Archive for February, 2010

Customized Love

Posted: February 19, 2010 in family, love
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Love  is idiosyncratic.

We  each  experience  love uniquely, filtering it through our personal backgrounds, personalities and experiences.  In this domain, don’t bother with generics.

One person feels loved when they are given a gift that perfectly fits an interest they have. For them, that’s love.  Another  feels deeply loved by a  snuggly hug, another by being close but not touching. Another feels most loved by being listened to as they share the trivia of their day, another by being allowed to talk about ideas, another by having a purring cat sleep on their lap, another by being allowed to watch a local football game with friends, another by being encouraged to go to the beach and walk with girl friends.

Love is ideolectic, which means it is articulated in the language of the individual, not the group. It is found in nick names and private endearments and familial neologisms and  goofy redefinitions. It resides in family jokes, favorite foods and funny family stories, a language invented by people with the same reality even if they don’t have the same last name.

When we cannot experience love, the dysfunctions behind our attachment disorders are often idiopathic, unknown or at least unrecognized by us.  An angry father, a perpetually drunk mother, a childhood illness, a traumatic divorce,  a disabling shyness — we may have some idea as to our love disability, but often we are not quite sure as to its precise etiology. We may brood, “Why can’t I seem to connect well with people, bond, enter into love the way I see that others do?” We often don’t know precisely why; perhaps we never will. Love’s dysfunctions are complex, but we do not have to understand them completely to  love.

To whatever degree we can give or receive love, we should; it is a gift and a thrill. Love  is the essence of mental health and the core of happiness. Love is so essential that it should be made the highest priority of life. We should go all out to love the people we live with idiosyncratically, in the ways in which  they want and need to be loved. We should gently, kindly, patiently and continuously customize our love for our spouses and boyfriends and kids and best friends.

If we do everything else but don’t do love, we have done absolutely nothing. Love is first, best, highest and most supreme. Do not miss making this your primary mission in every second of every day for the rest of your life.

Let quirky, personalized, specialized, custom-fitted love rule.

Main-Thing Talk

Posted: February 16, 2010 in people
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We talk about everything but the main thing.

Not talking directly and openly about the main thing is like not eating enough protein. It is like not getting enough sleep.

What is the main thing? Well, if I say it you might disagree and there we go, not talking main-thing stuff again.

Recently, I talked with my daughter about sex. Now there is a main thing. Ads talk about it a lot and radio songs gush about it all over the place, and so she should know all about it, right? Not really. She’s been saturated with ads and songs and singing ads all her life, but it hasn’t gotten it, and she still didn’t know some very simple and of-the-first-order things about sex. Why? We just don’t talk about it; we let our fear of awkwardness keep us from becoming not awkward with life. So my college-aged daughter and I got down to some honest, simple, raw questions and answers. I know what she doesn’t know, and I’m the safest person in the world to let her know. Dang!

It is so easy to be honest if we just get started and so refreshing too. It’s like leaving a crowded restaurant where there is a constant din of undecipherable noise and moving to a park bench under a quiet tree and sitting close and hearing every nuance of meaning and expression in each other’s voices.

I had a conversation with some one recently about God. Who hasn’t heard of God? But there is a constant din of puzzlement about him too, and silence here too. It’s too weird. People say they can’t talk with certain people about politics or religion. So they don’t. Fine. Who need arguments? But really now? God is arguably a main thing. And he is so main he is integrated with everything else that we talk about or don’t talk about, like sex and violence and pets and movies and the weather. And not bringing him up is bizarre. He is the ultimate elephant in the room. Why wouldn’t we in our role as parent and friend and lover and consumer speak directly and personally about God.

We know stuff and kids have questions and friends have concerns. It is long past time to break the silence and say what we think to each other!  Come on now. We are letting moments pass when we should be jumping on the opportunities to teach and learn and lean while we teach as we just get honest and real and verbal.

The main thing is always the thing below the surface of the thing we have chosen to talk about. To get down to it, we need only look further to the larger structure: what is the branch that is holding this leaf, the trunk that is holding this branch, the root that is holding the trunk, the earth that is  holding this root, the solar system that is holding this earth, the universe that is holding this solar system, the force that is holding this universe? Questions get us deeper, closer to the main things that are so interesting and refreshing and empowering to talk about.

Main stuff needs attention. This is ridiculous. We are shutting up way too much. We are acting like we don’t know about what we do know about. Just go there. Fearlessly dive to the next level.  Admit what you don’t know; say what you do know. Say it plainly, honestly and directly.  People who you love need you to say it, now.

Fight Fair

Posted: February 4, 2010 in family
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“We had a fight last night.”  Few families haven’t said that.

Most of us do verbal battle in our families, often at night when we are all home, and all tired. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A certain degree of conflict is normal, even healthy! Conflict is needed to set things right when they have gone wrong.

My wife has confronted me several times in our marriage over spending too much time at work. As a result, we’ve made more space to be with each other more, to do more fun things together. Lately we’ve been walking together on the days we have off together.  Conflict, if resolved well, can bring about new peace and order in the family.

But how we will fight, now that is worth thinking about, because if we don’t fight well, in fair and productive ways, we can cause a lot of damage and even eventually ruin our relationships. Early in my marriage, I said somethings my wife still remembers thirty years later. I wish I had been able to control my mouth better.

What do families commonly fight over? They fight over significant issues of power and control in important areas of life:  money, in-laws, sex, children, homework, housework, jobs and friends. The underlying psychological reasons include our desire and need to control our lives, our instinctive drive to get our own needs met and the normal competition over the emotional and financial resources available.

In my family we have sometimes fought over how to discipline the children. Sometimes one of us has wanted to be tough on an issue and the other has wanted to be relaxed, to let things go. It’s classic; it’s the old war between the obeying the rules or relaxing and having fun, between having strict in discipline or creating a relaxed, easy going atmosphere. The truth is we need both in the family. Too much just-leave-them-alone and you get chaos and rebellion; too much hammering of the policy and the bedroom turns into a military barracks.

As a result it’s good to scrap about discipline once in a while, and to come to some middle ground between the police academy and an unspervised grade school playground.

Whatever the outcome, conflict should not be seen as something to avoid. The good family is not the family that never fights, but the one that knows how to fight in fair, appropriate ways. 

Here are a few rules for fighting. You’ll recognize some of these. They are borrowed, currently part of the common language and knowledge of good conflict resolution.

 1. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. The goal is to “Get it,” to really listen in such a way that you can truly understand how the other person feels and what they think.

2. Go for win-win outcome. That means you come to a solution both parties can live with.  Avoid win-lose solutions, where someone dominates the others. To help, remember that you are fighting for your relationship, not for a personal victory.

 3. Stay under control. Be kind.  Work hard not to be abusive, mean, cold, hard, inflexible. Giving full vent to your anger can cause a lot of damage.

 4. Give people space and time to process possible solutions if they want or need that. It’s great to work things out on the spot, before you go to bed, before it can build up. But sometimes, other people just need time to cool down and think a little. In that space they may even self-correct.

 5. Stick to the point. Avoid bringing in a bunch of other unresolved issues, and avoid personally attacking the character of the person you are disputing with.

 6.  Support your spouse in front of your kids. If you don’t agree with your spouse, set aside some space and time to talk it through later. Parents who are united can do a super job of dealing with kid issues.

 7. Avoid arguing late in the evening, when you are tired, when you have the least control.

 8. Ask for forgiveness, and be willing to forgive.