Maude Mayes's Blog: Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed, page 114

Knowing Who You Are

Dear Maude,

I wrote about “knowing what your own goals are”, and you wrote “you need to have spent time learning about yourself”, so we’re both acknowledging the importance that knowing yourself has in a successful relationship.

The better you know yourself, the easier it is to pick a suitable partner. Of course, that advice isn’t much use if you’re already in a relationship; in that case, knowing yourself better will change your responses, and that in turn will change the relationship. For instance, if you’re criticised, you can

realise it’s valid and try to change
think it’s unfair, but try to change to avoid future attacks
find it hypocritical and respond with your own criticisms
know it’s unjustified, and ignore it

Changing your response will most likely change your partner, too; perhaps not the first time, or the second, but if you continue to choose 1 or 4, their actions will no longer produce the expected paybacks and the emotional game will eventually wither and die for lack of a partner.

More Thoughts to the all Important Issue of Acceptance

In order to accept another person for who they are and how they act, it is important to feel secure in who you are yourself. I think to be in a successful relationship, you need to have spent time learning about yourself and be willing to go on with that learning. True acceptance implies not only taking the person for who they are, but rejoicing in that difference. There is a noticeable lack of power struggles, when one practices acceptance, and an absence of needing ‘to be right’. None of this is really possible unless you do not feel challenged in who you are yourself. I heard someone giving relationship advice who said, “pick your battles”. I thought, well why battle at all! Let things go unless they concern core issues. Being ‘right’ does not usually get you where you want to go. Finding words and styles of communication that bring peace and loving support is what most of us are truly looking for. Exploring the wonder of another person can be one of the most exciting things open to us in life. First we are attracted to the difference, but all too often we then spend all the rest of the time trying to get rid of all difference and make it just like us. How boring! You already have yourself. Relax and enjoy and Accept the otherness!

The Requirements for Acceptance

Acceptance of the other means letting them do their own thing (pardon my 60′s).

If we see them as less skilled or capable than us, the temptation is to chide them or correct them, but these are parental responses. Even offering help can be an implied criticism of their capabilities. Furthermore, our perception of their incompetence may be misplaced; perhaps they just like doing it that way, or maybe they actually know better than us.

All of these reactions are attempts at control, or in Buddhist terms, we are attached to a particular outcome. It may be something totally unacceptable, like killing kittens; more likely, it’s something less freighted, like having opposite political opinions, or maybe one person wants to travel round the world while the other wants to remain and study. This is when you need to examine whether you and your partner have shared and mutually acceptable goals.

To do that requires knowing what your own goals are, and in the clamor of advertising, family expectations, social norms, it is hard to filter out those voices and find your own. The ancient maxim “Know Thyself” applies here. Make time away from the distractions of the world. Run, hike, see a therapist, meditate, or whatever it takes for those voices to dissipate and for your true self to show through.

It is when your partner’s behavior is not in contradiction with your beliefs and life goals that you need to practice acceptance. Is it your life’s goal to live in a world where the toilet seat is always down, or do you have loftier ideals?

Acceptance – Some Thoughts to the Topic

In preparing to write an article to the topic of Acceptance, we have been thinking and talking together about the components of this very critical aspect of conflict free relationships. I keep thinking that one of the places that people get caught up, is in the area of understanding that there really are two separate persons involved in a relationship. I know this sounds obvious, but in practice, the mind does not always acknowledge this fact. As we grow more intimate with someone, there is a sliding of the line between ‘us’and ‘them’. We feel the mutual self and sometimes we forget there really are two selves, as well as the new self – the couple in union. This is most often seen in simple areas. The couple is out with friends. One of them speaks and says things differently than the other would. The one listening feels bad, angry or badly represented, because they feel that what their partner says counts as them speaking.

These types of feelings can quickly lead one down a path of criticism, and the desire to alter how or what the other person does, to adjust it to be more correctly representative of one’s self.

Acceptance is basically the exact opposite. You are in full knowledge of the other person as just that. You are fascinated by the very fact that this is another person, with totally different ways and thoughts, while at the same time being in consonance with you on your core issues. You are not threatened by their being, their different way. You celebrate it!

How can we avoid this pitfall that is so common to all of us, as we build our relationships.

What do you think?

True Then and True Now

Over the course of our relationship, we have recorded sessions analyzing what makes our relationship so successful, so peaceful, so conflict-free. We have blogged, written articles, published a book, and sought different ways to communicate that peace is possible within a relationship.

