by tashmcgill | Mar 23, 2016 | Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Relationships
I used to be sentimental about a lot of things, but I ran out of room in my heart and for keepsakes. Now, I only keep the most important things. I try to limit my sentimentality but it’s hard to put memories away, even when you no longer need them. We spend a lot of time making memories we don’t need. You only need to remember where you live when you are twelve while you are twelve. When you are 25 or 86, it matters less where you lived when you were 12, but where you live now.
By now I’ve learned what they don’t teach in school, but ought to. People and the unique connections we form with each other can be like seasons. Some pass and some always return. Some are life-long and with those people, I want to remember everything. Some people you meet and want to keep forever, to sear into memory each unique expression and turn of phrase; the way of walking and movement. How they enter a room and the sound of each sigh and laugh. Mostly, these are colours that bring stories to life and I want to remember each story of the most important people.
But whether it is transience, heartbreak, betrayal, injustice, death or simply the way the world turns from time to time; we are taught to hold nothing tightly; nothing is forever. People will come and go from your life but sometimes, taken by surprise, you will whisper to yourself the question of another, ‘Can I keep you?’
Can I keep you?
I remember the first time I met my friend Bethany. I’d known her husband for a couple of years but in meeting her, felt a kinship that was special. I found myself wondering after laughing together, will I get to keep her? ‘Can we always be friends?’ I whispered to myself. I store up all the memories of our visits together, because I never want to forget a moment of her magic and wonder in my life.
It’s like that with my nieces and nephews too; paying attention to remember the funny things they say and how they play, their favourite books. I want to keep them preserved in my mind from age 0 til .. well, forever.
All relationships change the brain – but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self. Diane Ackerman
What does it mean to keep someone?
Of course, I never set out in knowing someone to say goodbye; but sometimes it is unavoidable. Time and space dictate a mathematical impossibility in maintaining the intimacy and hum of relationship with all those we meet. You have to make choices about who to keep and who to let go of. Sometimes people will choose to let go of you and all of this is acceptable, until you have no choice in letting go. The problem with dementia isn’t keeping the memories at first, but finding them. My stepfather is losing his ability to make new memories so now he only has what he has, when he can find them.
Maybe if we keep less of the unimportant memories, we’ll make it easier to find the important ones. One step further, maybe if I only make the memories I know will count, then perhaps I can save myself some unnecessary grief and hold on to the important things, giving all my attention to those.
I meet a lot of people. But I confess I do not catalogue them all or commit each one to memory. I listen to stories, I pay attention, I am present with you and sometimes that is enough. Sometimes it has to be enough but it leaves me with a choice about who to remember, who to give the precious space of memory to, and that is harder than you might think. Once in a while, I meet a person that is too exquisite and interesting and I hear that small voice whisper again, ‘Please can I keep you?’
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories. George Eliot
Should I remember the way you said that, in case later it becomes important? Will I want to remember what that expression means? Should I make an effort to store away this particular feeling in case I want to one day say, this was the first time I knew I wanted to keep you. This was the first glass of wine I knew we would be friends. I am tired of collecting memories just in case; but I can’t help myself but make them.
Life would be simpler with caveats on how the end will come. If you could know when people would leave you or when you would need to leave people. You could administrate farewells and collect only the innocuous memories, the ones that bring no harm. No need then for memories that are so heavy, collecting too much weight in the mind or heart.
But a life of caveats leaves no room for surprise. No room to change the rules and I am, by nature, a rule changer. Not a breaker, as much as a changer. I like the flexibility to change the expectations. Who says some things are unforgivable or that things must go a certain way? Why must beginnings be dictated by their end, before a proper beginning is even begun?
Oh, it’s the weight of memory that we carry from the time before and the time before that. We forget to reach for the stars yet untouched. We neglect to imagine what is possible, what may yet be. We know what it’s like to let go of memories we made with the intention of keeping them forever.
But perhaps it’s perfectly acceptable to keep some memories forever, without keeping the people. Perhaps that one unforgettable season is worth holding on, no matter what happens.
I’ve never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don’t understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now. Sophia Loren
When I see you now
there is room in my eyes to remember your eyes.
I have space under my fingertips
to remember the feel of your skin.
I remember now, the feeling expanding within
my chest cage is not sadness but space
– when did lightness become so heavy?
Oh, but it’s you, like an anchor within me.
