We wrapped up this week. Click the links to download the 60 minute MP3 audio file.
Here are the files all downloadable or listenable for free (for the time being). Maybe we'll produce them as CDs.
#0 Introduction Dec 22nd Done!
#1 The Map of Relationships: The Dream of Vintage Love Feb 2nd Done!
#2 The Lizard: Safety, Trust, building and rebuilding it. Feb 9th Done!
#3 Clinging and Avoiding: dynamics of reliable connection. Feb 16th Done!
#4 Understanding the Other: Intimacy, Self-Esteem. Feb 23rd. Done!
#5 Power / Passivity: or Democracy in action. Mar 2nd Done! Class #5 now has set of 4 videos that go with it. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
#6 Communication & Boundaries: Skills. Mar 9th Done! Class #6 now has a set of videos on Mirroring that go with it. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
#7 Learning it all: Vintage Love in Reality Mar 16th Done!
Great series. The Vows that Laura read on the last show. Enjoyed it a lot.
Click here for Laura Lavigne's website.
http://www.lauralavigne.com/Talkshow.html
Laura has also created a discussion site on Facebook called Relationship Wisdom Series. See you there.
Comments on this Interview Series, posted from December 2009 thru May 2010, are archived here.
An Interview Series
Comment posted by: kez
Date July 11, 2010
Hi Al, thanks for your comments. My spouse refuses point blank to go to a marriage counsellor and just says he is 'done and dusted'. Still wants to be friends (why do they always think that is so easy? When you genuinely love someone you don't go from love to feeling 'nice' just like that!). I did ask if he would at least give me three months to work on positive actions and reconnection etc. ( I thought this would be reasonable since I had complied with his three month time out). However, won't budge. I have given him Harville Hendrix's book and requested he read that with no expectation on my part – but hopefully it will help him sort out some of his stuff. I will now just continue to work on me. I told him that I truly wish him to be happy and this is heartfelt on my part (yes I love him that much!) Anyway thankyou again al, you have really helped me in some of my darkest hours (does the pain ever go away Al?)
regards, kez
I suppose it is an horrid understatement that relationships seem to often involve tragedy. Well, I believe we are designed to recover from such. Yes, the pain does go away, but hopefully the wisdom gained doesn't.
I found it useful in this life to become better and better at “metabolizing” loss and the pain of loss. Seems we are all in for a lot of loss throughout our lives. Studying grief has been useful for me. Therer are many books on the subject. I particularly like Tom Golden's work – though he is focused on men's grief.
Best Wishes, Al
Hi Al,
Thanks for replying and suggesting that book – I will have a look. After waving the white flag, and retreating to lick my wounds I am still working tirelessly on myself – I want to enjoy life and not let this make me bitter! I still very much want to achieve the biological dream, and now accept that perhaps he is not the one – so I am planning things for me. Al I have been thinking lately about 'love' and how we (men and women) all seem to have different ideas about it. What stimulated this thought was that my spouse has said to me a couple of times now that he 'loves me but is not in love with me'. When I asked him did he mean that he doesn't feel that romantic love (or infatuation, or that passionate rush and so on) he said no, and that I just didn't understand. I said that to me love was about all those things, but also still loving someone with all their strengths, weaknesses, flaws, etc. and through the good and bad times was what it was all about. But he only replied with that sentence again! I also remembered reading some of your thoughts on love in one of your essays (can't remember which one). Have you more thoughts on love or perhaps doing an essay?
regards kez
Ho. Good for you. Wondering about this “thingy called love.” Perhaps a couple of ideas may help.
I personally stopped using the word “love” for some years during my first marriage. The problem for me was the we seemed to be in a rut where we would say “I love you.” “I love you, too.” without any meaning to it at all. I was embarassed and said I wouldn't use that word till I knew what it meant. This was about 1967 or so and was one of my many mistakes/attempts.
Secondly it is worth repeating the idea that “words have no meaning. People have meaning and use words to try to share that meaning.” This is part of my wisdom in Mirroring. It came originally from studying General Semantics. Using that principle, the issue is not what the word “ove” means, but who is using it and what do they mean by that word at that moment.
Thirdly, I have written a lot about the word “love”. Just stick it into my website as a search word.
I generally think of three meanings: Romantic Love, Vintage Love and simple love. Simple love for me is a decision to spend energy on nurturing someone or even yourself. Romantic Love is a temporary condition energized by many emotional chemicals including PEA, triggered by the Biological Dream. Romantic Love is characteristic of being in the presence of a potential Imago Match, a candidate with whom you can (if you work your butts off) reach Vintage Love. Romantic Love never lasts very long. Vintage Love is a dreamed-of state, sometimes made real, where people act in congruence with what I call the Biological Dream.
