Calm: Educate Yourself in the Art of Remaining Calm, and Learn how to Defend Yourself from Panic and Fury

by The School of Life

Nowhere do we tend to misbehave more gravely than in our relationships.

We are creatures deeply marked by our expectations. We go around with mental pictures, lodged in our brains, of how things are supposed to go.

When a problem has been factored into our expectations, calm is never endangered.

No one can disappoint and upset us as much as the person we’re in a relationship with – for of no one do we have higher hopes.

expectations are the enemies of love.

more moderate, more reasonable, set of expectations around relationships would include the idea that it is normal and largely unavoidable that people do not understand one another

As a relationship developed, we then wouldn’t get hurt when our partner made some wildly inaccurate assumptions about our needs or preferences.

We’d ideally have an assumption that in any relationship there would be significant areas of disagreement – which could well turn out to be irresolvable.

The idea would be that a good relationship would involve strong agreement on a few pretty major matters, with the expectation that in a host of other areas there would be sharply divergent attitudes and ideas.

We’d be assuming that our partner would be quite often wrapped up in concerns of their own that wouldn’t really have much to do with us.

disagreement is what happens when love succeeds and you get to know someone close up across the full range of their life.

The relationship should be a place where each person is conscious of how fragile their partner inevitably is on certain matters – and takes deliberate care to treat them delicately. This is an admired accomplishment and a real expression of love.

In search of calmer relationships, and happier loves, our collective attitudes should be heading in a more Classical, and politely more pessimistic, direction.

The nagger is trying to influence the other’s behaviour, but they have given up trying to explain rationally.

The shirker for their part simply avoids doing what’s being suggested.

From each side it just feels plainly obvious that the struggle isn’t worth having, which nevertheless doesn’t prevent it from occurring.

To increase patience. When we accept that an issue is intricate and serious, we are willing to be patient around it.

But raising the prestige of the domestic means accepting that such details are matters on which a sane and sensible person could have strong feelings.

Long-running, highly stressful domestic anxiety often circles around what look like pedantic details.

Domestic details look small but carry big, important ideas.

Unfortunately, the very different cultural image we have of relationships – as being about big feelings, rather than little pragmatic issues – has made it hard for us to give these matters the serious attention they in fact deserve.

The road to calmer relationships therefore isn’t necessarily about removing points of contention. It’s rather about assuming that they are going to happen and that they will inevitably require quite a lot of time and thought to address.

we get controlling. We feel our partner is escaping us emotionally, and we respond by trying to pin them down administratively.

rather than admit: ‘I’m worried I don’t matter to you …’

The goal isn’t really to be in charge all the time, it’s just that we can’t admit to our terror about how much of ourselves we have surrendered. A tragic cycle then unfolds. We become shrill and unpleasant. To the other person, it feels like we can’t possibly love them any more. Yet the truth is we do: we just fear rather too much that they don’t love us.

we get nasty. As a final recourse, we ward off our vulnerability by denigrating the person who eludes us. We pick up on their weaknesses and complain about shortcomings. Anything rather than ask the question that so much disturbs us: does this person love and desire me?

We must get better at seeing the love and longing that lurk behind some of our and our partner’s most frosty, managerial and brutish moments.

We view their actions as the result of some really awful things about them that they could change if only they wanted. It feels as if they are deliberately setting out to thwart us.

The Weakness of Strength theory reminds us that many of our partner’s irritating and disappointing characteristics are actually the shadow sides of things we really like about them.

The shift in interpretation doesn’t make the annoying fault go away, and it doesn’t mean there’s nothing this person could ever do in terms of self-improvement. But it does mean that we’re no longer staring at an utterly bleak internal vision of who our partner might be. They’ve not turned into a monster – the constant anxiety-inducing thought that dogs relationships. They are a nice person who is just now showing the negative sides of a good quality.

Our panic has a fatal way of undermining our capacity to deal with the underlying, real problems. Being calmer doesn’t at all mean that we think everything can be fine; it just means we are in a better state of mind to cope with the genuine challenges of our lives.

One of the most fundamental paths to calm is the power to hold on, even in very challenging situations, to a distinction between what someone does – and what they meant to do.

We see intention where there was none and escalate and confront when no strenuous or agitated responses are warranted.

Secret fragility – the cracks that have been accumulating over days, weeks and years – explains our occasionally extraordinary outbursts that can be so puzzling to onlookers.

don’t assign a negative motive or mean intention

look for the source of the agony that drives a person to behave in appalling ways.

We need to aim compassion in an unexpected place: at those who annoy us most.

‘Teaching’ is the infinitely complex art of getting an idea, insight, emotion or skill from one human brain into another.