An anchor in space
As light as the moon
Can we turn the moon upside down
Change the weight of gravity
Leaving nothing as it was
A star map to find everything again
When I see you now
there is room in my eyes to remember your eyes
I have space under my fingertips
I am only anchored to the sky
feet gently dangling on the earth
rewriting the stars.
by tashmcgill | Dec 1, 2015 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Relationships
A year ago and a week ago, I passed under this bridge in a traffic jam, stuck again on Interstate 65. This piece of highway is a constant in my life as I travel between places and people I know.
I was stuck metaphorically too, stuck in a dream of a dream. The bridge is just a symbol, a lot of water has passed under this bridge since then. 372 days that see me further from one dream but closer to another. I don’t know what that dream is, but it must be a dream because it’s not yet real.
I think I must have grown up some but there’s a post-it note stuck to my computer screen that says “Everything I ever let go of had claw marks in it”, and it’s certainly true for me. I can feel the tingling in my fingertips. How much I want to hold to something, for something to be as permanent or certain as this bridge. I want to held on to; to be permanent and certain myself.
I’ve been learning you can’t hold on to what’s not real or permanent. You can’t hold on to what’s not holding you. Lorem Ipsum has no permanent home, just like a pipiwhararoa it flies from nest to nest looking for a place to call its own. No one holds on to Lorem Ipsum either.
Lorem Ipsum.
You probably recognize the phrase. If you’ve ever worked in design, printing, had to produce marketing materials or a website there’s a good chance you’ve seen this text. It’s ancient Latin from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book on the theory of ethics was popular with emerging humanist thinkers during the Renaissance so as printing technology emerged during this era, it’s no surprise that a collection of paragraphs from this text was used as dummy text to review typefaces.
Placeholder text is designed to look close enough to the real thing that it becomes invisible to the viewer. Originally so that a printer and publisher might agree the layout of the text or the choice of typeface on a page. Now, Lorem Ipsum is often used to fill out the design frames and suggest where text is required in marketing collateral and digital publishing.
A placeholder is used to fill space but leave no lasting impression. It looks and feels real but carries no meaning. It is yet it does not endure. Lorem Ipsum has survived for 5 centuries now only ever being useful for a moment, to fill the space before it is replaced.
I am not Lorem Ipsum, neither are you.
It’s a shame that some things you only learn after the fact. You learn the rock is slippery as soon as your foot starts sliding. You realise you’ve been Lorem Ipsum when someone starts seeing straight past you. You realise you’ve had all the good intentions in the world, but your friendship has carried no meaning, your words have floated off like feathers in the sky. When Lorem Ipsum is replaced with words you attribute meaning to – you no longer need the Lorem Ipsum.
I love words. And these words meant something to Cicero, to the great Renaissance philosophers and ethicists. Sentences constructed with intention just like I have been made with a meaning greater than the sum of my syllables – Lorem Ipsum is the real thing, not a dream. You have forgotten that I once, had meaning too.
Lorem Ipsum in the Debris.
I do believe some relationships are seasonal. And especially friendship can be deceptive, appearing mutual when both parties have different expectations and agendas. My shared stories and experiences create a narrative that we all own, my stories shared become your own and vice versa. We give meaning to each other but only if we mean it.
But no person should ever be Lorem Ipsum for another. We must be able to look each other in the eye and keep our promises – I see you, you can see me. If we treat each other like placeholders til something better comes along – we strip meaning from beauty and destroy our shared narratives. We destroy each other and ourselves.
Yes, we do this from time to time – we fill our world with those who are available to us although they do not always fulfil us. We allow ourselves to feel useful and meaningful. Of course, we do this because loneliness is a hungry wolf at the door. But once we start to feed the wolf on hollow bread, we cannot keep him from the door. Resist. Resist. Commit yourself to the meaning of those you share your stories with. And therefore choose carefully whom you love.
There is a shallow darkness in anyone that can live in such a way, to not know the ancient, wise, tenacious gift they hold in the palm of their hand. It implies an unknowing of themselves, because authenticity demands authenticity.
The storm change comes along and swept up in the river swell you become the debris on the bank. The difference between a seasonal transition in relationships and being Lorem Ipsum, is acknowledgement of the season change, thank you and goodbye. Without it, gasping for air and wondering how you missed the signs, you shirk off your sinking expectations and swim for shore.
Of course, you can choose not to become the debris. We all get caught out from time to time; not realising that while we laid out our words in perfect syntax, our Latin went unrecognised by the other. For being fooled into thinking my narrative was true, I have learned even more what authenticity looks like. I’ve realised even though people can hurt you by treating you like a spacefiller – I can free myself in a minute by letting go.
