Concepts on the Final

Relational Conflict Myths
-Conflict Styles

Relational Stages
Contact
-Perceptive Influences

Involvement
-Testing
-Intensification

Intimacy
-Helen Fisher's Loves
-Aristotle's Loves

Deterioration
-Communicative Behaviors

Repair
- Why We Stay Together

• Inertia
• Fear
• Emotional Attachment
• Children
• Commitment

Dissolution
- Why Things Fall Apart

• Unrealistic Beliefs
• Undefined Expectations
• Excessive Intimacy Claims
• Change
• Money
• Work
• Sex

Relational Amelioration

• Own your word
• Own your emotions
• Own your direction
• Release your expectations
• Release your past
• Realize Gratitude

Relational Maintenance

• Fidelity
• Friendship
• Forgiveness

The Mastery of Love

• The Track of Love, The Track of Fear
• The Man who Didn't Believe in Love
• The Magical Kitchen
• Sex, The Biggest Demon in Hell

Single Mom

Such a dichotomy in these words, not just semantically, but inherently. On one hand they’re spoken in demi-whisper as if they were a cake about to fall covered in fondant of pity, and on the other superhero implications grace the harrowed and depleted, duly noting the self-sacrifice, ultimate commitment and identity lost along the way to the playground.

Neither end give justice to this misnomer.

Single implies an abandonment, and certainly that argument’s been made a million times. But the single didn’t happen at the cusp of separation. Single moms are single long before they’re alone. What has changed is the displacement of weight; not a ballast or a keel that keep direction and momentum, rather a mass that once made living and rearing almost immovable is now sinking away from the effort. And as his shadow dissipates in the depths, what’s left is her identity as a woman. But all we see is a mother, single. An enigma and stigma, an implication of powerlessness and discount that warrants little more from lookers-on than pity. Especially those lookers in relational proximity.

Others define it as failure, more puzzling. And again, while much evidence is out there to the contrary, more women who are mothers have an opportunity to finally succeed in their core impetus, mothering without distraction. No one would consider remission from cancer a failure.

It’s also defined as less, single mom opposed to double parents, as if women need men to mother. They don’t. At all. It’s children who need men to father. When these efforts work in tandem, with some accord every now and then, there’s familial consonance, fidelity, the prescribed goal of any religious institution.

That’s why when marital standings change there’s an illicit subtext that single isn’t enough to do the job. Really? We live in a society where half the children will be reared at some point by one adult and we claim that’s not enough? Don’t get me started on single dad.

And others define it with capes and masks, and while I’d never discount the commitment and valiance of a single mom, as soon as we ascribe her with superhuman values, we’ve overlooked the single most important aspect that enables her maternity; she is a woman first, that sacred feminine that does so much more for the human condition than simply its perpetuation.

nothing has changed

Given the apocalyptic diatribes and vitriol spawned in contrast to the joy and celebrations of the events of last week, it’s important to understand that if you are white, married, straight and Christian, nothing has changed for you.

Nothing has changed for you with the removal of the Confederate flag from any State edifice or grounds, from the shelves of WalMart or Target or the web pages of Amazon. The first is an exercise of State’s rights and the second an exercise of either prudent commerce or public relations, or both, because regardless of how you feel about the stars and bars, despite what it means to you, it was created to represent a tyrannical movement rooted in state’s rights endorsing slavery, the complete and total subjugation of blacks. The only way you could possibly be affected by the removal of this flag while remaining insensitive for what it has represented to millions of our brothers and sisters is because you are a racist. If that’s the way you feel, nothing has changed for you.

Nothing has changed for you with the SCOTUS’ decision to legalize marriage equality. If it has, your own marriage is not what you purport it to be. If it is so fragile that the very idea that homosexuals can now be recognized by states the same way “traditional” marriages can, whatever the divisive issue may be is within your own matrimony. The definition of marriage has only changed for you if you are gay or lesbian, and if you’re in love with someone with whom you wish to legally and lawfully wed and if you live in a state where that right has yet to be afforded. If you’re already married to someone, someone of the opposite sex, you are living your definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Nothing has changed for you.  

Nothing has changed for you with the legal sanction for all individuals to have the same rights to marriage. If you believe these rights will infringe upon your religious freedoms, you have little understanding of the First Amendment. Nothing has changed for you.

