Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship

Maturity comes when we tend to our inner children and don’t inflict them on our partners to care for.

You have to help your partner come through for you. Tell them how you'd like them to be. Help them win. Help your partner succeed, because it's in your interest to act like a team. In our individualistic culture, your partner either comes through for you or they don't. But when you begin thinking relationally, ecologically, you realize that you have something to say about how things go between you. "What can I do to help you come through for me?" is an entirely relational question. Thinking like a team is the clear antidote to thinking like two individuals. It's a shift from "I don't like how you're talking to me" to "Honey, I want to hear what you're saying. Could you please lower your voice so I can hear it?" A shift from "I need more sex" to "We both deserve a healthy sex life. What should we do about it?

There is nothing that harshness does that loving firmness doesn’t do better.

Everyone gets to go crazy in long-term relationships, but you have to take turns. I call this relational integrity. It means that you hold the (Wise Adult) fort while your partner goes off their (Adaptive Child) rails. It’s not an easy practice, but it builds strong relational muscles.

You really can’t be mad at not getting what you never asked for.

Fairness is a trap. Stop being centrally concerned with your rights for a moment. Stop acting like a rugged individualist, and remember the wisdom of ecology, remember your biosphere.

We all marry our unfinished business. We all marry our mothers and fathers. And in our closest relationships, we become our mothers and fathers.

The particularities of your parents’ limitations and dysfunctions became the imperfect “holding environment” you adjusted to. That adjustment, that adaptation, becomes your particular version of you and me consciousness, the imprint on your limbic system of your unique Adaptive Child.

Before you open your mouth,” I tell him, “I want you to stop and think. Ask yourself: ‘What is the thing I’m about to say going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to?

There is no place for objective reality in personal relationships. Objective reality is great for getting trains to run on time or for developing an important vaccine, but for ferreting out which point of view is “valid” in an interpersonal transaction, it is a loser.

relational mindfulness—stopping for a brief moment and centering ourselves. Observing, just as in all forms of mindfulness, the thoughts, feelings, impulses that arise—and choosing something different.

I believe there’s no such thing as overreacting; it’s just that what someone is reacting to may no longer be what’s in front of them.

Soft power. When you need to speak up, be artful. Take care of your partner as best you can by explicitly cherishing them and your relationship. Start by letting them know you need repair, is this a good time? If your partner agrees to talk, thank them, start off with an appreciation - something you are thankful for that your partner has said or done, even if it's just that you appreciate their willingness to sit down and talk. Then state your intentions - a good thing to do generally: "I want to clear the air between us so that I can feel closer to you." Center yourself in your Wise Adult, prefrontal cortex, and remember love. Recall that the person you're addressing is someone you love, or at least care for, and in any case, you will have to live with them. Remembering love is a recentering practice. You're speaking to someone you care about in the hopes of making things better.

The neuroscientist Stephen Porges posits that feeling safety in another person with whom we interact consists of two important qualities—the absence of an agenda, and the absence of judgment.

Once we move beyond individualistic myths like survival of the fittest, and wake up to our interdependence, it dawns on us that the willful denial of connection has consequences both to those who are denied and to the deniers. The cost of disconnection is disconnection. If us consciousness unifies, you and me consciousness fragments—our communities, our personal relationships, our very souls. As we will explore in some detail, the legacy of individualism is loneliness.

In your close relationships, urgency is your enemy, and breath is your friend.

It’s the Whoosh, the visceral reaction that comes up from the feet like a wave washing over your body. I speak of it as our first consciousness, and I divide it into three reactions—fight, flight, or fix.

ADAPTIVE CHILD WISE ADULT Black & White Nuanced Perfectionistic Realistic Relentless Forgiving Rigid Flexible Harsh Warm Hard Yielding Certain Humble Tight in body Relaxed in body

The central question I ask myself during a therapy session is simply this one: Which part of you am I talking to?

What determines when we stay wise rather than lurch into reactivity? Current research shows clearly that it’s determined by our subjective sense of safety or its lack.

making a child into the family hero—the light all others depend upon—is a form of trauma.

Whenever a young person encounters trauma, they react to it and they also repeat it. Modeling has elements of identifying with the aggressor. In modeling, you don’t resist the dysfunctional mores of your family—you reenact them. You see yourself as you were seen; you internalize bad behavior as normal.

With no one there to help modulate your feelings, you did a very smart thing as that little boy. You shut them down. Closed a door on them.

The real work of relationships is not occasional, or even daily: it is minute-to-minute. In this triggered moment right now, which path am I going to take? Rather than being overridden by your history, you can stop, pause, and choose.

Before we can provide corrective emotional experiences for each other, we must learn how to tend to our own immature parts, to our own reactivity, to our avoidance, our long-suffering frustration. We must master the art of relational mindfulness and retake the reins.

There’s No Redeeming Value in Harshness

self-denying, is in fact, also a form of control—trying to “not set him off.” I define codependent behavior as occurring when you back away from perfectly reasonable behavior—like telling the truth—for fear of your partner’s unreasonable response. Both

And at the end of the day, the way we honor our parents and their efforts is by carrying on their blessings and doing our best to not pass forward their troubles, their faults, to our own children. Our children’s sins should be their own. It’s

I invite you to use Janet Hurley's feedback wheel, a form of speaking that has four parts. It is a structure you can use to organize your thoughts and more skillfully speak up when you are hurt. 1. This is what I recollect happened. 2. This is what I made up about it. 3. This is what I felt. And that all-important fourth step most speakers leave out: 4. This would help me feel better. In other words, this is what repair might look like. ... 1. Terry, you said you'd be home by six and you arrive at 6:45, no message or text, while I sat with the kids waiting for dinner. 2. What I make up about that is that you still have some narcissistic traits and that you value your time over ours. 3. I felt sad lonely, fearful of the impact on our children, hurt, and angry. 4. What I'd like now is for you to apologize to the kids, and to me for that matter. And tell me what you're going to do to not repeat this pattern. Notice that each step of the wheel is complete in just a few sentences. Be concise. And here are two more important tips. First, when you share your feelings, be sure to share your feelings, not your thoughts - keep them separate. "I feel like you're angry" doesn't cut it. Better would be "I make up that you're angry and about that I feel.