Choose not to hold on to people who don’t want to hold you back. Workplace comraderie, friendship on any scale, lovers, distant family – choose not to hold on to anything but the present moment and those who are willing to hold you. Even then, choose wisely from those who would hold your precious meaning in their hands. Letting go can feel like losing something until you remember the best thing you had in that friendship was what you made it, with your heart, your compassion, your love and soul. Even your hopes and expectations of the other were a good kind of dream. So you walk away losing nothing, because you still have yourself. You are the carrier of your meaning.
You have your purpose, becoming clearer in the days and by dream at night, a new old kind of dream. Instead of fighting the current below the bridge, you are now given the chance to cross it; a change in every direction – first up, then East instead of South and with a much larger view to the world. Remember your meaning.
You are a gift to the world, often unopened by many who drift by you but still valuable. An ancient treasure hidden in a field, a pearl inside a gnarly shell, a fragment of beauty that does not fade, an eternal force more precious than rubies. Your meaning is not taken from you by those who do not comprehend you. Perhaps they have not imagined you yet but still you are.
Cicero’s Lorem Ipsum (a fragment).
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”
“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
by tashmcgill | Nov 30, 2015 | Community, Friendship, Relationships
You love fewer people than you think you do. And, if you need permission to care less diligently about some, in order to love others better – this is it. Feel free to hit delete.
I mean, of course, you’re kind and warm, welcoming and enthusiastic about lots of people when you encounter them in the street or with mutual friends. You’re never not gracious and friendly; making small talk while circulating the room. You listen to stories and remember to think good thoughts for those who are suffering and say a prayer if you are so inclined.
So, yes – you do care about people, in a general way of speaking. You care, in a general, non-practitioner sense. You care with the capacity that you have. You pay attention to your Facebook news feed. But you do not really love that many specific people.
Read that sentence twice. Follow the emphasis.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
And that’s ok. In fact, it’s probably good for you. Indeed, I’m giving you permission, I’m asking you to consider loving fewer people, better. Let Love take on a heavier, more intentional meaning than when you talk about ice-cream or potato chips.
Our world is saturated with connection that lacks intimacy. Week after week, people tell me how brave and vulnerable I must be to write how I do on this blog or in social media. I share my reflections on an inner life and strangers halfway around the world are moved. I am moved because they are. I feel a sense of purpose in creating meaning for others. But I am not the meaning.
You see, I care about the people who read and engage with my words. I care that they are well, moving towards wholeness, being themselves, discovering bravery in intimacy and courage to use their own voices. I care, but I do not love you.
That’s ok. You shouldn’t need me to love you and you probably don’t. But some of us – the only care we receive is what comes back through those social media filters.
I can only truly love maybe 20 people or so. There are another 30 or so I love very much. There are another 30 – 40 beyond that I would feel their absence keenly from my world and be rocked by their tragedies. But I am an anomaly and almost none of those people experience my love through social media.
Most people only have room for 6 – 8 significant intimate connections outside their immediate family. That’s how many people you can truly love, engage and maintain intimacy with. I have a small family, I figure I get some extra numbers. I’m an extrovert, a writer and speaker. Part of my job is to connect with people. It’s almost effortless to collect people along the way and genuinely care about those interactions and outcomes. In the moment, when you’re there. And conceptually, afterward – even for a long time.
Anyone who lives in the present moment will find themselves well-connected to all manner of people; because we are able to give and receive in the moment of ourselves and others.
That’s life-giving, fulfilling and beautiful. It is the nature of Love when we are swept up in its outpouring to engage with others. It may be intimate for a moment but it is not lifelong.
With the exception of marriage (I still believe), our relationships are permitted to be seasonal. Not every fleeting connection was meant to last forever, but nowadays we accumulate relationships the same way people collect baseball cards. There’s always room for one more and always a new player joining the team. How are we ever meant to figure out the rules of engagement for every connection we make? How are we ever to find the time or the energy for all these connections.
Don’t get me wrong. Caring for people is great. Whenever you are able, care for someone. Caring is good and creates emotional connection, but Love will demand action too. We need to pare back our tribes so we can really care. To go deep again, not wide.
