Heal the Split

There’s More to Relationship

I sometimes offer questions near the end of my articles. However, this time, I’ll lead off with a fundamental question:

- How can we conduct relationships without having to have every single aspect of our relationships covered by agreements?

Before I address that question, let’s look at another question first:

- What keeps us from expressing our truths, our wants, needs, and desires?

Check-ins: “What am I feeling?”

“I may not be clear on what my wants and desires are. They may be in shadow, I may have addictive or other compulsive behavior and have the lack of an ability to come through in my agreements. I can make an agreement in my head, but energetically I’m not there.”
– Jose Merida, Northern California New Warrior

When you’ve sat in a men’s group meeting or a staffing circle, in response to the invitation to check in, have you ever:

- Coughed up a couple of feeling words just to satisfy the request, but not really felt those things?
- Said to yourself inside, “I have to say something. If I felt something, I imagine it would be this.”
- Experienced fear, anger, grief, shame, joy, in response to the invitation itself, rather than being connected to what was already there before the invitation?
- Heard others speaking feeling words in their check in, but you didn’t sense them actually being in those feelings?
- Wanted more time to get in touch with what you actually might be feeling, time to establish an authentic, deeper connection with what was alive in you at that moment?
- Wondered whether others in the circle are actually curious about what you’re feeling?

I imagine that one intention of a check-in is primarily to establish the sense of safety that we have a place and permission to share what is so in us, and another intention could be for us to feel connected in a common shared experience. And in being encouraged (with an implicit expectation) that we state what we feel with words in a moment, what happens in us and what is lost?

One leader of men’s work once said to me “You should be able to go to any feeling on a dime.” I’ve always thought that was rather odd, as this suggests that we can simply use our will to move into (or out of) any feeling.

In “Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transformation“, I present an architecture of the psyche with four groups of layers, or realms. About the second realm, that of emotions, I write: “In the layers closest to the surface, closest to the border between our conscious and unconscious, there are eddies and currents of emotions. Life is teeming with emotion beneath the surface. When our unconscious wants us to know what we’re feeling, one of those emotions pops through into our conscious awareness, and we experience having a feeling. It’s like an iceberg — all we can see is the tip that is visible above the water line. So even though we are not conscious of it, we are always having emotions, every second of every day. In addition to the personal emotions of joy, fear, anger, sadness, and shame, in some of the deeper levels of this realm reside the impersonal emotions of unconditional love and compassion.”

So the idea that, on demand, we could conjure up an experience of an emotion in an instant, particularly without some sort of energetic training and practice, strikes me as unreasonable. And by “energetic training”, I mean that, like going to a gym to build physical muscles, over time we can develop “muscles” that have access to a fuller range of states (including emotions), and have the mobility to shift among those states. But hardly any of us have such training .. .hence many of us just say words in response to requests and demands to state what we’re feeling. Imagine if, each time we were requested, we didn’t just say what we’re feeling, but took the time to let those feelings emerge to be seen and felt by others …

If we lack the energetic awareness to sense what’s alive in the other person, we rely on asking them to report to us what he or she is feeling. We then require them to conjure up something in response to our insistence. Whether in an I-group or in an intimate one-on-one relationship, what we do in our opening moves can have a profound influence on establishing the tenor of the subsequent interactions, including whether we are inclined to express our truths, our wants, needs, and desires … or to withhold them.

Likewise, if we don’t have a shared set of values and principles that we live our lives by, we are resigned to have everything spelled out in explicit agreements.

Masculine and feminine: Stereotypes and archetypes

To help with our understanding, let’s examine masculine and feminine energies or forces. I am not talking about male and female, men and women, but rather the essential qualities of the masculine and the feminine. Most men predominately carry the masculine, and most women carry the feminine. I’ve assembled some descriptive words for each.

Masculine:

Doing, directing, singular focus, refinements,
differentiating/categorizing, separation, order/linear,
building, using force, protected,
penetrating, penile/phallic, sperm, fast,
outward, above, fire and air, land
mind and will, conscious/the known

Feminine:

Eros, being, waiting, multi-layered, essence,
including/engulfing, connection, chaos/non-linear,
containing/housing, inviting/attracting/seducing, vulnerable,
receiving/yielding, womblike/vaginal, egg, slow,
inward, below, water and earth, ocean,
body and heart, unconscious/the unknown (mysterious)

Stereotypes appear in our culture when a sufficient proportion of people in a particular group, based on ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, exhibit the same or similar behavior or characteristics. While it is unfair to overlay a stereotype to a person simply because they belong to a particular group, a stereotype is, at least to some degree, rooted in the essence of the group’s psyche, and therefore it is useful, if only to provide an outlet for some aspect of collective shadow to be expressed. (A healthy sense of humor is an indication of at last some relationship to shadow.) And a stereotype is a form of societal recognition, albeit incomplete and skewed, of the presence of an archetype.