I believe that to reach Vintage Love, Romantic Love must end, and a lot of very specific learning has to happen in both people.
When people say they are In Love, I look for a lot of dreaming and delicious fun. I also anticipate the “crash.” When people say they are “no longer in love” I tend to look for the Power Struggle, a lot of anger and grief, and that ever present decision to learn or not.
This is all in my Map of Relationships. Enjoy.
Hi Al,
Just thought I would post an update. My spouse is 'full steam ahead' with separation stuff – in the process of splitting everything up. The 'funny' thing is though, when I say to him what is your intention, if you're splitting everything up, do you want a quickie divorce? He replies 'no – we are separating and can stay that way for years.' I said 'but, if you don't want to divorce, why are you splitting up everything? Do you want to see how you feel 12 months down the track?' To which he says he doesn't see any future for us a husband and wife. Al, I am so confused. He seems so direct in some ways and in others not. And the other thing is Al, could I request some advice. All through this I am trying to be calm, not pushing etc. and am trying to pre-validate, mirror and validate, but I often get off track – or he just gets annoyed and says I'm telling him how to think! Ahhhhhhhhhh ………. Is this still power struggle stuff? I am on the verge of telling him I don't want to see him for 6 months! Help!!!!
Thanks again for all your comments, regards
Kez
Hi Al,
Thank you so much for all the wisdom you've shared throughout this site. Your essay on the Passive-Master is especially hitting home for me, and listening to your radio interviews is also really helpful– it's nice not just to read the information, but to hear how you deliver it. I can hear why your partner enjoys talking to you, and it makes me want to learn to communicate so that others relax more in my presence.
I have a question about giving someone space when the Clinger and Avoider have switched roles. I had a work/life situation outside my relationship this summer that ended in me getting panicked and depressed for quite some time. Communicating with my partner about it (which I may have been doing quite ineffectively, I now see after reading about Passive-Masters and emotions) was leaving me feeling even worse, because I left our conversations thinking he never understood how I felt. I started to pull away in obvious ways first– not calling much, etc.– and when he was upset by that I shifted to several months of unproductive numbing out via overwork and exhaustion. I stopped being supportive of him, and I let lots of anxieties about us manifest in unpleasant ways instead of working through them because I was too tired and numbed out to care. Of course I didn't see any of that at the time…
So he finally got sick of it and now he's in the act of physically leaving, maybe wanting a break from the relationship, and there goes my lizard, wanting to cling. When I start feeling clingy, I know that's my signal to make sure there's space for both of us to calm down immediately. I was doing pretty well with it for the first week and a half, and things were very slowly turning around, but I think I got too enthusiastic that things were getting better and the space shrank a bit. The overstimulated deer has now hopped back into the forest. I won't make that mistake again (hopefully)!
The tricky thing is that what upset him in the first place was my absence, physically, mentally and emotionally. I heard in your interview what you said about it being best to take time-outs for one's self and not to instead tell your partner that they need a time out and you're doing it for them. But if he's already decided that I'm someone who takes off, and if when he asks for connection I say, “Yes, but only a quick chat before my counseling appt,” might he not just decide I'm being manic about self-help like I was about work? Or might time-outs just look like me running again and make it worse? I'm just not sure how to frame giving him space so that it doesn't look like my same old avoiding tricks. I'm seeing myself as sort of stuck between where he is and what he needs, and what I was doing and don't want him to think I'm doing anymore. Any insights would be very much appreciated. BTW, he's leaving the region for two months for work in a couple of days, so some degree of space is about to be built in.
Best wishes,
Work in Progress
Ah, well you are into some advanced stuff.
Along the way to Vintage Love this will happen – things get confusing. And I think you need time and thoughtfulness from both to work through this into getting clear what is going on, what did go on, and what you want to have go on, and (of course) what to do next.
Let me focus on one issue. Is your partner’s stuff your problem? The answer is yes and no. You do not cause their stuff. They do not cause your stuff. Those are just two boundary statements.
But their stuff is somehow your stuff too. Think of this analogy. If you were both riding on a snowmobile at 60 miles an hour, and you have to sneeze, that means closing your eyes for second. If you’re the driver and the forest is close, both are gonna crash and burn. Your sneeze is their problem, too.
The challenge is to noodle your way through to finding out your differing roles. What does the sneezer do to help this situation? What does the sneeze do?
Same is true with learning how to handle your needs to withdraw for your sanity, by letting your partner know how long you will be gone – giving them structure so at least they don’t have to feel abandoned.
Another point is that “the way to improve is to cheerfully make mistakes.” All living systems have to have repair processes built into them. You have to good at grieving when loss happens, be good at appropriate forgiveness, be good at making Amends, be great at embracing effort and reminding each of little steps made.
Glad you like my stuff.