TOO BUSY TO READ? I've read it for you!
SEPTEMBER 2010 BOOK:
How Can I Get Through to You?
By Terry Real
This is perhaps Terry Real's densest book and the one written with the most heart and soul.He wrote this book first, before his best-seller, The New Rules of Marriage, and it is here that he collates all of his “great thinkers” who have influenced him in building his model. People may recognize some of the material from his Self Skills: Relational Skills
that he learned from working with Pia Mellody.
This newsletter is about the success story. What does it look like when each partner practices relational skills on their own in order to work the same skills within the relationship?
Learning relational integrity means managing your end of the seesaw, knowing what your partner does on his end is nothing over which you have control. This depends on what Pia Mellody calls moderation; the capacity to experience, hold, and express oneself moderately without being excessively immature or mature; a big baby or a stiff.
The relational dynamic to individual moderation is the capacity to practice containment and stay moderate in the face of your partner's immoderateness.
Staying seated in maturity when your partner is acting like a big baby is like riding uphill.
Even though it is hard to remain adult when your partner is acting like a big baby and especially if that behavior is being disguised as a one-up or one-down personna that you might actually believe, immoderateness of any kind is a cry for connection. You don't have to be the connector and therapist for your partner, you just want to stay available for connection.
This means that you can set boundaries and sit with them, often in solitude and often when you're being goaded to do something else by your partner or by your own fears.
The capacity to do this, I believe, is a spiritual act.
SELF SKILLS |
RELATIONAL SKILLS |
- Self-Esteem
- Holding self in warm regard, despite imperfections and limitations
- Dysfunction
- Shame
- Grandiosty
- Self-Awareness
- Knowing one’s own experience (thoughts /emotions /sensations) and sharing them politically
- Dysfunction
- Disassociation
- Boundaries
- Ability to protect and contain oneself while remaining connected to others
- Dysfunction
- Too porous (reactive)
- Interdependence
- Identifying one’s wants and needs; caring for self/letting others care for one appropriately
- Dysfunction
- Overdependent
- Antidependent /needless /wantless
- Moderation
- Experiencing and expressing oneself moderately
- Dysfunction
- Immature (too “loose”)
- “Supermature” (too “tight”)
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- Relational Esteem
- Holding the relationship in warm regard despite imperfections and limitations (harmony /disillusionment /repair)
- Dysfunction
- Control> revenge> resignation
- Speaking Relationally
- Contract before speaking; speak from the “I” (multiple subjects); move from complaint to request (negative past to positive future)
- Dysfunction
- Objectivity battles
- Listening Relationally
- Listen with an internal boundary; respond by scanning for the positive (lead with agreement, not argument)
- Dysfunction
- Defensiveness /argumentativeness /walls
- Contracting
- Moving from “win/lose” to relational wisdom
- Dystunction
- Zero/sum power struggle; needs are not directly expressed; contracts left too open-ended or vague
- Relational Integrity
- Staying moderate in the face of your partner’s immoderateness (detachment from outcome)
- Dysfunction
- Answering immature behavior with reciprocal immaturity either complimentary or symmetrical
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Wendy Allen, Ph.D, MFTis a psychotherapist and coach. She is an expert in Couples and Marriage therapy.
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