Love turns up in the middle of the night to a three word text message. Love is often invisible on Facebook, as a friend of mine reminded me. Caring for someone can happen in a moment; Love that follows through every promise grows over time. It’s a different kind of investment. You will learn this in the cruelest way when you realise someone you thought loved you, only cared. Then you will know what it is; to need to know the difference in how you love and how you are loved.
Loving some people and caring for others is kinda healthy. The ability to make connections deeper than Sunday coffee conversations and the ability to prioritize where you invest. More than checking Facebook status updates.
The trouble with navigating relationships in a world dominated by constant connection with people through social media, text and email – is that sometimes the ones you truly love are not the ones that dominate your time or your filters. Sometimes people get waylaid in their expectations and they want more Love than Care.
They forget that a Facebook or Instagram like
is not as weighty as a text message
which is not as weighty as an email
which is not as weighty as a phone call
and is not as weighty as your physical presence
when it comes to Love
because Love will always come with action.
Caring is enough, if caring is what I have to offer. But caring cannot get in the way of Love.
Hit Delete.
Facebook is an audience. A collection of people whom we’ve connected with. But my people, the people I love find themselves around my fireplace. The people I love eat my food. Still, the pressure builds to stay on top of triumph and tragedy through words and pictures on a dozen different channels. We love knowledge and some (most) are naturally curious. We love to discover what’s hidden or unknown. But a hundred connections that love real love and intimacy will never equate to the truth and power of being really known by a friend you love. Who hopefully loves you back. Those are sacred spaces, so you can’t have them or share them with all those people. No one has enough spirit for that. Except maybe Oprah. And even then, not even Oprah. She knows.
The power of real intimacy with a real person in comparison to the influence and energy of an audience. Neither is better, but they have different purposes and meaning in our lives.
So maybe you need permission to let some people go. To hit delete from your Facebook friends list, or eliminate the noise from people you care about to focus on the people you love. Delete pointless contacts from your phone. If you’ll never call them, don’t keep their number. Filter out the needless information and curiosities that fill up your day/mind/thoughts and open your spirit again to deep Love. If you are really brave, filter your little black book of calendar engagements too.
Delete me, if you need to. I get it. I care about you too and I want you to do a better job of loving the ones you Love. I want the same thing. You’ve got permission to gather yourself back from the hundreds of little connections draining your battery and making obstacles for true love.
by tashmcgill | Aug 7, 2015 | Friendship, Relationships
Men and women need each other, and they need to be friends. However, rarely do people write about what happens to precious, life-giving male-female friendships when friends find lovers that are not each other.
I’m lucky to have a lot of married/engaged/commited men in my life. I enjoy their friendship and mostly I love their women too. Sometimes, my dear male friends have become so because I loved their wives first anyway. I’ve successfully negotiated relationship mergers before.. guy friends who have married and their wives have become as close as the husband ever was.
But it’s tiresome, heartwrenching work because there are moments you have to sacrifice the role your boy bestie played, sometimes for years.
A woman like me, needs men in her life. Companions and champions. Buddies and trusted advisors. I need them because I have a wealth of women in my life but if I don’t continue to have positive, thriving relationships with great men – I might risk believing the press that no man you’re not sleeping with is worth your time.
Truthfully, I think these relationship transitions are more important than we realise. The fabric of social groups and communities is woven with the complexities of many different types of interactions between men and women. So while I am writing about my male friends, this is true for many of us regardless of gender.
Sometimes, a rare thing happens and you end up adoring the woman that makes your friend so happy, even more than you loved your friend to begin with. Those relationships are amazing and I’m lucky to have a few of them. Sometimes, the one you thought was never good enough turns out to be worse and you have to bite your tongue from saying all sorts of things. Sometimes you don’t have to say anything because you’re so relieved your friend is no longer suffering. That’s happened a couple of times.
Sometimes, you end up seeing your friends through their weddings, marriages, children and then through their divorces. That’s happened a few times too.
In any of those circumstances, there is a season where your friend is lost to you, replaced by a creature called ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’. Your secrets, once shared in trust between the two of you are now the shared property of your friend and their lover. You have to re-introduce yourself and hope they are equally as trustworthy. You have to hope that they choose to love you, as you choose to love them.
You hope happiness lasts for them, forever. You hope not to lose them forever.
Mostly, the change is within you. You learn to say goodbye differently and hello less often. You grow accustomed to a changed priority, a new role, a different place. ‘Stranger That Knows Your Deep Secrets’ is no longer as available, for good reason. They too, are undergoing personal adjustment. Avoid bitterness.
