had done. Take another look, see the things that were going unnoticed. How had I approached the situation?
Here was my personal inventory as I unpacked the situation:
1. I assumed he felt sad that I had left him home on a Saturday morning.
2. I assumed he did not want me to go.
3. It was difficult for me to leave him home alone.
4. I felt guilt and mild resentment, along with some frustration from wanting to feel more freedom and independence.
STEP TWO – Come clean and clarify
Next, I explained to him my part in the situation, coming clean with my actions (lowering the wall of defensiveness, there is no need to protect what I had done). Going to your partner with your complaints is a dead end. So, I went to him with questions. I went to him letting him know that I realized some things. I realized I had assumed how he was feeling and asked him directly for clarification.
“Did you feel sad that I left?”
“Were you okay with me going to the coffee shop or had you wanted me to stay home?”
I listened carefully to his replies. I thanked him for letting me know and apologized for assuming I knew how he felt. I acknowledged that assuming how he feels is not beneficial to our relationship. It usually lands us in hot water.
I let him know that it was me who had difficulty leaving the house when I knew he would be left alone. I took responsibility for my part here too. It was not his fault I felt that way. He was not “making” me feel this way. Too often we blame the other person for “making” us feel this or that. We blame them for creating things in our lives that are actually our own creation. As soon as you notice you are blaming your partner, you will find yourself at an emotional impasse.
STEP THREE - Doing my spiritual and emotional work, asking to be shown the truth.
This is where I get really, really honest with myself in every way. I stop hiding the truth from myself and I ask to be shown what is really going on. I use writing to go deeper.
Acknowledging my difficulty in leaving him home alone allows me to see where I can make changes. It lets me realize that I have the ability to shift the situation. As long as he is responsible for how I feel, I am a powerless victim. Take the steering wheel and notice where you are actually in control.
The difficulty I had in leaving him at home alone that morning was a result of assuming he was unhappy with me. If he had been smiling, bubbly and happy-looking, it would have been easy for me to go. But I had to face disappointing someone I care about in order to do what I wanted.
Going deeper
This was evidence of my long history of people pleasing, and always swaying with other people’s preferences. Bending to their perceived will, wanting to give them what I thought they wanted.
People-pleasing is a sneaky bastard of a habit. I think I am giving the person what they want, but in fact I have never even asked them what they want. I believe in my ability to read minds and energy and emotions so strongly, that I can predict how they feel, how they want the situation to be, and how they prefer me to behave all in one powerful swoop. Ridiculous! What an ego trip to think I can manage both sides of the relationship all in my head.
The ego hides in this scenario like an altruistic hero, when in fact it is only degrading the quality of the relationship as it stumbles erroneously through a fragmented, assumption-based reality. If I may be totally honest about the level of manipulation people-pleasing serves to attain, then without further ado:
People-pleasers are not the sweet, nice, giving, selfless saints you may think they are; they are more like traumatized, fearful, anxiety-ridden, bordering on paranoid, control freaks with a gaping emotional wound (if you were to hang a sign above this wound hole, it would say, “love me please”).
I can say this as a recovering people-pleaser myself. I know deep down, my drive to please others is based on my own fears of not being loved and accepted. Feeling that in turn I must pull the coziest, soft, warm wool over people’s eyes in order to induce my own feelings of belonging and to feel valued. By abusing the law of reciprocity (I give to you first then you give to me) I will gain all the treasures I seek emotionally. It is a lie. And deep down, it feels terrible for both parties involved.
If this is also you, it’s time to pull the ripcord and launch away from all this neediness. Just look at all this energetic demand I place upon others. Looking to them to love me and give me all the sense of who I am and what I mean. We aren’t doing anyone any favors by trying to please them with a false identity, false behaviors. Our loved ones deserve the truth of who we are. They deserve to know us, not the phony us we think will make them happy around us, and thus, make them love us more. Do you see now the unconscious manipulation involved?
We deserve to live our lives in truth and integrity. To move through the world trusting our own inner wisdom, following the signposts from the universe, following our inner visions. By creating relationships based on truth and honesty, we can develop new levels of trust and resilience and love.
Knowing all of this, I see where my own thinking has caused the coffee shop situation entirely. But I don’t feel bad about it. This is the nature of the mind. It jumps to conclusions, judges, interprets, and often gets it wrong. I can notice this pattern and continue to practice what the Buddhists call “I don’t know mind.”
I can see where I want to please him and know that I don’t have to engage in this needy emotional transaction where we both actually lose in the long run. From my experience with other topics, seeing the truth of this situation will help me to avoid falling unconsciously into the same pattern over and over again. I might find myself going there again, but it will be more likely that I will find my way out quickly or before any tension arises in the relationship.
I can also strengthen my commitment to my intentions: to be honest and open, loving and supportive, and still do exactly what I’d like to do.
I am still working to make peace with this ingrained tendency to not only misread emotional energy, but to single-handedly strike out on guessing what that person wants of me. I have to embrace this fear that someone may not approve of what I am doing, that they may think I’m doing something “wrong.” I have to risk that they will still love me and value me. There is never any guarantee but there can be trust. I have to leave even though he may look sad. I have to put my own integrity first and remember that I am not responsible for his emotions. He is responsible for any feelings of sadness, inner discord, or loneliness. This is where my work ends, and his begins.
Get acquainted with what your work is and what the other person’s work is. You cannot do their work for them, no matter how hard you try. Take my word for it, I have tried countless hours, days, years to do his work for him. It is impossible.
But you can lead the way, doing your work. Your partner is bound to see the pay off and want to start pitching in. I can’t know if this will be true for your relationship, too. I am still navigating these waters, hopeful that we will continue to see these situations for what they are, silly mind games. Attempts by the mind to help us that are actually harming us. It’s not our fault, there is no need to feel lousy about the state of things. We are lucky to have the ability to transcend the patterns and habits of the mind, to see them and continue living consciously. We are at a blessed time where we now can put an end to these patterns simply by gaining the awareness of the truth. Noticing the rules we’ve been playing by, the unconscious beliefs we’ve been operating under. This is our path to freedom. This is the way to forming relationships on the foundation of real love, rather than egoic mental addictions.