Last night, we listened to a recording we made about a year & half into our relationship, then read a chapter of our book aloud. It was amazing to see that even that early on, we were highlighting the same things we are talking and writing about today; presence, acceptance, and respect for the others’ individuality. It emphasized for both of us how true and real our message is, and how how constant it has stayed. More than ever, we feel that we must debunk the myth of inevitable conflict within relationships. It can be done differently, and we are the living proof.

For more, see:

Our book, Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed and ebook.
Awareness Magazine: How to Make Joint Decisions without Conflict
The Myth of Inevitable Conflict Within a Relationship

Get Some Sleep!

Want to have a better relationship? Get a Good Night’s Sleep!

That’s the conclusion of two UC Berkely psychologists who followed over 100 couples for nearly 2 years.

“Even among relatively good sleepers, a poor night of sleep was associated with more conflict with their romantic partner the next day,” one of the researchers said.

I’m Me and You are You!

Excerpt from “Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed” pgs. 18 – 19

“I’d like to try to break down some of the qualities that seem so important to how we are with each other.

One factor that seems critical is not only accepting the other person for who they are, but also celebrating with joy who they are, feeling a deep abiding affection and respect for the other.

At the same time, it is important not to get confused and think that one’s identity has merged with the other. We seem to keep our separate identities, while merging into something else as well. When you’re not trying to change the other person, you don’t run into so many of the difficulties that bring conflict and distance between two people. So how does one find a balance of not trying to change each other, while at the same time being open to help and support each other?

I think part of this paradox could be avoided by not thinking you know better than your partner what is right or best for them. Maybe by not separating yourself from your partner, by not thinking from a position of separation such as smarter or better or more fully knowing what right action is, you can instead actually experience the joy of another viewpoint, the discovery of other ways to see and think of things. This difference of identity has to at the same time be consonant with your basic values. You have to feel connected and in accord, to fully appreciate difference and not want to make it the same as you.”

Is it Important to Be Right?

One of the things that I love about how we are together is the lack of either one of us ‘needing to be right’ or being concerned with ‘who is right’. When we listen to each other as we are talking together, we are actually listening. We are not just in our head, waiting for the moment when we can talk again about why our opinion is the correct one. In fact, both of us seem to really get off on the fact that the other one has different ideas and doesn’t see everything exactly as we do. These differences are not really sources for actual conflict. They are not differences in meanings and values. I feel that in so many relationships, the sharing is more like a debate or an argument. Things that are often of no consequence or actual substance, become the areas of intense struggle, all in the name of ‘who is right’!

By eliminating this type of back and forth altogether, we seem to wind up in a miraculous space. We go to an area where we share what each of us feels and thinks and even as we are talking, something begins to occur. We start to hear new ideas, things that aren’t exactly from either of us, but yet have the best of what each of us has contributed. By the time we are done, we usually have a new creation, an answer to our problem or a plan for action that is much better than anything either of us came up with.

It really feels like magic and it happens every time.

P. 28 “Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed”.

Change Your Words – Change Your Relationship – for the Better

We’ve written a guest post on a wonderful site called geekandjock.com. It is about the use of peaceful language within a relationship. These tips will be helpful for any relationship, not just couples, and we believe you will enjoy it as well as being able to use it. Please check it out, share it, and like it and if you have time, do comment about it. Let’s spread Peace, one relationship at a time!

http://www.geekandjock.com/change-your-words-change-your-relationship

Individuality Within a Relationship

One of the key characteristics of our relationship is a deep respect for the separate individuality of the other person. We both have a very strong sense of our identities. Neither of us would be comfortable letting go of or changing our inner person. We would not respond favorably to being told how to act or how to be. As a result, we do not try in any manner to alter, reform or impinge upon the other. We do not push, pull or adjust who the other is or should be. And yet, we have opened ourselves up to a deep merging union with each other.

Furthermore, we take pleasure in seeing such autonomy in action. We honor and celebrate the difference. We feel enriched by another person who is actually different; has a different thought pattern, history and a different way of expressing things.To grant such autonomy to the other needs trust. This is something that was assumed in the beginning, then confirmed over a period of time. This confirmation is found not in small things like remembering to pick up milk, but through a consonance of meanings and values: how do we see other people, and how do we treat them? Once these values are seen to be aligned, differences are not threatening or disturbing, and we can relax and revel in the uniqueness of the other. We have shared our deepest inner places and have at the same time retained two totally independent and separate lives. As these mesh more and more, we continue to be present as two whole individuals, even as we deepen in our union.

Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed pgs. 15 – 16