You have lost your friend for a season, maybe forever. You cannot retrieve him from the place he has arrived at; that’s not your right. You now have only the choice of waiting, hoping and nurturing some expression of a relationship that somehow bridges the stranger he has become and the memory of who he was. In it you become a stranger too; a stranger to his partner, a stranger to the friendship that you had that now merges to be something different.
More often than not, you are no longer on the inside of their life, even though once you shared dreams and thoughts. Indeed, crisis and tears and whispered words float past their ears, the smiling partner who knows enough of your face to warrant knowing a measure of your heart. You will whisper, ‘I miss you’ and it will go unheard in the depths where you needed to be heard.
You will pick yourself up. Your friend may one day return but you are less likely to have the same sense of comraderie you did before. You can’t be forced into loving companionship with his wife, and you can’t force yourself upon them, they are two, they are strong.. and they wholeheartedly go about their existence. This is the way the world should be.
You won’t talk too loudly about it, because boys and girls struggle so much to be friends anyway. You won’t be too demanding. There is no sensitive way to say I love you, but I do not know your wife enough to love her yet. There is a sadness admist your joy in your friend’s delight.
See, in the corner of your heart, you always fear that you had your friend by default .. that he has only room for his mother, sisters, wife and daughters in the woman-shaped spaces in his life. You wonder how you got there to begin with, and you know you’ll never be the same.
His empty space is shaped like a brother, within your heart.
by tashmcgill | Jun 24, 2015 | Poems, Relationships
I once said to someone that writing requires an ability to recall a moment, a feeling, a person in an instant. To re-enter the past and all we experienced there, then step back into the present. Thus, it is possible to live with much experience and emotion close to the surface of your skin yet not live trapped in the past.
It’s muscle memory; the ability to recall, interpret and re-create those moments into new moments. It requires some remembering and some deliberate forgetting.
I saw a man in the corner of my eye the other day who may or may not have been worth remembering or forgetting but I walked quickly away; without giving myself the chance to change my mind. I think now, in reflection, he is better to be forgot.
At the crosswalk I chose to not look behind me although I was certain I could see his shadow catching up.
Regardless of what we wish for; it’s remembering that happens so fast and forgetting that takes so long.
This was born on an airport concourse, while I was travelling forward. I stopped and breathed and this time, I was not caught.
i.
Remember is quicker than Forget
on the track of a mind.
You are easy
to forget to think about
if I walk quickly in a forward direction
if I do not look back
– I do not think to think about you.
I do not write you down, I do not imagine words to shape you
Out of the nothing, back to the mind.
I do not remember to make you from memory, I would not remember to forget.
I leave nothing in memoriam, but everything is left behind regardless; in nothing-ness.
But – if I stop or pause,
if catching my breath on an airport concourse
at a train station;
driven but not driving and left to wonder
interrupted by a red light –
if I do not propel myself forward from you
in every moment unceasing;
then Remember is quicker than Forget – and catches up to me.
I encounter the memory of you
who taps me on the shoulder,
I collide with you, the thought and thinking of you.
Remember is so quick, Forget so slow.
by tashmcgill | Feb 3, 2015 | Mind, Relationships
There’s nothing more heartbreaking or frustrating than listening to a friend talk about the latest fight they had with their lover or family member, when you hear an emergence of the same old patterns, the same old stories and the same habits. Those habits are slowly destroying the future of the relationship.
Conflict is necessary and inevitable, but not always necessarily bad. Conflict is often how we discover and process our differences. Because conflict can be any difference of opinion or desires, it is not always a ‘loud’ expression of discord. It’s how express conflict that makes all the difference as to whether it’s healthy or unhealthy.
In romantic situations, we’re often sold an idea of conflict merely being thinly veiled passion but despite promises of great makeup sex – conflict is much more than the flipside of our passion. Each of us will experience conflict with many different people in different ways throughout our lifetime. The key is to not become so habitual in the way we personally express conflict, that we are unable to learn and grow new, smarter ways of addressing conflict in our interpersonal relationships.
Most of us only have one, maybe two fight modes. If those fight modes are not constructive, then conflict is likely to be unhealthy, rather than something we can work through to achieve greater understanding, harmony and intimacy. If you can learn to evolve your fight modes over time, you can become a better communicator through conflict. You can grow from it. If you get stuck in an unconstructive fight mode, you might well be doing damage unwittingly.
Wondering what an unconstructive fight mode might be? Here are a few examples.
