Seeking a New Relationship from the Inside Out (1 of 2)

Be sure to read "About This Blog" on my website The Craft of Life as it lays the foundation for what follows.

This blog is meant primarily as a support for those who have read and are practicing The Craft of Life. I plan to explore everyday topics and common situations to provide an expanded view of the principles presented in my book. Our focus will be on shifting our perception from the norm to something new and different. We will practice seeing life in its myriad forms from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Today I raise the question: what would it look like to pursue a new relationship from the inside out rather than from the outside in?

Here is a typical way that we meet people and begin a relationship. We place an ad on one of the many dating sites. In it, we describe ourselves: who we are, what we do, what we like, what we don’t like. Must enjoy dancing. Open to exploring new things. Please like cats (or dogs). I prefer Christian or Jewish or atheist. We are inviting someone else to do the same. We are telling them this is me from the outside in; this is me and how I live my life; if you happen to match my profile, please get in touch and I will look at you, also from the outside in, to see if it feels like a match. We look at their photo; they look at ours. Do we like what we see? Are we attracted to this person? These are the points we focus on. Some will go further and want to hear about what the other person believes: are you a Republican, a Democrat, a socialist, a communist? Pro-war, anti-war? Pro-life, pro-choice? Do you believe in God? Are you an atheist, agnostic, a Buddhist? Mutually exploring one another’s beliefs and values would appear to be a dialogue about inner thoughts and feelings. But none of this is what I mean by living life from the inside out.

All of the above also would be true if we met someone in a bar or out and about or if a friend introduced us to this other person because they believed we might hit it off. We meet. We exchange information about living our life from the outside in and try to determine if what we see matches.

"I like this thing, this activity, this food."

"Me, too?"

"Wow! You’re into all of these things, too?"

"Yes, I am."

"We seem to have a lot in common."

Of course, the most important factor of all is chemistry. Do we feel that special something as we gaze into this person’s eyes? Does that mysterious and unknowable force spontaneously awaken in our hearts and loins? Do we find this other person attractive? While we may attribute this to other things, our assessment and decision to pursue a relationship are based almost wholly on impressions from the outside in.

All of this would be fine if 100% of our identity were known to us, but this is not the case. Half of who we are remains neatly tucked away within the unconscious part of our mind. We don’t see it. We don’t think about it. We don’t consider it in our decisions. But it is there, all the time, as a dynamic part of our identity. Within my model, which I call Identity Theory, I refer to this part as the hidden self. The hidden self is the repository of our unfulfilled emotional longings, along with the personal strength required to ask for them, which we surrendered growing up. The conscious part of our identity, which I call the seen self, removes these emotional longings and personal power and stores them out of sight in our hidden self, or unconscious part of identity, as a way to avoid disapproval and rejection for revealing them. Our seen self works ceaselessly to ensure this horrible and dangerous event never happens. Simultaneously, our hidden self lives in possession of our innermost truths, strength, and desires. More simply put: our seen self fears and avoids what we long for most, believing that if we ask for or pursue it, we would face certain disapproval and rejection. Our hidden self gently but quietly tries to remind us of the existence of these valuable, buried parts of ourselves, along with the deeper truth that we have absolutely nothing to fear by asking for or pursuing them.

Now think again about finding a new relationship. We have a personal story that composes our identity. This story has both conscious and unconscious elements. Though it remains an inconvenient truth, every human being has aching emotional longings that remain unfulfilled. We want nothing more than to find a partner who will give these things to us. We believe that if we could just find the right person this will happen. So we search and hope and pray and say affirmations, but if we do not ask this other person to tell us their story or name their masking behaviors or reveal their emotional longings, then we are seeing them mainly from the outside in, and we are not encountering half of who they are. This means we cannot see or understand half of what motivates their decisions and actions. When we overlook these crucial details, we begin our new relationship blissfully ignorant, believing this might be the one we’ve been looking for all along, which is pure self-deception. This other person actually may be the right one--but only for our seen self--and our seen self wants this other person badly because it knows this other person will not give us what we emotionally long for unless we ask for it directly. Our seen self also knows that asking for what we long for is what we fear most, so it will likely not happen. This conundrum serves our seen self's purposes to perfection as its main motive is self-preservation through imprisonment of the hidden self and all that it contains.

The behaviors I am describing are what our new partner is doing as well. They, too, are focused on us from the outside in. They want to know what we do, what school we went to, what things we’re interested in, what team we root for, which activities we enjoy. If they feel an attraction, they will spend more time with us so they can learn more about our beliefs and values.

When relationship progresses as I am describing, no matter what it feels like, the situation is this: two separate human beings, each seeking deep emotional fulfillment from the other, inadvertently fail to check and see if what each wants from the other is even possible, fearing disapproval or rejection should they do so. This not knowing, not asking sets up an unconscious relationship in which each person’s childhood emotional wounds will now manifest between them and repeat indefinitely, back and forth, year after year, decade after decade. This is why relationship is commonly an unfulfilling experience for a majority of people. The collective lie in our culture is that what I am suggesting is not true and that the majority of married or partnered people are emotionally happy and sincerely fulfilled. On the other hand, if what I am describing here is accurate--if we don’t actually see half of who we are or half of who our partner is--then unfulfillment and dissatisfaction must be part of that relationship—there is no way around it. But neither life nor relationship has to be this way. It is possible to reverse this entire pattern by making a handful of relatively small changes, the foundation of which is a willingness to drop the romantic overlay that we habitually put on relationship and see what is factually true about ourselves and the other.

Living life from the inside out would make all of this quite different. A new relationship begins with a new kind of relationship to oneself: knowing well one’s own story, one’s fears and insecurities, one’s emotional longings. I know my own story well. My father was a compulsive gambler who was overly emotional and highly irrational. I could not depend on him to protect, support or take care of me. My mother died when I was a baby, so I was not raised with much feminine love, affection or caring. I could not ask my father to protect, support, or care for me; nor could I ask him to meet me consistently in a rational manner. I could not ask my mother to hold me affectionately or make me feel loved. All of these became my emotional longings. If I were not aware of this, I could not meet someone and understand the importance of checking to see if they have the love and affection I need, or can provide me consistently with rational responses during times of conflict. It is not what team they root for or what their political leanings are that in the end matter. It is these other specific things that are crucial because they are what we want most and feel continuously unsatisfied not having. Building a relationship in which we might receive these emotional longings is what will heal our wounds and bring us profound fulfillment.

I WILL CONTINUE THIS BLOG IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT--BLOG 2