Relationships of the masculine and feminine

I’ve seen circle after circle of men get stuck in doing work around responsibility, integrity, and honor. Those are admirable qualities, but while they can serve in support of relationship, particularly between men, they are not the essence of relationship. Try this experiment: Go to the women in your life with the ideas of responsibility, integrity, and honor, and find out if that’s their idea of relationship.

While this is intended to be rather light-hearted and perhaps humorous, it is rooted in some truth. Relationship is inherently messy and disorderly…this is what makes it juicy and interesting.

Let’s look at two very different types of relationships:

- Goal-oriented, cooperation-based relationships, such as getting work done or holding together a society, fall primarily in the province of the masculine. Integrity, accountability, and agreements are stressed.

- Connection-based, feeling-oriented, intimate relationships fall primarily in the province of the feminine. Feelings, vulnerability, and intuition are valued.

Most intimate relationships occur between a person who carries primarily masculine energy and one who carries primarily feminine energy. If presented with responsibility, integrity and honor as the basis for relationship, and the masculine’s insistence that there must be a clear agreement about every expectation, the one who carries the feminine, while appreciating those qualities, will find them tedious and unfulfilling, and is generally likely to feel unmet in the area of feelings, vulnerability, and intuition.

Mario Jacoby, in his book, The Analytic Encounter, provides a diagram that shows, between any two parties in relationship, the connection lines between both parties’ conscious and unconscious, respectively. Since our unconscious is infinitely vaster than our conscious, it follows that the greater aspects of our relationships occur in unconscious realms, either between the conscious of one person and the unconscious of the other person, or between the unconsciouses of both people, where it is not visible to either party.

If we only rely on what we can see and hear, we are limited to only our conscious mind’s story about our relationships. Developing an intuitive ability to sense what is alive in others, without requiring them to state it explicitly, is required in order for the masculine to be able to relate to the feminine.

A stereotypical male response is “Honey, I can’t read your mind.” I’m not suggesting that we should automatically know what someone else wants or needs or what his or her motivation is. I’m talking, at a basic level, about sensing what is alive in them. A good starting place to practice (perhaps for years) is sensing what they are feeling.

This won’t work if we are simply taking our projections as truth for the other person. Reliably having that intuition requires practicing taking back our projections long enough that the possibility of sensing what’s actually alive in someone else might happen.

Wounded vulnerability and mature vulnerability

Power and vulnerability go hand in hand. Regardless of whether we recognize it, each of us lives in the tension between them.

Consider two different men:

1. Brutus is macho, a he-man, a bully. He expresses power directly, by being in charge, in control of himself and others. He doesn’t take into account his impact on others, and is often seen or sees himself as a bull in a china shop. Brutus is distilled masculine, pure Warrior.

2. Tad is a “new age sensitive guy.” He is very concerned with his impact, wishing to be respectful of everyone and everything. He never pushes or pokes at others. Tad is nearly all Lover.

If you had to choose, are you more closely aligned with Brutus or with Tad?

Neither one is better than the other. Neither of these is balanced. And both of these emanate from wounded vulnerability. The young, wounded, vulnerable parts within us are protected by our primary selves … the critic, the judge, the bully, the rebel, the pusher, the pleaser, the perfectionist, the caretaker, the one that hides, and even our rational mind — all are designed to prevent reoccurrences of our wounds. Our relationship strategies consist of protecting the young wounded vulnerability through using either brute force or hyper-sensitivity. In essence, we give away our power to our young ones and they run the show, our lives … or the world.

On the other hand, mature vulnerability refers to having a different relationship to our wounded parts. Again from Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transformation, “Transformational healing comes about by changing our relationship to what is, either within us or ‘out there’. While our feeling state may not actually change at all, our relationship to it can. While we can’t make our wounds go away, we can change our relationship to them.” So I learn to be with my wounded vulnerable parts, lovingly. I love and I am curious, without needing to make the hurt, or fear, or anger, or sadness I feel go away. I love, even though I’m afraid or angry or sad. And I can hold power even while I’m seriously hurting.

Awareness of impact and feedback

Many men’s work organizations have no process for giving feedback. Clearings and accountability work are designed to pull a charge off of another man or invite a man to take ownership of a broken agreement. Both of these are designed for a man to do his own work.

Some sort of mechanism for giving and receiving feedback is an essential part of any type of relationship. In offering feedback, I share my experience of another man, including letting the other man know something about the impact of his words or action. Similarly to clearing, I distill my data and my feelings, but there ends the similarity. While, in a clearing a man goes on to speak his judgments and take ownership, in feedback I speak of the impact and how I may want to respond.

The difference between these two processes is indicative of the differences in intention and purpose. A clearing is designed for the man to do his own work, and the other person doesn’t actually need to be there. Feedback is designed to offer the other person some sense of how they show up, how they bring themselves, or how they are affecting others.