Most of all, though, nothing has changed for you if you’re a Christian. Your marriage vows, covenants and promises are no less sacred nor holy simply because those you esteem to be unworthy of the blessings of marriage can enter into it. The Atonement still stands for your salvation. You’ll still be saved by your works or by grace or by whatever you believe. The Sermon on the Mount has not lost its efficacy. The SCOTUS has no jurisdiction there. But, if you feel indignant that gays can now marry, if you love the sinner, but hate the sin, if you claim you have friends who are gay but don’t understand their lifestyle choices, religion - with all its potential to ameliorate the human condition - has been lost on you.

If you have taken upon yourself the name of Christ, and if you take emblems regularly reminding you of His sacrifice and gospel, and if you feel contempt, outrage, atrocity, and doom due to the removal of a symbol of hate and the legalization of marriage equality, nothing has changed for you.

This is not the end of the world, but two incredibly significant steps to making it better.

Eric Young is the anti-Christ

One of my most common complaints from students is that they wish I wouldn’t bring up religion in class discussion. I can see it in their faces and the hair on the backs of their necks any time I broach the subject. Figurative dukes up, ready to defend. 

My retort for years has been if they (those who find offense, it’s certainly not everyone) can divorce their religion, the foundation of their values from the way they treat people, the way they communicate, I’ll gladly skirt religion.

As I write this there are nineteen countries involved in religious conflict. According to the Center for Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict, these countries include:

The Balkans – Eastern Orthodox v. Muslims
Brazil – internal Roman Catholic conflict
The Caucasus – Christian v. Muslim, Orthodox v. a breakaway faction
China – the government v. Buddhism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Taoists
Egypt – Muslims v. Christians
Ethiopia – Muslims v. Christians
India and Pakistan – Hindus v. Muslims
Indonesia – Christians v. Muslims
Iran – the persecution of the Baha’is
Iraq – Shiites v. Sunnis
Malaysia – Hindus v. Muslims v. Christians
The Middle East – Judaism v. Islam
Myanmar – Buddhists v. Christians
Nigeria – Christians v. Muslims
Northern Ireland – Roman Catholics v. Protestants
The Philippines – Muslim v. Roman Catholics
Sri Lanka – Hindus v. Buddhists
The Sudan – Christians v. Muslims
The United States – Muslims v. Christians

Historic conflicts have been more ideological rooted in theology, a breakaway in thinking condemned by a ruling religious order. These ideologies include concepts such as the solar system, the properties of light, lightning, mathematics, interest on money, anesthetics during childbirth, birth control, inoculation, and the shape of the earth. Lives have been taken over these.

More recently, theology was used to justify slavery, genocide, and racism.

Today we’re fighting about race, gay marriage, unwanted pregnancies, capital punishment, sex education, polygamy, evolution, and the list goes on. These are quieter conflicts, though just as polarizing. What I’m not seeing is the amelioration of the human condition, a tide of compassion transcending tolerance. Instead there is division with patronized forbearance. For example, if while reading the list of countries above the thought crossed your mind that the reason these nations are warring is because they don’t have the truth that you enjoy, I’d bet that you’d complain about my class discussions as well.

Christ, Hillel, and Confucius held a common tenet, one that either exacerbates the nature of the crimes listed above or justifies their impetus. For Jesus it was treat others as you want to be treated. The great Rabbi taught, “What thou thyself hatest, do not to thy neighbor.” Confucius taught it with one word, reciprocity. Granted, the Koran is bereft of such an idea, though it does state, “No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”

Each of the above is a variation of a theme, love one another or at least hate not one another. Oddly, it is a premise dropped in order to defend it.

So when I get comments like, “I go to Church on Sunday, I don’t need to hear Eric talk about it on Monday,” or “I don’t like it when Eric talks about religion,” or “Eric Young is the anti-Christ,” I get a bit blue, because I’m not getting through. And I realize I won’t with everybody, I know, but the authors of these comments are the ones who had the most to learn.

Like it or not, the way we treat people is inextricably linked to the way we value them and that value is drawn from an emotion of love or an emotion of fear. The nineteen examples above illustrate the power of fear.

If love prevailed we’d have much less conflict over religion. If love prevailed the differentiation between sects would be obscured, the colors of skin would integrate, and tongues would wag between smiles regardless of language. If love prevailed ire would sleep in my classes and I could entertain more useful feedback from my students.

Until then I’ll talk about religion in my classes and how it impacts the way we communicate.

that dichotomy of being

Seldom a day goes by where I don’t make the decision to keep on living. That is difficult to admit here, but I’m guessing not all that surprising. 

I received a text from my son telling me of Robin William’s passing and my first response was that of not surprise, but an old familiar intense and deep sadness, emotions as akin to me as love and even joy. Since then there’s been a deluge of tributes and outreaches, memories and affects of the artist and actor and human on all channels social media, and in its wake, and in this wake, I just wanted to offer up something.