The Demand/Withdraw Cycle.
One partner (research says more often it will be a woman) demands change, discussion or resolution of an issue, while the other partner avoids or deflects. This cycle is a terrible way to fight because ultimately, nothing is able to be resolved. If one person is not participating in a conversation, it’s not really a fight. Quickly it becomes an attack. The danger is one person becoming dominant over the other because how they raise the issues (which may well be valid) is pushing the defensive boundaries of the other partner, thereby shutting down other forms of resolution or communication.
Carrying a Duffel Bag.
If you or your loved one’s fight mode includes frequently revisited previous conflicts, wrongs or mistakes – that’s a Duffel Bag fight mode. This person is cataloguing previous encounters and regularly unpacks them in any argument to back up their point. This is soul-destroying to live with. Are you carrying a duffel bag of things you’ve fought about but not resolved? Are you carrying a list of previous mistakes and not allowing your loved one a chance to move on or progress? Time to reset your fight modes before you destroy what’s left of your partner’s self-esteem or have yours destroyed.
The Roll Over.
Slightly different to the Demand/Withdraw (that one is really a team effort!), the Roll Over is the posture of someone who is already feeling defeated and prefers not to engage in the conflict at all. Whether you or your loved one is responding with this posture, it’s a fast track to misunderstanding and deep wounds on both sides. This can also be displayed as simply ignoring the issue.
The Pushback.
If one partner believes there to be an issue but the other partner proactively pushes back or denies the issue. Usually this is associated with a putdown of the other person’s perception or security in the relationship and/or personal critique.
The Whiplash.
If you’re ever been on the receiving end of this one, it’s actually hard to keep up with where the emotional swing is at. At any point in the conflict, your loved ones attitude might be full of love and/or remorse only to swing back moments later. It creates total instability and undermines any trust.
The Here We Go Again.
The fight instigator usually has a regular trigger that causes a chain reaction. The chain reaction might also include some of the above, however usually the other partner can recognize similar patterns and language being used and therefore will either role play how they’ve previously temporarily resolved the conflict or shut down. Repeating temporary solutions only exacerbates and extends the duration of this unhealthy conflict.
The ‘I Am Right, Regardless’ Posture.
If either partner or loved one maintains this posture, you might as well call it quits now. There is little comeback for a relationship where one party cannot reasonably fathom the possibility that they may be wrong. Where one person assumes a superior position to the other from the outset, the resulting conversation or conflict cannot be resolved without an affliction to the personhood of one or the other.
And of course Flight Mode.
Avoidance at all costs, the truth is that this mode usually only occurs if there is some sort of identity wound or paradigm that prevents the person from being able to face (even terrified) conflict of any kind. This might be an habitual affliction or something that is a direct result of previous conflicts.
A constructive fight mode might be something like Respond Don’t React, Listen Then Reflect, or even Blurt Then Talk. If you can talk about your fight modes then you’ve begun a path to recovery and constructive behaviour. If your fight modes are unhealthy, you’ll be either reinforcing negative patterns for yourself or the other person.
Learn to talk about fighting.
‘It makes it hard to talk to you when you go into this ‘………..’ mode’ because it makes me feel like….
Here’s the rub: it doesn’t matter what you fight about. The way you fight is actually what’s depicting the health of your relationship and communication. You could fight about the smallest trivial things each day, but if your conflict process is actually helping you to learn about one another in constructive ways, it’s fine. Typically these relationships already have a high level of security.
Healthy conflict can be exhilarating because a passionate encounter with another person’s beliefs and/or values can create a sense of intimacy. Think about when someone has stood up to protect the rights of others in a public setting, or the resolution of a longstanding family conflict. These emotions play highly into our moral compass when dealing with conflict.
Often, it simply doesn’t occur to people to talk about how they fight. The focus becomes what they were fighting about instead of how they approach the disagreement. The key to successfully moving towards ‘as little as possible conflict in the healthiest possible way’ means maintaining an open-mindedness to trying new ways of resolving conflict. This is particularly something that parents should be mindful of as they navigate through complex teenage or young adult years. At that stage of life, young adults are learning conflict patterns they are likely to repeat throughout their lifetimes.
If you are stuck in any one of these or other similar patterns – it’s time to get help or get out. The truth is that many relationships cannot be resolved because the work required to change behaviour patterns are too engrained to be re-wired neurologically or through behaviour therapy without a large commitment from both parties.
