Something Personal: The Rules

Over the course of teaching interpersonal communication and doing my own life, I've come up with a set of rules that I try hard to live by, and recommend that other people do as well. As they are excellent guidelines for human functioning, here they are:

1. Stay Away From Crazy
   
   Yes, yes. I understand we all have a little bit of crazy lurking about inside of us. Things set us off and make us behave irrationally. I'm not talking about that. I'm also not talking about any sort of legitimate mental illness. I'm talking about people who either refuse or don't know how to behave correctly. I'm talking about people who lie compulsively, who are manipulative, who aren't willing to take responsibility for their actions, who make more excuses and explanations than sincere apologies. I'm talking about people, who when you interact with them, routinely make you feel angry or hurt or frustrated.
   
   Why should you stay away from crazy? Because crazy people are takers and not givers. They are usually too self absorbed to actually contribute anything meaningful to our lives and people like this drain us of resource that we could be giving to other people who feed us and help us to grow and live a life full of love. For more on that, see the Glowworm lecture.
2. Never Ask a Question You Don't Want Answered Honestly
   
   It amazes me the number of times I've seen people shocked when someone gives them an unpleasant truth in response to a question. Just a few examples: "Have I gained weight?" "Am I a diva?" "Do you think I make bad life choices?" "Do you fantasize about other women?" "Did you cheat on me?"
   
   If you're going to ask a question like that, you had better assume that there is a possibility that you aren't going to get a nice, tidy, socially appropriate, self-esteem-affirming response. If you are being a diva and if you ask me if you're being a diva, I can assure you that 100% of the time I will tell you that you're being a diva. You may be asking, why wouldn't I just tell a nice little lie that will make you feel good about yourself? Because you asked. And because you asked, you've given me permission to tell you the truth.
    
3.  Seize Joy
   
   I don't just mean stop and smell the roses. I mean go out of your way and find some roses and smell the heck out of them until you suck the scent right off of them and love every minute of it. You have one short, little, precious life on the planet. Go out and seek and grab and pull to you those things, experiences, and people who fill your heart with boundless delight. Be responsible (no, "seize joy" isn't equivalent to the idiotic mantra of millenials, "YOLO"), but know that joy isn't going to happen to knock on your apartment door while you're bingeing on whatever you binge on when you're home alone at night. Rather, ya gotta go out and get it. And when you do, hold the hell on to it.
4. Act Right
   
   Usually, when I tell people this in conversation, the whole rule is, "Act right; it ain't that hard". Perhaps my greatest pet peeve is when people choose to do what they shouldn't or fail to do what they should. In my experience, there are few situations that legitimately impede a person from behaving in whatever way is called for by the situation or relationship in which they are behaving. Rather, we fail to adhere to our responsibilities because we don't want to, and then we make excuses for it. What really drives me bananas is when a person, in the course of making excuses for a failure to act right, bemoans the negative consequences that accompanied whatever ill-conceived choice they made instead of acting right.
   
   I don't care why you didn't do what you should have, or why you did what you shouldn't have. I don't care what unfortunate thing happened to you as a result. Your job, my job, the job of the collective humanity is to behave in responsible ways that minimize to the best of our ability, the chance that our actions in any given moment are going cause someone hurt. Put that way, why wouldn't you act right. It really is too easy.

So, these are the rules. Sincerely, I try very hard to live by these. I don't always succeed, and some I struggle with more than others, but I find them to provide a good framework for making the best of my small little life.

Relationships are Like Gardens Part II: Success Requires Skills and Planning

This is part 2 of a 5-part series drawing the analogy between gardening and building good relationships. Part I talked about how knowledge is central to success in both endeavors. Here in Part II, I discuss how the acquisition of the right skills, and the development of a sound plan are important to success in gardening and close relationships.

I introduced this series with a very sad tale about how I tried once to grow cilantro and failed miserably because I didn't know how to do it. Not knowing how to do it prevented me from being able to generate a plan for when and where to plant (as it turns out, I failed on both these points) or knowing whether I had the skills to do it (I still wonder if I am capable of seeing the difference between the edible first round of leaves and the frilly, lacy, bitter leaves that the plant produces as it matures).

My cilantro fiasco (as I'm now calling it) was rooted in a lack of knowledge, but that lack of knowledge ultimately resulted in my total inability to know how to plan for planting and then tend the plant once it started to grow. These same pitfalls in relationships can cause them to fail to flourish.

Strategy: Identifying a Desired Outcome and Developing a Viable Plan to Get There

The word "strategy" can be off-putting for people in reference to their relationships. Strategy sounds like something we do when we are playing games or going to war - both of which are categorically terrible comparisons for relationship management. Curiously, when we begin what we hope is a romantic relationship, we often strategize like champs. We know what we want (to form a romantic relationship with potential-partner X) and we know how to get there (by a series of tactical moves that are part of a larger playing-hard-to-get strategy that minimizes our availability and maximizes our desirability).

Something happens, though, as we become confident in the persistence of the relationship. We stop approaching it strategically. We let the relationship, for lack of better language, "do what it's going to do". Here's the thing about relationships "doing what they are going to do" - they don't. Relationships don't do a thing. Relationships are a result of human action. If we don't behave well, our relationships won't be well.