This is not so much about hope as it is about patience. This is not so much about being happy as it is about being. And this is not so much about cost as it is about value.

It has been about twenty years since I understood my dependency on living for something to which I was looking forward, getting caught up in the notion of won’t-it-be-great-when. I’ve come to learn it is a human default; that grass-is-greener, train-in-the-distance thing that energizes the part of our brain that suspects there may be something better than our status quo. It’s a Christmas way to live, the only problem being is that 364 days feel like December 26th.

Hope, for whatever the virtue inscribes – a vacation, a cure, a relief, a relationship – amplifies its own wonder and longing, its own giddy anticipation that builds to one of two common termini, satisfaction or disappointment, the latter being for far too many the most prevalent. I believe we have conditioned ourselves for such, but that is something to write about in another post.

Patience, hope’s journey, is an acceptance of the time it takes, the steps required, the rotations of the planet necessary to the end, instilling more presence in the trip, a leveled sense of purpose that for me can displace depression. Not always, but honestly, nothing ever does.

I’ve learned, though, that nothing ever completely displaces being either, not even suicide. In my Interpersonal curriculum we discuss certain self-defeating drivers, one of which is be strong. It is in this content that I kid my students that I take meds to knock off the edge of happy, that were I not medicated I’d be vaulting through the halls singing odes to joy. At the cusp of convincing them of this case I say, not really, I don’t take pills to make me less happy. And why not? Because happy is not diagnosed as a mental illness.

Now, before I get taken in the wrong vein here, I’ll say that clinical depression can warrant a pharmaceutical intervention, no question. Been there. That’s a bit of a pun within itself because while I was medicated not only did I not feel the pain and despair and hopelessness of my depression, I also did not feel like being. Depression – again, this according to my own experience – can be as much an emotional default as happiness and joy. We feel it. And while it hurts as much as happy heals, it is not for the most part an illness. It just is. It falls somewhere on that dichotomy of being. Anesthetizing emotion blurs that line.

I have big holes in my heart. Many are the size of people, both living and dead. Some the sizes of dogs and others little chasms of regret. These holes cause pain; costs of mistakes, costs dying, costs of narcissism. Pain is too easily described in terms of loss. On those days where it overwhelms my own valentine I have to force myself to recognize the value of pain instead of its cost; the amelioration from relations, the appreciation of the present and the grace of allowing someone most precious to die.

For what this is worth, and in the hope that this may assuage you on some level, this in supplement to the love and grace of my children and my companion is why, on those particular days, I decide to live.

Your Put-Into-Practice Post on the Authentic Self

I've received several questions on this assignment so I thought I'd clarify. We've talked about the self-concept this week, from the JoHari Window to self-defeating drivers. Did something resonate with you? Light a spark? An A-ha moment? Have you discovered something you would like to change about yourself, the way you think about yourself, your negative self-talk? If so, these are ideas you can write about for your posts.

-e

Apology

From imnosaint, January 9, 2012

I posted on the last day of last year something that’s turned trite and tinny, and I must apologize, because it’s nothing more than an empty promise. 

“It gets better,” I said, an emulation or a ripoff of a message intended for those who live with bullying, or rejection, or judgment, or fear. You can add to that list.

That’s not true, though. It doesn’t get better. It just is. It does what it wants. It has a mind of its own. It doesn’t regard you, how you’re feeling, what you wish for. It just is. You are inconsequential to it.

The blown red light, the wrong place at the wrong time, the injustice of a decision, the errant division of cells, the poison of words; whatever is decried just happened or worse, even terrifying to most, is that it will. And you can’t stop it.

Really, what you can do with it is relatively limited.

You can fear it. Most do. Much of our communication is driven by the fear perpetuated by it. Fear of judgment, failure, disappointing, consequences beyond our control, as if we had any. Control, that is.

You can resist it. Fate or fortune swings that quotidian pendulum to a place that hurts or a place that feels really good, but the spin of this old orb seems to centrifugally draw that swinging indicator back to where we’ve allowed it to rest, resisting both the differences of what fate and fortune can offer.

You can deny it. Fear is often managed through denial. Not my kid. Not in my backyard. Not in our schools. Not in this country. It kills, it divides, it’s unjust, it’s liberating, it evolves, it teaches.

You can embrace it. All of it. Remove the value; good, bad, right, wrong, heaven, hell, and it just may begin to fit within the circle of your arms. It’s a risk. It will hurt.

And you can heal. It doesn’t get better, you do.

You can get better, better at it. It just is.

You are so much more.