This is the seventh and final part in a multi-part series of articles.
A relationship that plumbs the depths of intimacy in the physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual requires a certain amount of commitment in order to be healthy. Imagine emotionally intertwining who you are with someone else, only to have that someone else decide that they want to jerk free of that entanglement. That is just a terribly damaging act, and divorces illustrate just how painful it can be. The greater the depth of intimacy, the greater the pain.
Not only do deep relationships require commitment, but they also seek balance. If I pursue depth of intimacy in the intellectual, I'm probably going to seek it in the other three aspects as well. That's just part of being human. We want the whole package. A common reason for people not pursuing the whole package is cynicism; the lack of belief that intimacy in a given aspect is even possible. It takes trust to accept the possibility that such depth of intimacy in so many areas can happen with another human being.
And all this brings us to the topic of marriage. Consider the notions that greater depth of intimacy implies greater commitment, and that we seek balance in all four aspects of relating. The greatest physical intimacy is procreative - sex. If a couple has chosen to be that physically intimate, then it suggests that they are equally intimate in the emotional, intellectual and spiritual. A relationship that involves sex without similar levels of intimacy in the other aspects will lead to discontent or even disaster.
A good marriage is one where the man and woman commit to each other completely. This means that they have permitted themselves to open up to each other physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. Given such a setting, what are they committing to each other about? Buying and selling cars? Writing books? No, those aren't implicit in a deep, intimate relationship between human beings. What is implicit, then? Children.
Remember that the best marriage has great and balanced intimacy in all four areas. If you're being physically intimate and are committed to each other and your relationship, then you accept the healthy completion of that intimacy. Holding back will jeopardize the relationship. Refusing to say why you don't want to move to a new city is an intellectual withholding. Lying about why you're crying at a certain moment is an emotional withholding. Not wanting to have children is a physical withholding.
Holding back from commitment in a marriage is going to complicate matters and quite probably lead to disaster in the relationship. That's because of the desire for depth and balance. The whole picture is complicated by the fact that none of us has the complete and perfect understanding of how to have healthy relationships. But imagine a couple that has entered marriage with the agreement that they will have no children. A few years later, one or the other comes to understand that children would be a deeper intimacy between the two of them. One will want to pursue greater depth, while the other with withhold. Tension results, and possibly disaster. Nobody wants to hear "no" to a request for greater intimacy and commitment in a relationship.
A choice to bear and raise children is really the ultimate in relationships for people. We can pursue great depth of relationships that emphasize a particular aspect of relating, but because of a lack of balance in the other aspects, it will feel incomplete and we will be discontent whenever we have an opportunity to explore the depths of the unbalanced aspects. That is, if we have a relationship of great emotional depth and an opportunity comes to share a spiritual intimacy, there will be a disconnect between the two people. People usually work around such shortcomings by learning to avoid certain areas of their relationship, and that is terribly limiting. Many people learn to avoid areas of relating altogether because they are so practiced at it from prior relationships. Said another way, they dodge topics and issues because they've been burned in the past.
If you are of a mind to pursue a marriage with someone, remember that you are approaching the greatest intimacy that people can experience, and that you will find the greatest joy when you know how to both plumb the depths of the four aspects of relating as well as balance them. If you hold back, or if you choose to unbalance your relationship - or are faced with someone who does either - then the relationship will suffer. No relationship is perfectly deep and balanced, but you and your prospective spouse should surely be aware of the possibilities and the pitfalls. Study the task of loving. You will benefit and your children will benefit by your example.
This concludes the Relationship PIES series.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Relationship PIES - Dating
This is the sixth in a multi-part series of articles.
If you want to develop a relationship with someone, you've gotta pursue a balance of the four aspects of a PIES relationship. Start shallow and work to depth, intensifying in each of the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
How does a PIES date go? In truth, dating the way that you probably think about it is a bad idea from the very start. Extensive one-on-one time with a man or a woman that you are interested in is just not a good idea. That tends to quickly produce a little bubble world where the two people relate to each other in ways that they are most comfortable with, ignoring the need to relate in areas that they are less comfortable with.