Feedback is one of our most precious gifts. The other person has an opportunity to learn about themselves. The feedback may or may not be true, depending on how strong the offerer’s projection filter is. Usually, there’s some modicum of truth, even if only a little. The receiver can choose to work with it, or sit with it to see if it’s true, or discard it.

Asking permission

It’s up to you to decide whether to ask permission to offer feedback. It depends on the context of the relationship. In some cases, it may be annoying to repeatedly ask “Can I offer you feedback?”, if a level of rapport has been established, such that openly giving and receiving feedback is part of how the relationship operates.

Giving feedback

I offer two method of giving feedback.

Method A, in two varieties:

“I experience you as…” I report on how I observed or sensed the other person. Examples include “mean and uncaring”, “disconnected”, “kind and generous”. These are the same sorts of things you might say in a statement of judgment, but here they are offered for the other person’s benefit, to know how they are being experienced.

“I imagine that you…” This is one of my favorites that I use frequently in conversation and in my articles. This allows me to state my judgments and projections in a way that is more likely to be readily received, and consequently, the other person is more likely to try it on to see if it holds some truth for him.

Method B, in several steps:

1. “When you…” I report on what the other person actually did or said. Everyone reading this is familiar with this. Examples include “raised your voice to me”, “said that I’m stupid”, “told me that I did a good job.”

2. “I feel…” or “I felt…” Here is where I report on my feelings in response. Likewise, everyone is familiar with this, too. Examples include the five basic warrior feelings, but can include more variations and refinements, such as “frustrated” or “inspired”. Be careful not to go very far into judgment territory.

3a. “And my response is to want to…” I state what action I would want to take in response. Examples include “run away”, “hit you”, “never speak to you again”, “give you a big hug”.

3b. “And what I want from you is…” I make a request, which can be anything I want to ask for.

While the last two steps, 3a and 3b, are useful, they are also both optional. 3b can be used any time, whether part of feedback.

Notice that, unlike in a clearing or in Method 1, there are no statements of judgment or ownership. This is the difference between an internal integrity tool and a relationship tool.

In all the above cases, I included positive examples as well as negative. Feedback can be used to express appreciation equally well.

(If you’re familiar with non-violent communication, you’ll no doubt recognize the first two steps as being the same, but there is no statement of need.)

Receiving feedback

The receiver opens to hear the feedback. This does not mean that the feedback is necessarily a true statement for the receiver.

Even if you have a charged reaction upon hearing the feedback or you violently disagree with the feedback, the invitation is to say “Thank you” and sit with the feedback for several hours or for a day.

What to do

So now back to my original question: How can we conduct relationships without having to spell out everything in explicit agreements that cover every single specific aspect of our relationships?

I’ve mentioned a number of concepts and methods. Here’s a recap:

1. Discover a shared set of values and principles that are the foundation for how the relationship operates. Referring to a principle takes much less effort than agreements. Note that I say “discover” rather than “agree”, because agreeing on these doesn’t have much meaning or sustainability if we aren’t actually aligned.

2. Practice regularly giving and receiving feedback using one or more of the methods described above.

3. Know and practice the difference between acting out of wounded vulnerability and acting out of mature vulnerability. This requires love and curiosity directed inwardly towards our wounded vulnerable parts…and compassion can only help.

4. Develop an intuitive ability to sense what is alive in the other person. Again, this isn’t mind-reading. It’s an energetic sensitivity to energy states in others. And taking back projections, over and over, is prior groundwork.

Note that these are but simplified basics that are only the start of a much richer and deeper realm of relationship. In forthcoming articles, I’ll explore some of that richness and depth. I also plan to visit regional centers to do “energetic training” to help build the muscles of range and mobility.

“I” and “we”

What will it take to truly make the jump from “I” conversations to “we” relationships?

As I see it, the progression goes something like this:

- “I”. I am aware of my feelings, my desires, wants, and needs. I state my truth.

- “You”. You are aware of your feelings, your desires, wants, and needs. You state your truth.

- “You and I”. You state your feelings, your desires, wants, and needs, and I do the same. We make agreements about specific events and issues, based on our feelings, desires, wants, and needs.

- “We”. I discover my values and principles, and you do the same. I share my values and principles with you, and you do the same with me. We discover what are our common values and principles. While we continue make agreements about some specific events and issues, we use the values and principles and the foundations for how our relationship operates and for our expectations, applicable to situations that aren’t covered by explicit agreements.

As you can see, relationship requires us to bring ourselves to others in ways beyond simply creating a safe space or clearing with another, both of which may help set the stage for relationship, but themselves will not bring about the relationship.

In fierce love,
Cal

If you’re interested in having a relationship/energetic training in your area, please see the About Cal page.

(C) 2006 Cal Simone
[First published in the MKP New Warrior Journal, November 2006.]