If we want our relationships to be well, our over-arching strategy should be to take care of the relationship and each other. If caring for ourselves, our partners, and our bond is what is at the front of our minds every time (and I do mean every time) we communicate, then our tactics should match that.

Let's take a recent example from my own life. My sister and I were hanging out a couple of weeks ago. I had intended that we would hang out together with my niece, Doodle, and have dinner and catch up. She spent the first two hours of my visit working on something else and only half-listening to me during our visit. I became increasingly frustrated but said nothing to her about it until I had utterly lost my patience and felt hurt and dismissed as a result of her inattention. My hurt and anger caused me to lose sight of that big relationship objective of caring for our bond and I yelled at her to stop what she was doing.

This was a major, massive tactical fail on my part which happened because I was more concerned with expressing my annoyance with her behavior and getting her to stop rather than the bigger strategic objective of taking care of our relationship. As you can imagine, my behavior hurt and upset my sister, and we proceeded to waste the better part of the next 3 hours yelling and crying. A mildly annoying situation turned into a huge, hurtful incident because I prioritized my own emotion over the relationship. I made a bad tactical decision that I would have avoided if I adhered to my strategy of caring for us both.

If we have a good plan and commit to adhering to it, we make better choices and have better relationships (and cilantro).

Strategy Can't Work without Skill

Okay, so it's all well and good that we decide that our primary strategic objective is to care for our partners, ourselves, and our relationships and that we should devise a set of tactics that enable the meeting of that objective. The trouble is, we may not have the skills to do so.

I can assure you, that while I don't remotely have the skills to be able to grow cilantro, that I absolutely have the skills to be able to have good conflict. I simply chose not to use them in the situation with my sister that I referenced above.* But what if I didn't have the skills? What if I knew that barking wouldn't end well, but didn't know what else I could do? What if I didn't know how to express frustration and ask for us to change what we were doing without sounding angry? Would I be doomed to failure in relationships? No. Certainly not.

Skill comes from practice, but we have to practice the right things. If you have a friend who is good at the thing you want to get better at, ask if they might role-play and practice while they give you feedback. There are also people who provide relationship and communication coaching** (myself, included) who, like an athletic coach or trainer, will identify skills fundamentals that need improvement and help you to develop them. You can ask your partners to tell you how they would prefer for you to behave in a given situation. If they can alert you to the troublesome behavior and motivate you in the midst of a conversation to do a better behavior, this can help you grow as well.

Growth is the End-Game

In the case of cilantro or relationships, what we're ultimately trying to do is grow them. Our closest relationships are the most valuable things many of us have. In order to grow them, to make them closer, warmer, more stable, we need to be mindful about how we approach communicating within them. We've gotta be knowledgeable, strategic, and skilled if we intend to reap the enormous benefits of our closest bonds.

Of course, all of the knowledge, strategy, and skill in the world can't prevent the occasional pest or hassle from creeping into our relationships and cilantro beds. We'll come to that in my next post, so stay tuned for Part III.

Notes:

* Yes, dear readers, being an expert doesn't necessarily mean I always do the right thing. I'm well-educated, but I'm sure not perfect. And yes, I absolutely did apologize to my sister.

** If you're looking for a relationship coach, scrutinize credentials. There are lots of people who will sell relationship coaching services with no educational or experiential credentials that would justify their charging you for their alleged expertise. Find someone whose academic or experiential credentials are clearly identifiable, and ensure that their degrees, certifications, or experience are in an appropriate field (e.g., you don't want an MBA in Management teaching you interpersonal conflict management but they may be perfect for business communication coaching). Many certified legal mediators with specialties in family mediation may also offer coaching services.

Soapbox: To Get It, Ya Gotta Give It

I've titled this post "To Get It, Ya Gotta Give It" because this is the root of so many of our missteps in the way we manage expectations for other people. We tend to approach life with an exaggerated idea of the resources we are entitled to expect from other people - time, energy, money, company, love, affection, sex, respect, etc. Unfortunately, we tend to spend a disproportionately small amount of time thinking about the extent to which we have given enough of those resources to other people to warrant our expectation that we are entitled to receive them.

Do me a favor and think back to your grade school days when one of the first life lessons we were taught was the Golden Rule - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When we are taught this as children, the point is that we should avoid treating each other badly if we expect others to treat us well.

As adults, it behooves us to consider this advice with a more sophisticated mindset. We should consider the Golden Rule as our own mindful establishment of parameters for how we should conduct ourselves in relationships, rather than just having the mindset that we should avoid doing unkind things to others.

Here are some things you ought to consider as you devise a strategy for doing unto others:

• Give the resources you want to receive.
• Show appreciation when you receive resources that you didn't expect or that you arguably haven't earned.
• Occasionally choose to give up resources to your partner that you feel like they haven't earned to help build a landscape of positivity and generosity in your relationship.
• Apologize for your failure to give resources that you should have . . . and then try better to provide those resources to avoid breeding resentment over unmet needs.
• Try not to suck.