We're shooting for a balance in the four areas, and a good way to do that is to involve other people in the relationship. Ideally, we want to avoid focusing our attention on a single person. Instead, we want to have a dozen relationships going all at one time, each at a level that works with that person. This isn't anything new, of course. You have a relationship with your family, with your coworkers, with each of your friends, and so on. Unfortunately, we're constantly faced with relationship that aren't going to build any depth, which is why we grasp at the least bit of depth - even when that depth is guaranteed to be in only one aspect. One aspect is better than none, right?
Unfortunately, not. So many people develop strong single-aspect relationships. The classic is the strongly physical relationship, where the two people do many things together, but they never share anything about themselves with each other, they never discuss what's going on in the world, and they just don't get into the nitty-gritties of what really motivates them, their dreams and hopes, etc. We turn our backs on the aspects that we don't want to explore, building a kind of fantasy relationship that will crumble as soon as it is put to the test.
The test comes about when other people are added to the mix, and when they throw curves at the relationship that the two people were diligently avoiding because of the "work" involved. They have no interest in possibly sabotaging their physical relationship because it's the best that they have going. It's better than nothing. Yet life does throw curves at relationships, and the relationship that survives the jostling and bumping is the strong one. It's the balanced one. It's the PIES one.
So which relationship is going to survive? Well, that takes us back to spirituality, which is really the cornerstone of any relationship. If two people are physically attracted to each other, emotionally compatible and intellectually challenged by each other, a disconnect on spirituality is just going to be a drain on anything else that they have. Remember that spirituality is about our basic motivations in life. What we believe at a fundamental level. If I believe that a loving family is important to my relationship with my girlfriend and she believes that family has no real role in our relationship, we're going to lock horns in a fundamental way.
To avoid locking horns over the big stuff, we need to be always looking for what's best for a relationship. For example, can a relationship operate without a loving family being involved? Sure. But it's going to be handicapped. And that brings us back to involving other people in a relationship. Those other people can be a reality check for the relationship. That's true only if those other people have a healthy understanding of relationships. Because we're the reality check for so many other people's relationships, we need to be studying relationships and understanding them.
Don't get me wrong about the non-spiritual aspects of relating. They're still critical, because those aspects are part of us. But without the spiritual, any relationship will lack fundamental resilience.
In summary, if you're trying to develop a relationship with someone, stop being insular and focus on getting your relationship out in the open where others can see it. Make your relationship something to be proud of, not something to sneak by others. As you work on your relationship, ensure that you develop it in a balanced way, avoiding the temptation of delving deeply into one area while letting other areas atrophy. Depth is very appealing to us, but depth without breadth produces a relationship that will eventually fall over.
Next time, marriage.
If you want to develop a relationship with someone, you've gotta pursue a balance of the four aspects of a PIES relationship. Start shallow and work to depth, intensifying in each of the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
How does a PIES date go? In truth, dating the way that you probably think about it is a bad idea from the very start. Extensive one-on-one time with a man or a woman that you are interested in is just not a good idea. That tends to quickly produce a little bubble world where the two people relate to each other in ways that they are most comfortable with, ignoring the need to relate in areas that they are less comfortable with.
We're shooting for a balance in the four areas, and a good way to do that is to involve other people in the relationship. Ideally, we want to avoid focusing our attention on a single person. Instead, we want to have a dozen relationships going all at one time, each at a level that works with that person. This isn't anything new, of course. You have a relationship with your family, with your coworkers, with each of your friends, and so on. Unfortunately, we're constantly faced with relationship that aren't going to build any depth, which is why we grasp at the least bit of depth - even when that depth is guaranteed to be in only one aspect. One aspect is better than none, right?
Unfortunately, not. So many people develop strong single-aspect relationships. The classic is the strongly physical relationship, where the two people do many things together, but they never share anything about themselves with each other, they never discuss what's going on in the world, and they just don't get into the nitty-gritties of what really motivates them, their dreams and hopes, etc. We turn our backs on the aspects that we don't want to explore, building a kind of fantasy relationship that will crumble as soon as it is put to the test.
The test comes about when other people are added to the mix, and when they throw curves at the relationship that the two people were diligently avoiding because of the "work" involved. They have no interest in possibly sabotaging their physical relationship because it's the best that they have going. It's better than nothing. Yet life does throw curves at relationships, and the relationship that survives the jostling and bumping is the strong one. It's the balanced one. It's the PIES one.
