Thursday, July 30, 2009

Space in Relationships

“But let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.” – Kahlil Gilbran

I think most people have trouble with the task of creating space within togetherness. Taking space for oneself, leaving it for the other, and creating it for the relationship are challenges that we need to make conscious and face head-on. Togetherness should never feel like imprisonment, and love ought not come with shackles… though it often seems this way. I think we need to ask whether love is even the right word if what is being offered comes with restrictions that feel like imprisonment.

Whereas prisons and shackles don’t sound very appealing, the truth is that many of us participate in this way of being together: Parents, children, siblings, romantic partners, and friends. Why is this?

For a great many, fear is the answer (it often is)—Fear of rejection, abandonment, humiliation, and shame. We think we won’t survive such experiences, and so we set-up our relationships—or try to—in a way that we believe will allow us to avoid them. We, understandably, try to protect ourselves from the potential pain. We seem to do this in two related ways.

1. We don’t give the other the space to be fully him or herself.

2. We don’t take the space we need to be wholly our selves (Eric Francis, www.planetwaves.net). **

The problem is that in the long run, these strategies only create more pain.

Most of the time this process happens subtly, which makes it all the more insidious, with fear flowing into the relationship unnoticed, underground, and yet pervasively. Working this out would be more simple, for example, if a woman said to her partner: “I’m afraid that I won’t be important to you some day and that you’ll leave me. When you spend time golfing with your friends, I feel my fear strongly and so I want you to stay with me rather than go out golfing.” Instead, this same fear is often acted out more passively and subtly: The woman starts to grow silent whenever her partner talks about going out with friends, and she grows angry when he/she’s on the phone scheduling a tee-time. Her partner notices this but doesn’t understand why. Her partner cannot see her fear.

We can say that because of her fear, the woman is not giving her partner the space needed--space to nurture other friendships and to engage in his/her passion.

Let’s say her partner feels her anger and hurt, even if it’s not explicit. And let’s say this partner then decides to cancel plans with friends. Or maybe the partner gets very angry and starts blaming the woman for all sorts of dissatisfactions in his/her own life. Either way, the partner is now the one not taking space for him/herself, probably because he/she is also afraid. Afraid of not being good enough, afraid that the woman might walk away from the relationship, afraid of being accused of being selfish, or fearful of engaging in life with passion….

As adults, we are responsible for filling up the space of our own lives. Doing so involves recognizing one’s own needs and acting in ways that best allow these needs to be met. Conscious living is about awareness (i.e., recognition) + action (i.e., exercising one’s ability to respond). Fear, again understandably, gets in the way. Fortunately, there is a way out of this: When fear is present we can look for a need within it, and we can recognize that the more intense the fear, the more than need is experienced as a matter of survival.

Let’s go back to the woman: Under her fear is a need for something- perhaps a need to feel important. This need is valid for her. It may even feel like a matter of survival because of some deeply held belief she learned long ago: “I will only be loved if I’m important.” What is problematic is that now, as an adult, she is expecting her partner to take responsibility for this. She relies on her partner to help her to feel important, and she does this unconsciously (meaning without awareness and without her own ability to respond to her need), which ends up feeling a bit like shackles to the partner! As challenging as it might be, it is up to her to feed her own need for a sense of importance, and it is up to her to test out and possibly learn that even when she doesn’t feel important, she is still loved and she can definitely survive.

Going back to the partner: If he/she tries to fill the woman’s need to feel important due also to fear, and in doing so neglects his/her own needs thereby failing to take space for him/herself, resentment is the likely result. The whole situation becomes a vicious cycle and the inability to give or take the space-to-be becomes toxic, poisoning the relationship between partners as well as the relationship that each partner has with him/herself.

How do we step out of this cycle? Because it is fueled by fear, the way out must contain a great deal of compassion. Each partner must be compassionate with him/herself and with the other. Compassion allows us to see through the defenses to the fear, just as seeing through to the fear allows compassion to flow. Compassion does not mean giving up one’s own space! We cannot have true compassion for another unless we also have it for ourselves, which literally means coming together with our own passions. Stated another way, this means filling out the space of our own short lives, which further requires tolerating the fear, guilt, or shame—of others and ourselves—that may arise as a result. Therapy can help both the process of increased awareness as well as that of tolerating the resulting feelings that can at first be difficult when one begins to live more consciously.

** The notion of giving another space is influenced by Object Relations Theory and D.W. Winnicott’s notion of a holding environment (1960). The idea of taking space is attributed to Eric Francis, whom I have heard speak about this concept in personal communication and various pieces of writing.

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