Long story short: you can only expect to receive what you're willing to give. If all you're willing to give is nonsense or nothing, then you're not prepared to be in a relationship. Work on that.

*hops off soapbox*

Soapbox: Adulthood = Acting Right

Okay, this isn't about relationships, but since I have an audience I'm going to take this opportunity to hop on my metaphorical soapbox (which, if you ask my students, is something I'm highly prone to doing) and give a screaming lesson about life.

Today's soapbox: Being an adult means acting right.

Listen, life is tough. My mom started teaching me that lesson when I was about 8 years old. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do - like going to work instead of posting up on our couches for three days and watching marathons of Golden Girls and the Walking Dead. Sometimes we have to put up with people whom we don't like and find it difficult to deal with, but they are our bosses or co-workers or in-laws and they aren't going anywhere. Sometimes we'd really love to drop a couple hundred bucks on a shiny new whatever-the-heck instead of making a car payment. Sometimes, we are bored with our romantic partner and entertain the idea of a tryst with a hot stranger.

Get of over it. Seriously.

Being a grown up - a full-fledged adult means taking responsibility for ourselves. I will grant you, getting old and bearing the responsibility that comes with movement through life as we age isn't always awesome. And it doesn't always come with benefits and rewards commensurate with increased responsibility. But you know what? That's life. Handle your business, pay your bills, contribute to society, and treat people well. Do these things even when you can't see a good reason for it because the success of larger social structures relies on individuals' willingness to make responsible choices.

Or you know what? Don't.

Here's the catch, though. If you want to choose to shirk the responsibility of adulthood and act like an irresponsible child, that's fine. BUT, that means you have to bear the consequences of those choices. If you lose your job, get your car repossessed, or have your spouse leave you because you were self-indulgent and utterly lacking in conscience, empathy, integrity, or foresight, then so be it. But shut up because I don't want to hear you gripe about your lousy lot in life. If your bad life circumstances are directly tied to silly, stupid choices, then revel in the mess you've made for yourself. Don't ask me for a ride, don't ask me for relationship advice, and don't ask me for a loan. You did that to yourself, so figure out how to work it out.

Quit sucking and act right, for crying out loud.

*hops off soapbox*

Daytime Tri-Cities Day 5: Keeping Your Relationship Fresh

Today's topic (and the last one for the week) was about keeping a relationship fresh and warding off boredom.

So let's suppose you've managed to meet a great person, you've dated a while, you've made a long-term commitment to each other, and the relationship has gone on . . . and on . . . and on. Inevitably, the boredom that comes with the mundane routine of everyday life sets in. You find yourself not only bored with your life, but also bored with your partner. And that, my friends, is bad news if you don't manage it well.

The thing about boredom and routine is that they are normal. I repeat: being periodically bored is a normal part of even the happiest most functional relationships. I talked in the Daytime segment today about where that boredom comes from and why it's natural. What I want to spend the blog post talking more about, though, is what to do about that boredom.

So, I present to you a few tips for reducing boredom and reintroducing excitement into our relationships:

• Date your partner. At the start of the relationship, we plan and do activities that we enjoy. We go to concerts and out to dinner. We make trips to the zoo and and go on moonlit walks. As we grow into a stable pattern in our relationship and life happens around that relationship, we tend to stop prioritizing these enjoyable activities. We feel like these small delights are luxuries that we aren't entitled to when we have the responsibility of everyday life to attend to. Let me tell you what - if your relationship is working and happy, you'll be happier while you do all the other things that life demands.
• Create a relationship bucket list. Many of us have either a mental or written list of the things that we want to do in the short time we have on this planet. I recommend making a relationship bucket list of activities that you would like to do with your partner. Decide together on things that you want and are committed to trying to do. These can be small things like going ice skating together, or bigger things like taking a luxurious vacation together that you plan and save up for. (By the way, vacations are especially good for relationships - especially your sex lives. Check out this article published by USA Today about the subject). Not only will you create a list of things that you are looking forward to doing together, but the activity of creating the list and adding to it when you come up with a new idea can also create fun in the relationship.

• Play with your partner. We often think of play as being something the children do. Happy relationships, though, are characterized by playfulness and lighthearted activity that might include having nicknames for your partner, gentle teasing, wrestling, or playing literal games like board games. In addition to breaking the routine and monotony of a relationship, Leslie Baxter, a relationship researcher, contends that play can serve other important relationship-improving functions. Having a playful atmosphere in our relationship allows us to express our feelings for each other, manage conflict in a non-confrontational way, and to develop a culture in our relationship that makes us feel special and unique as compared to other relationships (here's the citation for her article on play in Human Communication Research). 

Naturally, the best thing to do in your relationship when boredom sets in is to tell your partner that you think it's time to break your routine. Be sure to be clear that you don't blame your partner for your boredom, and invite your partner to think about ways that you can reintroduce fun and excitement in a way that you'll both enjoy. While relationships do require some work and tending to in order to thrive, they are supposed to be joyful and fulfilling. When you start to lose sight of the joy, go get it back. Have fun!