So which relationship is going to survive? Well, that takes us back to spirituality, which is really the cornerstone of any relationship. If two people are physically attracted to each other, emotionally compatible and intellectually challenged by each other, a disconnect on spirituality is just going to be a drain on anything else that they have. Remember that spirituality is about our basic motivations in life. What we believe at a fundamental level. If I believe that a loving family is important to my relationship with my girlfriend and she believes that family has no real role in our relationship, we're going to lock horns in a fundamental way.
To avoid locking horns over the big stuff, we need to be always looking for what's best for a relationship. For example, can a relationship operate without a loving family being involved? Sure. But it's going to be handicapped. And that brings us back to involving other people in a relationship. Those other people can be a reality check for the relationship. That's true only if those other people have a healthy understanding of relationships. Because we're the reality check for so many other people's relationships, we need to be studying relationships and understanding them.
Don't get me wrong about the non-spiritual aspects of relating. They're still critical, because those aspects are part of us. But without the spiritual, any relationship will lack fundamental resilience.
In summary, if you're trying to develop a relationship with someone, stop being insular and focus on getting your relationship out in the open where others can see it. Make your relationship something to be proud of, not something to sneak by others. As you work on your relationship, ensure that you develop it in a balanced way, avoiding the temptation of delving deeply into one area while letting other areas atrophy. Depth is very appealing to us, but depth without breadth produces a relationship that will eventually fall over.
Next time, marriage.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Relationship PIES - Spiritual
This is the fifth in a multi-part series of articles.
Last time, I talked about the emotional and how emotions are given to us. That they are instinctive. This time, we go to the other extreme and talk about the thing that most uniquely defines who we are - our spiritual side.
For most people, this immediately means God, religion and prayer. When I speak of spirituality, I'm talking about something that is the common denominator of all spirituality, and that is the ethics and mnrality that someone practices. You may choose not to steal, and your rationale may be that it is in violation of a Holy Commandment. You may choose not to steal, and your reationale may be that it's against the law. Either way, you are making ethical and moral choices, and they are based on some view of reality that influences everything that you do. That is your spirituality.
In the context of relationships, this is the most critical aspect of relating. Two people can have an incredibly deep relationship if they are compatible in their spirituality. They may not be attracted to each other physically, emotionally or intellectually, but if they share a spiritual connection, there is something deep within each of them that will draw them towards each other. Quite likely, they will find common ground in the other aspects of their lives. This is called "learning to love each other", and people have done it for generations after finding themselves married to each other.
I want to present a warning here about relationships that are predominantly spiritual becuase I'm sure that some readers mentally skipped the "not prayer" statements, while greedily absorbing the "spirituality lets you go deep". Depth of a spiritual relationship comes from sharing the same core values, not just the same church or the same prayers. If two people can pray a Catholic rosary together, but differ over the morality of homosexuality, or the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, then any spiritual connection that they have is tenuous at best.
Another important thing to consider here is that many people don't even have a formed notion of their spirituality, of their ethics and morality. They just live life one challenge at a time, without thinking about the big picture. Yet, when the time comes, everyone makes a decision. If faced with a decision to have an abortion, a decision will have to be made. If faced with a decision to tell that little white lie, a decision will have to be made. We have an ethical and moral structure within us, and it's up to us to explore it and refine it. If we don't do that, then we will fall back on our instincts and simply do whatever our instincts (our emotional side) tells us to do. We will be at the mercy of whatever emotions we have, and uninformed choices are not always the best ones.
If you want to develop your ability to spiritually relate to others, be sure to develop your spirituality. If you don't know how, look into some formulated packages of spirituality. Religions are just that. Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and many more besides. They all entail rules of conduct that are consistent with the ethics and morality that come from the basic notions of the faiths - the beliefs. And be sure to look at the ideals of the faith more than the actions of those who claim to be the faithful. Sometimes, extremists can misinterpret the ideal ethical and moral structure espoused by a faith into something that is fundamentally inconsistent with it. This is true of all faiths because it is true of people. Sometimes I wonder whether that has happened with the American constitution. How many of our laws are fundamentally at odds with what the original writers had in mind?
To relate to others spiritually takes little more than a conversation or some simple actions. When a man opens a door for a woman - or doesn't open it - he is declaring a little bit of his spirituality to her. When a woman dresses in the sexy dress versus the frumpy dress, she is displaying a little bit of her spirituality to the world. These are tiny glimpses of the ethical and moral structure that each holds within them. Explore the small and the large when you want to pursue a relationship. You never know something until you ask. Indeed, the very act of asking may help someone to spend the time to figure out why they believe what they believe.
Unless practiced, it can be very difficult to distill the ethical and moral situation. Consider that the large organized religions are the distillation of hundreds or even thousands of years of people looking hard at ethics and morality. There must be something to the religions. They have motivated people do some very good things. It is that understanding that we should be looking to gain, because our relationships will be that much more easily understood, ultimately leading to the best relationships possible.
Next time, dating.
Last time, I talked about the emotional and how emotions are given to us. That they are instinctive. This time, we go to the other extreme and talk about the thing that most uniquely defines who we are - our spiritual side.
For most people, this immediately means God, religion and prayer. When I speak of spirituality, I'm talking about something that is the common denominator of all spirituality, and that is the ethics and mnrality that someone practices. You may choose not to steal, and your rationale may be that it is in violation of a Holy Commandment. You may choose not to steal, and your reationale may be that it's against the law. Either way, you are making ethical and moral choices, and they are based on some view of reality that influences everything that you do. That is your spirituality.
In the context of relationships, this is the most critical aspect of relating. Two people can have an incredibly deep relationship if they are compatible in their spirituality. They may not be attracted to each other physically, emotionally or intellectually, but if they share a spiritual connection, there is something deep within each of them that will draw them towards each other. Quite likely, they will find common ground in the other aspects of their lives. This is called "learning to love each other", and people have done it for generations after finding themselves married to each other.
I want to present a warning here about relationships that are predominantly spiritual becuase I'm sure that some readers mentally skipped the "not prayer" statements, while greedily absorbing the "spirituality lets you go deep". Depth of a spiritual relationship comes from sharing the same core values, not just the same church or the same prayers. If two people can pray a Catholic rosary together, but differ over the morality of homosexuality, or the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, then any spiritual connection that they have is tenuous at best.
Another important thing to consider here is that many people don't even have a formed notion of their spirituality, of their ethics and morality. They just live life one challenge at a time, without thinking about the big picture. Yet, when the time comes, everyone makes a decision. If faced with a decision to have an abortion, a decision will have to be made. If faced with a decision to tell that little white lie, a decision will have to be made. We have an ethical and moral structure within us, and it's up to us to explore it and refine it. If we don't do that, then we will fall back on our instincts and simply do whatever our instincts (our emotional side) tells us to do. We will be at the mercy of whatever emotions we have, and uninformed choices are not always the best ones.
If you want to develop your ability to spiritually relate to others, be sure to develop your spirituality. If you don't know how, look into some formulated packages of spirituality. Religions are just that. Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and many more besides. They all entail rules of conduct that are consistent with the ethics and morality that come from the basic notions of the faiths - the beliefs. And be sure to look at the ideals of the faith more than the actions of those who claim to be the faithful. Sometimes, extremists can misinterpret the ideal ethical and moral structure espoused by a faith into something that is fundamentally inconsistent with it. This is true of all faiths because it is true of people. Sometimes I wonder whether that has happened with the American constitution. How many of our laws are fundamentally at odds with what the original writers had in mind?
To relate to others spiritually takes little more than a conversation or some simple actions. When a man opens a door for a woman - or doesn't open it - he is declaring a little bit of his spirituality to her. When a woman dresses in the sexy dress versus the frumpy dress, she is displaying a little bit of her spirituality to the world. These are tiny glimpses of the ethical and moral structure that each holds within them. Explore the small and the large when you want to pursue a relationship. You never know something until you ask. Indeed, the very act of asking may help someone to spend the time to figure out why they believe what they believe.
Unless practiced, it can be very difficult to distill the ethical and moral situation. Consider that the large organized religions are the distillation of hundreds or even thousands of years of people looking hard at ethics and morality. There must be something to the religions. They have motivated people do some very good things. It is that understanding that we should be looking to gain, because our relationships will be that much more easily understood, ultimately leading to the best relationships possible.
Next time, dating.
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